As a girl, I’ve learned that some outfits aren’t “school appropriate.” But it’s become more and more apparent that my friends and I are singled out just for being girls. Teachers often make the general assumption that because we’re girls, we are automatically going to dress “inappropriately” if given a chance to. We aren’t the only girls out there being policed for our outfits. Many schools have banned certain articles of clothing (i.e. leggings, yoga pants, shorts, etc.) not just for showing a certain amount of skin, but also for the female silhouette in general. Schools have put their foot down on dress code, by suspending girls who stand up for themselves. But other schools have started to un-ban the clothes that have been banned. Whether schools improve or not, girls aren’t going to surrender their opportunity to speak up easily.

In Jennifer Weiss-Wolf’s view, “Schools must develop policies that do not shame girls or underestimate boys assuming that they cannot be expected to behave appropriately around girls who show any skin. The shaming of the female form- and the blaming of girls for being girls, while excusing boys for being boys-are the real disruption and, yes, distraction from the school environment.” In other words, Weiss-Wolf believes that schools have created a dress code out of the assumption that boys can’t control themselves, and that they should be excused from this behavior, and blame girls for their “distracting” bodies.

Jessica Valenti states, “According to educators and even some parents, young women’s outfits-- their bodies, really-- are too distracting for men to be expected to compart themselves with dignity and respect. It’s the season of dress code-- so instead of teaching girls math or literature, schools are enforcing arbitrary and sexist rules that teach them to be ashamed of their bodies.” Valenti is insisting that educators and parents are more concerned with protecting male education than female education, because we might divert young men from their work with our “distracting” bodies.
Weiss-Wolf states, “The school personnel must use a language that doesn’t shame students when discussing dress codes in announcements, emails, or the classroom. For example, in a North Dakota school that banned yoga pants, clips of the movie Pretty Women which stars Julia Roberts as a Hollywood streetwalker, were shown in school and female students were compared to prostitutes.” Weiss-Wolf is insisting that the school staff has been offending, publicly shaming, and humiliating girls with the harsh ways that dress code is discussed and that it needs to stop.
In Weiss-Wolf’s view, “We believe that students should never be removed from instructional time because of his or her dress or appearance. Nor should they be shamed as in a Florida school, where the punishment to wear is a neon shirt emblazoned with the words ‘dress code violation.’” In other words, Weiss-Wolf believes that students who break dress code shouldn’t be removed from class. I agree strongly with Weiss-Wolf here, because being removed from class because someone thinks my shorts are too short is ridiculous.

Soraya Chemaly, a feminist writer and media critic whose work focuses on women’s rights whose work appears on The Huffington Post, The Guardian, and a lot of other sources,   states, “With society fetishsizing girls at younger and younger ages, girls are instructed to self-objectify and see themselves as sexual objects, something to be looked at. A laundry list of problems can come from obsessing over one’s appearance: eating disorders, depression, or low self-worth.” In other words, Chemaly believes that society has taught girls at young ages to judge themselves and others harshly, dress codes are just pushing it farther down our throats, and the consequences can be costly.

Jada Pinkett Smith, an American actress, states, “This is a world where women and girls are constantly reminded that they don’t belong to themselves; that their bodies are not their own, nor their self-determination. I made a promise to endow my little girl with the power to always know that her body, spirit and mind are her domain. Willow cut her hair because her beauty, her value, her worth is not measured by the length of her hair… even little girls have the right to own themselves,” in reply to why she let her daughter cut her hair. The essence of Smith’s argument is that all girls should have an opportunity, if not a right to belong to themselves, even if someone might not like it.

But, there are some girls know specific outfits aren’t school appropriate, like crop tops and spaghetti straps tank tops, but they wear them anyway. But just because there are some girls like that, doesn’t mean that all girls should be so disrespected.

Of course there are teachers that are just trying to help girls be more modest. But teachers should try to see this problem from both perspectives, of being told that their bodies don’t belong to themselves and of actually saying that you think a girl’s body is too distracting for class.

Dress code is meant to set guidelines for students about what is to be expected for them to wear, not to police girls for how distracting their bodies are in some outfits. Girls need to start standing up to a dress code that singles them out to stop being labeled as “distractions.”