Source #1; (Pearlman)

Invitation for Principal to Take My Daughter Shopping After Dress Code

Violation
Catherine Pearlman  
Published May 16, 2017 
 
Dear Middle School Principal:
Thank you for sending a note home for the second day in a row to say my daughter was dressed
inappropriately for school. I’d like to offer an additional thank you for forcing her to change into
large mesh shorts that have been worn by only god knows who and potentially never washed.
To reward you for treating my daughter with such concern, I am cordially inviting you to take
my daughter shopping.
Here are the specifications you have to work with. I wish you loads of luck.
She is 5’7” and 13 years old. Built more like her father, she has exceptionally long legs and
arms.
She doesn’t like anything pink or purple or frilly.
She won’t wear pants because she gets overheated easily. Trust me I’ve seen this. It will cause a
scene in the school yard.
She absolutely will not wear a dress either.
No item of clothing can have a logo visible because to her that’s not cool. She will however,
wear any type of superhero, Green Day or USFL T-shirt if you can find them. You might be able
to try for an occasional Beatles reference but that’s touch and go.
Now, don’t forget that you will have to find something in the stores that also meets with y​ our
dress code​requirements. Here are the tricky areas that are most difficult to avoid. As per your
policy she cannot wear tank tops. Shorts and skirts must not extend to the end of the fingertips
(This is a toughie.)
So, if I were you (and I’m glad I’m not) I’d focus on the shorts first. She has very long fingers
which seems to make finding shorts that won’t get her sent to the principal’s office impossible
(On the bright side the piano teacher says those fingers are an asset.). I’d schedule a few
afternoons and weekends for this endeavor. I can tell you from experience that just heading to
the mall, Target and the outlets won’t cut it. Not much for her there. I’ve already checked.
One last point: please try to stay within a reasonable budget. We can’t spend a fortune on her
wardrobe. She is still growing after all.
I thank you endlessly for taking on this chore. What a relief for me.
Sincerely,
Sick Of The Dress Code Mom
P.S. I forgot to thank you for making it clear to my daughter that her body is somehow a
distraction, either to herself or to the boys. I thought she might have missed the message earlier
in the year when the gym teacher told her she couldn’t wear yoga pants because the boys aren’t
able to control themselves. I appreciate how hard you are working to drive the point home.

Source #2; (Pearlman)

