TW: Sexual harassment, sexual assault, rape.
As a woman, you start to be objectified by the men in your life at a very young age. People often talk about the transition from primary to secondary school as a transformative experience for young people. For many, it also marks the beginning of puberty. Dysmorphia is rife during this turbulent period in any adolescent’s life, and the last thing that you need during this time is to feel more external pressure to meet a certain standard of physicality. Everyone has the right to feel at home in their own skin, and yet women’s bodies are consistently being policed and held up to scrutiny by the mass media and the leering male gaze.
When I was in school, it was a regular occurrence for girls to be stopped in the corridors by members of staff for violating the dress code. The issue was almost always the length of these girl’s skirts. The subtext was almost always that their skirts were a distraction to male students. Or worse still: a distraction to male teachers. We shouldn’t need to ask the question ‘why is a grown man uncomfortable at the sight of an underage girl’s legs?’, and yet here we are. Perhaps a more appropriate question would be ‘why are schools employing members of staff who sexualise their students?’ or ‘why are young girls being subjected to sexualisation at the hands of men old enough to be their fathers?’. A school should be a place of education and a safe space for pupils to grow and develop into well-rounded and well-adjusted individuals. It shouldn’t be a place where girls are taught that their education comes second to their male counterparts; a place where what you wear is a hot topic of conversation in the staff room.
There is an inherent double standard being set when it comes to uniform policy in schools. I myself was part of a meeting in my Sixth Form to discuss a tightening of the dress code. On the agenda were subjects such as shorts that finish above the knee, and vests.
Unsurprisingly, an argument broke out when the Head of Sixth Form stated his intention to ban the girls from wearing vests and not the boys. It was immediately made clear to every girl in that room that his issue with vests being permitted was that girls would have their cleavage on show to some extent. A fellow student of mine countered the teacher’s suggestion by pointing out that the only girls who had scolded in the past for wearing vests were those with bigger chests. After some back and forth, it was decided that vests would be allowed to remain on the dress code for the time being. The point I’m raising here is that there should not be a different standard from one student to the next. But to go beyond that, even, women should be able to dress in clothes that make them feel comfortable. It’s a fundamental violation to women’s bodily autonomy to ask them to make decisions about how to dress themselves based on how other people may respond.
To place the responsibility of women’s safety and comfort level on women alone is to alienate them from every male student that they have to sit in a classroom with. It creates a culture in which men are not responsible for making women feel safe in their environment, which then carries on into the adult world where men are constantly making women feel unsafe. To blame a boy’s inability to concentrate on his studies on the clothing choices of the girl who sits next to him applies the same sexist and harmful logic as those who justify instances of sexual assault by saying “she was asking for it by wearing a short dress”. Is this the impression we want to leave our young people growing up with?
There needs to be a fundamental shift in thinking in the way that schools determine what is appropriate attire for a place of education. And note here the term education, as children do not go to school as a place of work. Children cannot be expected to dress and behave as adults when they are still considered too young to have a seat at the table. The focus in school should be on encouraging young minds to discover their place in the world and how they can build a better future. Why should this be hindered by something as insignificant as the length of a skirt?
---- Emily Little, Guest Blogger
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