As soon as children enter grade school, they are taught to follow strict dress codes. These dress codes serve to restrict clothing with offensive or crude messages in order to promote a safe and welcoming learning environment for students and staff. However, dress codes teach children, especially girls, that their bodies are sexualized from a young age. Many dress codes also target girls by having harsher guidelines for them than for boys.
For instance, the MHS dress code for an inappropriate outfit includes, “Bare-midriff tops, low cut tops or dresses, excessively short skirts/shorts, see-through garments, exposed undergarments, sagging pants, gang-related hats, gang-related clothing accessories,” and, “clothing promoting drugs/alcohol.”
At first glance, it does not look like there is a huge gap in the application of dress codes between male students and female students. However, a female student would get a disciplinary referral for wearing a tank top or an off-the-shoulder top that shows her shoulders or chest, while a male student wearing a sheer, low-cut tank top would not be subjected to any consequences.
Dress code violations are beneficial when reinforced in the circumstance that a student is wearing clothing that promotes sexist, racist, or violent ideas, but girls often receive dress code violations for showing body parts such as their shoulders, midriff, or knees. By punishing young girls for their attire, the school administration teaches girls that they are objects of attention, sexualizing them from a young age. Many schools, including MHS, Thomas Russell Middle School, and Rancho Milpitas Middle School, have restrictions on the length of skirts girls can wear and even the length of stockings too. It is hypocritical of schools to say they promote equality, inclusion, and a safe learning environment when they objectify young girls for what they wear and make girls feel uncomfortable in their bodies by promoting sexist dress codes.
Along with being taught to follow the dress code, girls have a message drilled into their heads from a young age: to avoid wearing anything that could be “distracting” to others, or more specifically, to their male peers and staff. However, instead of teaching girls not to wear clothing that shows off a shoulder or a knee cap, other students should be taught not to objectify women and to control their behaviors.
Writing discipline referrals for girls who show a part of their body teaches them that their choice of clothing has inevitable consequences. Dress codes reinforce rape culture and the mentality that rape is the victim’s fault. There is a clear connection between “your shirt was distracting your male peers” and “your shirt was the reason why you were raped.” In today’s society, these two statements both insinuate that males cannot control themselves and their desires, and so they cannot be held responsible for their actions, which is insulting towards boys and extremely harmful towards girls.
According to The Criminal Justice Statistics, Rainn.org, out of every 1,000 sexual assaults, 995 perpetrators will walk free. Only 230 perpetrators are reported to the police, 46 of those reports lead to arrest, and only 4.6 rapists will be sent to jail. There is a huge amount of sexual assault cases that are not reported to the police, and part of that is due to the culture we have grown up in, which insinuates that rape or assault is the victim’s fault. Since students grow up learning that their attire has dire consequences, they blame themselves for the assault and as a result, they do not report sexual assault cases should they occur.
Furthermore, when girls receive a dress code violation for wearing a “distracting” outfit, they are usually forced to change clothes, which takes away from valuable class time. This dress code violation is unacceptable because it teaches students that a girl’s attire is more important than her education, and distracting a boy from his education is much worse than her missing out on class time altogether.
Dress codes are put into place so that the learning environment promotes safety and acceptance, but when girls receive dress code violations because of their bodies, the safe and accepting environment goes away. Dress code violations for showing skin teaches girls that their bodies and their education are not as important as that of a boy’s and that her body is allowed to be controlled by others.
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