My Daughter Can’t Wear Yoga Pants Because Teacher Says Boys Can’t
Handle It
Catherine Pearlman
http://www.thefamilycoach.com/my-daughter-cant-wear-yoga-pants-because-teach
er-says-boys-cant-handle-it/
On the middle school website the stated purpose “for student dress and grooming standards is to
foster an educational environment.” Except at back to school night I heard a different story from
the gym teacher. The presentation started out predictably dull. The kids were slated for hockey
(wow!) and football (ooh!) and soccer (fantastic!) and, oh, the female gym teacher almost forgot
to mention—girls were not permitted to wear yoga pants or leggings, b​ ecause it might cause the
boys to spring an erection​.
Whoa. What?
Yes, you read that correctly. My daughter, barely 13, cannot wear yoga pants or leggings in gym,
because some kid might be aroused. The teacher elaborated. She said boys this age had a difficult
time controlling themselves. They could be stirred by the sight of a girl in exercise pants in
exercise class. The resulting erection could be embarrassing. Hence, in order to prevent this type
of humiliation f​ or the boys​ the gym teacher required the girls put shorts over their exercise pants.
It all happened so fast. Did I actually hear the teacher correctly? After class I went back to speak
with her again. She clarified. Well, she tried to clarify, as one tries to dig her way from a pile of
quicksand. She told me one of the reasons this is an issue is because she requires the students to
tuck in their shirts, you know, to be respectful. She believes when the girls have their shirts
tucked in, wearing yoga pants, it’s just too revealing for the boys. Got it?
Um, no. I do not. In fact, I am horrified.
In the 1960s and ‘70s, the girls all wore miniskirts that barely covered their rears, and the boys
still managed to graduate. Walk on to any college campus today and one spots students wearing
yoga pants, sweatpants and even pajamas to class. Somehow an educational environment is still
maintained. The male students find a way to suppress any possible sexual feelings while in the
classroom because it would be inappropriate otherwise.
Yet middle and high school dress codes are popping up with reckless abandon around the
country. Girls can’t wear tank tops or spaghetti straps on dresses. Skirts need to be no shorter
than fingertip length. Just fire off a quick Google search, and you’ll be startled by the number of
schools limiting what girls—but often not boys—can wear. It’s happening in Kentucky. It’s in
Texas. And in Indiana. And in Oregon. The girls in New Jersey were so fed up with the
insinuation that they are a disruption they created the Twitter hashtag #​ Iammorethanadistraction​.
Why is there a sudden problem with clothing being so terribly distracting in school?
The objectification of a woman’s body is pervasive in our culture. I don’t know of a single
woman who hasn’t experienced cat calling, unwanted whistling, fear of being followed, sexual
harassment or sexual assault. A national poll conducted by The Washington Post and Kaiser
Family Foundation in 2015 reported that 25 percent of women attending college experienced
unwanted sexual incidents. The problem isn’t that we aren’t creating an educational environment
in school. It’s that we aren’t teaching boys and young men that women are not sexual beings first
and foremost.
Banning yoga pants for the purpose of avoiding unwanted erections sends the message that boys
are programmed to respond and can’t help what their bodies do. Boys and men are responsible
for their actions. It’s no wonder some don’t stop unwanted sexual advances when they hear a
woman saying, “No.” Short skirts and leggings don’t cause sexual advances—the inability to
manage one’s desires does.
Instead of draconian dress codes what we really need are conduct codes. Enough with stifling the
girls to help the boys control themselves. That’s demeaning to the boys as much as it is to the
girls. Why not state the expectation that on school grounds any sexual activity or expression will
not be tolerated. Children can learn to control themselves when there are clear expectations for
how to behave with consequences for misconduct.
It isn’t the responsibility of my daughter (or any daughter) to help boys manage sexual urges. It
is the responsibility of the boys. It isn’t OK to start shaming girls about their bodies by telling
them to obsessively cover up. And girls should not have to disregard their own comfort to protect
the comfort of the boys around them.
I came home from back-to-school night and discussed the gym teacher’s remarks with a male
friend. He thought I shouldn’t have told my daughter the reason she couldn’t wear yoga pants. I
disagree, strongly. Girls need women to break down these issues when they are young, before
they are shamed or harassed or raped. It’s one step closer to showing girls that wearing a short
skirt isn’t akin to asking for “it”. I need to show my daughter what saying no looks like. And I
need to help change this policy so she can see what change looks like.
Shielding my daughter from the realities of being a woman will not help her stay safe in any
environment, educational or otherwise. Speaking up about, in her presence, will.
Source #3 (Grossman)
An open Letter to my school about Your Sexist Dress Code
Clarah Grossman
Jun 7, 2016
When I woke up this morning, the sun was rising and the temperature was well on its way 80
degrees. I made it to school on time and was able to get a cup of coffee before heading to the
bane of my existence, physics. I sat down at my desk and was flipping through my notebook,
waiting for my teacher to start class when the morning announcements came on. I pledged
myself to a flag and listened to how the girl’s lacrosse team was having a sale or something.
Regular day-- until the dreaded dress code announcement came on.

No belly showing, skin should not stick to your chair, and not too much of arms exposed. As
they said this, I was unsticking my skin from my chair because I have something to say to my
school: Screw you.

Now listen, I understand dress code and appropriate clothing and whatever but seriously? Sure,
not showing the belly I get but do they even make shorts for girls that will allow skin not to
stick? Do I even need to say something about exposed arms? You’re kidding me, right?
Originally dress codes were created just so the school wouldn’t have to say uniform, but I feel
like recently the only thing dress codes have been used for is to stop distracting boys. I didn’t
realize that the muscle on my arm would turn on a boy in class. Are the back of my thighs too
sexy for algebra? I don’t understand why a rule needs to be enforced because hormones can’t be
kept in check.

