March 29, 2014
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Interesting from the LA Times - ban leggings at school
By Charlotte Allen, guest blogger (condensed by me) March 27, 2014
A middle school in Evanston, Ill., has issued a new dress code barring girls from wearing shorts, leggings and yoga pants to school, on the grounds that the leg-displaying garments are “distracting” to boys. But judging from the reaction of the feminist media, you’d think that the school, Haven Middle School, had decided to require head-to-toe burkas.
The idea seems to be that the Haven dress code is sexist because it makes the girls stop wearing skin-clinging, butt-hugging outerwear instead of making the boys stop looking at and thinking about the girls wearing skin-clinging, butt-hugging outwear. Indeed, the very idea of having a school dress code for girls is supposed to promote “rape culture.”
“Targeting tight pants rests on the assumption that girls must work to prevent themselves from being ogled, rather than teaching boys they should work to avoid objectifying their female peers. The policy also links girls’ clothing to boys’ inability to control themselves. We really hope that you will consider the impact of these policies and how they contribute to rape culture. Girls should be able to feel safe and unashamed about what they wear. And boys need to be corrected and taught when they harass girls.”
First of all, the Haven dress code isn’t unlike the dress codes that many public schools have enacted to promote clothing appropriate for a learning environment. Second, the issue isn’t about rape culture or even boys harassing girls. It’s about distraction. Adolescent boys think about girls almost all the time. Adolescent girls are just about as boy crazy as the boys are girl crazy, and they have a complementary desire to show off as much of themselves to the opposite sex as they can get away with. Add to that mix a media culture that celebrates baring just about everything in public, and the runaway hormones and immaturity of early adolescence, and you have a school scene that is not conducive to studying.
Of course schools should insist that boys be polite and should punish harassment of girls. But there’s nothing wrong with telling girls to tone it down on their end. For one thing, school is supposed to be a serious environment. Just as we deem shorts and leggings in lieu of pants to be inappropriate wear for most offices, we’re entitled to deem them inappropriate for school. So many progressive parents want their daughters to become scientists and college presidents, but they don’t want them to dress or act appropriately in the educational settings that will prepare them for those intellectual professions. They don’t want boys treating their daughters like sex objects, but they don’t mind their daughters turning themselves into sex objects.
