In my junior year of high school I wore leggings to my AP Latin class. Leggings were against dress code at my school, as were sweatpants and skirts that were shorter than the ends of your fingertips. My female teacher admonished me in front of the class before sending me home to change.
I ran home crying and changed into jeans. When I returned, one of the older boys in my class made a rude comment as I sunk into my seat. I broke school rulesβas just about every other teenage girl in high school did when they got dressed in the morningβand probably deserved to be punished. But this time, my teacher, tired of reprimanding girls for dress code violations every day, had decided to make an example of me in front of the class.
The result? I missed important test prep for my upcoming AP exam, and she gave some immature boys an excuse to make sexual remarks in a classroom setting. That teacher was walking the fine line between enforcing a dress code and slut shaming.
This week, a group of middle-school girls in Evanston, Illinois picketed their school for the right to wear leggings. The argument being made by school administrators is not that distant from the arguments made by those who accuse rape victims of asking to be assaulted by dressing a certain way. We tell women to cover themselves from the male gaze, but we neglect to tell the boys to look at something else. That this has a sexist undertone is demonstrated by the fact that the girls who had more curves to show off were the ones more often disciplined.
The dress code in a middle school in Evanston is far from an isolated incident. Are uniforms the answer? Many teens including myself when I was in high school would argue that a uniform would prevent them from expressing their identity through their clothing when forging their individuality in middle school and high school is hard enough.