But this has to do with more than hormones, this has to do with how the female body is being
perceived. Media sexualizes women. Media leads women to believe that less clothing is more
attractive, yet in schools and public, women are rebuked for wearing something that shows off
their shoulders. People are making the female body something to lust after when in reality,
female bodies are just as gross as male bodies. Yet females are yelled at to cover up. Well, I’m
tired of it. Why do guys get to walk around with unbuttoned shirts and not get scolded? Do I get
to take off my shirt when I get too hot during a workout? My school announced that I couldn’t
wear a tank top, yet yesterday I saw a guy walking around with just shorts on. I am expected to
cover every inch of my skin while guys can parade around with less on. How about people start
enforcing dress codes for all genders? We can talk about this again after that.

I don’t need administration telling me that I’m distracting. No one needs this dress code because
no matter what, exposed skin is going to shock everyone. What is too much skin? Apparently, it
is my shoulders. How about you deal with some real problems and then we can discuss dress
code?
Dear school, I’m sorry my shoulders are too much but I’m going to continue wearing tank tops.
Want to know why? It’s f***ing hot and I deserve to cool off. This is the 21st century, and
modesty isn’t the same thing as hiding.

Source#4 (Krischer)
Is Your Body Appropriate to Wear to School?
Hayley Krischer
April 17, 2018

It started with a sunburn.

