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Alyssa Norden Princess Storrer AP Composition 20 May 2014 Dress Codes: More Than Just Clothing Regulations Schools all over the world have created and enforced dress codes. Some schools are more relaxed than others; however, they all share the common theme of regulating what students can and cannot wear during the school day. But what happens when the latest fashion trends completely compromise the implemented dress code? That is the problem student’s-particularly young women- are facing in today’s society. The overwhelming increase in dress code violations has brought to light another issue associated with the codes: sexism. More and more, young women are being targeted and punished for dress code violations. While this may be due to the fact that fashion in today’s society is all about tight clothes, it could also lead to more …show more content…
To place the blame on young women for how they are treated by men due to their dress is completely unfair. A girl could wear an oversized t-shirt and baggy sweatpants and a boy will still be curious about her. The same is true for girls. The idea that it is a girl’s fault if she is commented about or raped for how she is dressed is sickening and completely sexist. Reilly Card and Neil Haran, authors of an article titled “High School Dress Codes: Sexist or Appropriate?” in their school newspaper, give an example of this blame, using the phrase “she was asking for it” to prove this point. No girl is ever asking to be catcalled at, or ogled at, or-even worse-raped. As stated before, girls go to school to learn, and their clothing should not impede that. Card and Haran also raise awareness to the fact that by calling what girls wear “offensive” or “promiscuous”, it is implied that they dress more to impress the male population rather than to exert their self-confidence or show off a new outfit. This is not fair to young women, as it further blames them for anything bad happening to
We’ve all seen it, do not lie. Boys and girls alike, making sexist jokes in the hallway and laughing like it’s funny. Seeing boys objectifying girls, and vice versa, as if it is not an action that is humiliating and ridiculous. Young and impressionable, we have been taught from a young age to fight each other and bully each other with a simple saying: “Girls rule, boys drool! Boys rule, girls drool!” Regrettably, the idea is displayed on T-shirts at Target and Justice, and it’s tearing schools apart. This mindset of the superior sex is a horrible misconception of the world, implanted by ignorant adults to make ignorant children. And the most prominent ignorant rule in schools yet: dress code and uniforms. Innocently, people believe it’s a
Girls should not have to worry about how many rules they make break when they get dressed in the morning. They shouldn’t have to be worried that they’re going to be taken out of class just because they aren’t following every guideline set for them. A boy’s education should not be a priority either. Boy’s don’t get their education taken away due to the dress code, so why should a girl have to give up her education because she decided that she was going to wear a tank top that wasn’t quite three fingertips but maybe only two? The dress codes need to be updated to be less restricting, and less focused on how females need to be
Advocates of school uniforms repeatedly use arguments such as: uniforms decrease violence and gang activities, uniforms remove distractions from the classroom, and uniforms enhance academic performances but multiple studies have proven that uniforms or enforcing a stricter dress code of any kind produces any noteworthy changes. Most of the time it’s only the parents and administrators that see the results but that might just be a placebo effect, where a person claims they see changes because they expected it. It’s often seen in scientific studies where group one receives the experimental substance and group two received a substance with a similar appearance in order to see if the substance is viable. The school staffs sees changes but the student do not proving that dress attire does not have a great impact on learning. Dress code policies are also very sexist and aimed mostly towards females. It teaches boys it’s okay to sexualize girls and that it’s in their nature. Girl’s are told it is their fault if a boy objectifies them. Girls cannot embrace their bodies in fear that they will be harassed and can’t sit comfortably in a classroom on a hot day without being paranoid that she could get pulled out and sent home for exposing her shoulders. Etobicoke School of the Arts senior Alexi Halket once said “We are just trying to love our bodies and appreciate them for what they are, even with a dress code. Why would you send a female home because guys can 't control themselves when they see a girl 's outfit?” We need to be teaching boys to view women as people and not sexualized
Shame: A Documentary on School Dress Code was directed by Maggie Sunseri. The adjectives “shameful, unhealthy, unfair, objectifying, overrated, inconsistent, and discriminatory,” are just a few adjectives used in the film. Teenage girls that attend the same high school as Maggie participated in the short film, and these were the words they used to describe the dress code. One girl who wore leggings mentioned that she felt embarrassed and ashamed for wearing pants that she felt comfortable in. The majority of students in the documentary said they felt “embarrassed,” when they got dress coded. There is also the problem of inconsistency. A girl could wear a shirt many times throughout the school year, and not get caught. But then one day there’s a teacher that will call her out for it. Another example is when someone gets dress coded for wearing a dress that another student is also wearing, but only one of them gets caught. Females believe that the dress code is sexist, not only towards girls, but also guys too. The reason for it being sexist for boys as well is, because it tells them that they can’t control themselves. Women feel like they aren’t able to express themselves the way they want to. Girls sometimes want to look nice, but can’t because of the clothing requirements. This knocks down a girl’s self-esteem, because no matter how hard they try, they can’t dress nice
Many students believe that the dress code is unfair. In an article by Skylar M, she states, “Dress codes are unfair, and body shame young women. Fifty-three percent of teenage girls report that they are already unhappy with their body, so why would schools make teenage girls feel bad about showing a little skin. It’s not like girls are running around with nothing on”.(1) This showing that some girls don’t even like their body, and that the school thinks they are trying to show off your body or a little skin. Thus making them feel even worse about their
It is proclaimed that dress codes objectify females in an unfair manner. Ways in which they do this is by making one feel bad about their body and blaming them for publicizing sexual harassment. Dress code violation often results in girls being removed from class and missing the lesson. Females get sent home, given a hideous pair of clothes to change into, or restricted from meaningful school functions like the prom. A student named Marcia Stevens personally experienced this type of discrimination. Before the incident, she was involved in her reputation was different; teachers classified her as “a fine student without behavioral problems.” (Pomerantz 1 ) It wasn 't the clothes she had on but rather the amount of cleavage she was showing. Stevens cleavage was only visible because her chest is a bit larger than the other girls. “She was punished for having the wrong kind of ("fat," "messy") body in an article of clothing that was not considered inappropriate on other kinds of ("thin," "neat") bodies. Marcia 's body was "inappropriate" because it spilled out; it was not "ladylike" or "school like," it was not tidy, and it was not easily contained. In short, her body was visible as a body. And the visibility of a young woman 's body, according to this dress code interpretation, was tantamount to a crime. Her body made "maintaining a suitable school atmosphere"
When a student gets sent home a reasonable reason would be because of their behavior, right? Well, a student in Idaho was suspended because she wore a dress that hit her mid-thigh on her last day of school. Apparently, it had gone against dress code. This type of situations bring up the everlasting question, should dress codes be less strict? Schools should loosen their grip on dress codes especially for girls because it is unfair, sexist, and in most cases, the wrong person in the issue is punished.