Lizzy Martinez, 17, a junior at Braden River High School in Bradenton, Fla., had been
swimming and tanning all weekend at a water park in Orlando. But when Monday morning came
and she had to get dressed for school, Lizzy’s bra felt painfully constricting on her burned skin.
So she ditched the bra and purposely chose to wear something dark and loose — a long sleeve,
oversize, crew neck gray T-shirt — so she wouldn’t draw attention to her chest.
But around 10 a.m., about 15 minutes into her veterinary assistance class, Lizzy was called out of
the classroom for a meeting with two school officials, Dean Violeta Velazquez and Principal
Sharon Scarbrough. They ​asked her why she wasn’t wearing a bra​.
She said she told her school administrators about the sunburn. They insisted that she was
violating the school dress code. (The ​2017-2018 Code of Student Conduct​ does not say bras must
be worn by female students.) They told her to put on an undershirt because boys were “looking
and laughing” at her, a detail she later challenged. “No one said a thing to me until I got to the
dean’s office,” Lizzy said.
She was crying and wanted to go home, so Lizzy’s mother, Kari Knop, a registered nurse, was
called at work. “I said, ‘Lizzy, I’m working,’” Ms. Knop said in a phone interview. “I told her,
‘Can you just put the undershirt on and call it a day?’”
Lizzy was embarrassed and angry but she relented. When she returned wearing the undershirt,
the school principal had left. The dean, according to Lizzy, instructed her to “stand up and move
around for her.”
“I looked at her and said, ‘What do you mean?’” Lizzy said. “I was a little creeped out by that.”
The school has a strict disciplinary policy and she didn’t want to appear defiant. (School officials
refused to comment, except in a statement.)
The dean told her that her nipples were still showing through her T-shirt and she should use
bandages to cover them up. “She told me, ‘I’m thinking of ways I could fix this for you.’ She
said, ‘I was a heavier girl and I have all the tricks up my sleeve,’” Lizzy said.
Lizzy was given four adhesive bandages from the school clinic. “They had me ‘X’ out my
nipples,” she said.
“They hurt,” Lizzy said. “If you ever put Band-Aids on your nipples, those things are stiff. Any
time you move around you can just feel it. It’s like an annoying, rubbing feeling, especially in a
sensitive area.” She wore the bandages for 45 minutes before she began crying in class. Her best
friend took her to the bathroom and Lizzy lifted her shirt to show her the bandages. Then she
peeled them off and contacted her mother.
“I got a text from Lizzy saying, ‘This is not a dress code violation and I feel completely
attacked,’” said Ms. Knop. She was adamant that if Lizzy had been wearing a see-through or
form-fitting shirt without a bra, she wouldn’t have allowed her daughter to leave the house. “The
fact is that she wore a long sleeve T-shirt that was not see-through. It wasn’t even flattering,”
said Ms. Knop. “So to say she was trying to be a distraction is absolutely absurd.”
“She didn’t even tell me about the Band-Aids until 28 hours later,” she said. “She was so
embarrassed.”
In a prepared statement, Braden River High School officials said that the situation “should have
been handled differently.” They maintained that Lizzy was in “violation” of the dress code and
that their intention was to “assist the student in addressing the situation.”
The incident happened two weeks ago — Lizzy’s initial ​tweet​ about the incident went viral —
but the backlash is still going strong. On Monday, Lizzy and some of her classmates held a​ silent
protest i​ n support of “the destigmitization of natural bodies.” Despite threats of disciplinary
action, about 30 female students opted not to wear bras, and a number of students decorated their
backpacks with Band-Aids in the shape of an X. One student wore a shirt that read, “Do my
ni**ples offend you?” (The asterisks were hers.)
In the U.S., more than ​half of public schools h​ ave dress codes. Students are beginning to push
back on ones they deem discriminatory, challenging rules against​ buzz cuts​, ​shirt dresses​ and
hair extensions. In 2014, a group of New Jersey high schoolers created #​ iammorethanadistraction
to push back against their dress code and four years later, it continues to be an active hashtag.
Change.org​ lists over 500 dress code petitions in their database.
Sometimes the rules are overturned.
In March 2017, for example, Mya and Deanna Cook, two 15-year-old students in the Boston
area, were barred from the prom, taken out of extracurricular activities and threatened with
suspension if they wouldn’t r​ emove their braided hair extensions.​ The Massachusetts Attorney
General ordered the school to reverse their policy. The A.C.L.U. is currently litigating a case
against a North Carolina-based public charter school that ​requires girls to wear skirts to school​.
Meredith Harbach, a University of Richmond law professor whose 2016 paper explored
sexualization and public school dress codes​, said the problem arises when schools impose
gender-specific requirements based on sex stereotypes.
In the case of Lizzy, for example, the school is “foisting this notion that unrestrained breasts are
sexual and likely to cause disruption and distract other students,” Ms. Harbach said. But this kind
of messaging that targets young women — your skirt is too short, you look too sexy, you’re
distracting the boys — “deflects any and all conversation about appropriate mutually respectful
behavior in schools between boys and girls,” she said.
“Who is disrupted actually? It’s Lizzy. Whose learning experience is impacted?” Ms. Harbach
said. “It doesn’t sound like other kids had a major disruption, but s​ he​ sure did.”
Victoria Schantz​, 17, a senior at Indian Trail High School in Kenosha, Wis., has been battling
her school dress code since she was in the third grade and a teacher told her that her running
shorts were too short. “I didn’t see my body as a sexual thing at that age and they were making it
into one,” Ms. Schantz said in a phone interview.
In the seventh grade, Ms. Schantz was sent to an administrator’s office for wearing a pair of
leggings. In the tenth grade, a male teacher pulled Ms. Schantz out of class because her baggy
shirt slipped off her shoulder.
This year, she had enough. Ms. Schantz and 10 other members of the school’s student-led
Women’s Rights and Empowerment Club created an online petition which received 3,000
signatures, and then they took turns attending school board meetings and speaking about their
experiences. Recently, the school board ruled in their favor: Leggings, tank tops and yoga pants
will be allowed in the coming school year.
“It’s not clear whether the rise we’re seeing in advocacy around the issue of dress code is
because schools are imposing them in more discriminatory ways now than they were before, or
whether more students are feeling empowered to speak up and complain about discriminatory
dress codes,” said Galen Sherwin, a senior staff attorney at the Women’s Rights Project of the
A.C.L.U. “But we do definitely see that more students are speaking up.”
Her personal suspicion: “This is part of the sea change we’re seeing nationwide in speaking up
and challenging discriminatory treatment based on sex in all different areas of life.”
Source #5 (Unknown)

Source #6 (Valenti)
Enforcing School Dress Codes Teaches Girls to be ashamed, not ‘Modest’
Jessica Valenti
May 21, 2014

Now that the warm weather is here, everyone is happily boxing away sweaters and breaking out
their summer clothes. But as students across the country are bringing out their t-shirts and
dresses, school administrators are ramping up their efforts to quash cleavage and "risqué" outfits.
According to educators and even some parents, young women's outfits – their bodies, really – are
too distracting for men to be expected to comport themselves with dignity and respect. It's the
season of the 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.
Take the example of a young woman in Virginia who was kicked out of her prom this month
because fathers attending the event though her dress was giving rise to "impure thoughts". Clare,
17, says her dress was well within guidelines for the event's dress code - it was "fingertip
length". She wrote on her sister's blog, "I even tried it on with my shoes, just to be sure."
Still, she was asked to leave – thanks to a group of ogling dads perched on a balcony above the
dance floor. "I am so tired of people who abuse their power to make women feel violated and
ashamed because she has an ass, or has breasts, or has long legs," she wrote
It's not just proms that make for problematic interactions for young women. Everyday school
dress codes disproportionately target, shame, and punish girls – especially girls who are more
developed than their peers. In 2012, students at Stuyvesant High School in New York (my old
school) protested the biased implementation of the school's dress code. One student noted that
the “curvier” girls were singled out – a v-neck t-shirt considered acceptable on one student was
seen as absolutely ​scandalous​ on another.
Like the fathers at Clare's prom, Stuyvesant administrators defended the sexist dress code by
saying girls shorts and spaghetti strap tank tops are "distracting" to male students and teachers.
This is a common theme when policing the way women dress - just last month a junior high
school in Illinois banned girls wearing leggings because they're "distracting to boys".
To assuage the supposed distraction, girls caught wearing leggings are forced to put on blue
school shorts over them. At Stuyvesant, dress code violators are pulled out of class and made to
change into a large baggy shirt. (There are dress codes for boys, but they're not as frequently
enforced and all a male student generally has to do is keep his pants up and t-shirts referencing
drugs inside-out.)
As I've previously written, this sends a clear message about who the schools r​ eally ​care about.
Because truly, what's more distracting: boys and teachers having to deal with the occasional
glimpse of a girl's leg, or girls being pulled from class, humiliated and made to change before
returning?
Dress codes assume that it's male students whose learning needs to be protected – and adult
males who need protection from themselves. What girls need doesn't rate consideration.
Instead of mandating that girls cover their bodies or adhere to rules meant to humiliate them,
perhaps men and boys who truly can't control their gaze should be forced to wear blindfolds
when they're around women they otherwise would be "distracted" by.
Sound ridiculous? So is throwing large swaths of fabric over girls with the hope that boys won't
notice their bodies.
We could, instead, try having some more faith in young men – they are, in fact, fully-formed
humans with the capacity to exercise self control. And despite all the leggings, skirts, tight tops
and various awesome female bodies throughout history on which they could rest their gazes,
most boys are able to learn – and grow up – just fine.
The onus cannot be on women and girls to try to control male lust. As any woman who has
walked down any street can tell you, we could all wear full sweatsuits and still get catcalled.
Besides, sending the message to students that girls' outfits provoke male behavior is a dangerous
slippery slope. Clare, the young woman from Virginia, said it better than I ever could: "I'm not
responsible for some perverted 45-year-old dad lusting after me." Nor should she be.

Source #7 (Halkedis)
Students Say Dress Codes More for Girls Than Boys
Almost 60 percent of schools enforce a strict dress code around the country, according to the
latest findings from the National Center for Education Statistics based in Washington, D.C.
Requirements, however, vary from school to school.
https://womensenews.org/2014/12/students-say-dress-codes-more-for-girls-than-boys/