Dress codes have always existed in the United States. They were especially popular throughout the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. Once the ‘80s hit, the dress code fad began to die off until the late ‘90s came around. At the beginning of 1997, three percent of public schools required school uniforms, and by the end of 2000, the percentage had increased to twenty-one percent (“School Uniforms Timeline” 2). This is when school uniforms began to come back into style. More and more schools are now adapting school dress code policies. According to Matt Buesing, about twenty-two percent of children across the nation wore some form of a dress code in 2010 (Cavazos 2). Since then, David Brunsma has found that about one in eight public middle schools and high schools in the United States have policies about what students are supposed to wear to school (Motsinger 1). For example, certain schools have a strict dress code that ma...
Now we hop in the shower to get clean. In my perspective we are cleaning out all the details and information from a girls perspective on the school dress code rules and guidelines. To a girl the school dress code is very unfair and in a way to them sexist. A girl is being restricted from wearing what they want and what they are comfortable in because according to some they are showing "too much skin." Schools have banned shorts that are too short and don’t follow the finger tip rule, tank tops that have thin spaghetti straps, and basically in general anything that shows a girls skin. It isn't fair to girls that they aren't allowed to be comfortable in the clothing that
Throughout the years, I’ve seen copious amounts of girls sent to the office in the middle of class simply for having their shoulders showing. They’ve been punished for wearing a v neck shirt instead of a round neck shirt. It would make sense to wear what you want in the place in which you spend seven hours a day, five days a week, and at least thirteen years of your life. However, a lot of schools have restrictive dress codes that prevent students, mostly girls, from wearing clothes that they feel express their personalities. In many schools, boys are allowed to wear tank tops, though girls are not. In the article My high school abolished its sexist dress code. Things got better, Elizabeth Love states, “During our sophomore year, my best friend was disciplined for wearing shorts that were “too short” — although the shorts were part of the school’s soccer uniform… While the male rock climber who sat next to me in English class was routinely free to wear his shirt entirely unbuttoned, flapping in the wind, revealing his chest.”In the same way, boys are discouraged from wearing feminine clothes. While
Strict dress codes need to be put in many schools. Typically, schools have a general dress code that gives guidelines against clothing that is too revealing or that contains inappropriate language. With strict dress codes, students will be more uniformed. Instead of wasting their time picking out an outfit, students will get dressed quickly and go to school. Uniforms will also make every student equal and not separating them by wealth. Matured behavior will be shown by the students throughout the school. Plus, a student’s clothes will not serve as a distraction if everyone is professionally dressed. Strict dress codes will make education sophisticated to help students that get distracted easily.
The school dress code is a serious issue in all schools and has been for a very long time. Everyone knows that everyone has their own point of view when it comes to the dress code. The school dress code has to be taken more seriously if we want the schools that children attend to be better places. The school dress code is a necessity because it does not violate any constitutional rights, keeps students safe, and teaches self respect.
Young children absorb many influential messages about gender roles and gender stereotypes. According to Morris (2005, para. 28) these gender roles pressure children to conform to behaviours that may limit their full developmental potential. Gender is a social construction, and other social groups such as race, ethnicity, class, religion, and language also influence that construction. Gender stereotypes are everywhere; it is portrayed in the media, books, popular culture and even in schools in terms of uniforms. This paper will argue the impacts that gender specific uniforms play on education in Australia as eras are changing. The following will be about how school uniforms are stereotyped throughout children’s school years.
This is a problem because most of the students are wearing comfortable clothing such as tank tops on hot days and young women wearing leggings. Students should not have to change just because their schoolmates are immature. In middle school, the maturity of the student is debatable, however in high school there should be a change in maturity. The dress code should be changed because it does not allow self-expression, shames the woman’s body, and it is inconvenient to the student’s parents.
Within school dress codes, girls are being deprived of any opportunities to make their own decisions. Barbara C. Cruz, author of School Dress Codes, A Pro/Con Issue, writes of such ideas. She writes, “Some opponents also claim that by being required to wear uniforms, students are deprived of an important opportunity to make choices and set limits for themselves” (47). While Cruz writes of school uniforms, the same ideology can be applied to school dress codes- students, girls in particular, cannot make choices for themselves and are suffering the consequences. When girls are taught to consider the actions of others, they pay less attention to their own actions and thus lose their sense of