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Public School Dress Codes Endanger the Health and Safety of Girls
The start of a new school year always poses big questions. And this year, the constantly changing landscape of Covid-19 brings many new ones. Should students wear masks? Do students need to social distance? Will the Delta variant sweep through buildings bringing mass infections and quarantines? Are the measures put in place last year enough, too much, to deal with the new strains of the virus?
Administrators have many questions to grapple with as they return to school — many for the first time in over a year. Schools say they want to provide a safe learning environment for all students. One that is comfortable and free from unnecessary distractions.
But, in most public schools, one thing is virtually certain to prevent that from happening. Something that makes school unpleasant and unsafe for half of the student population. Something that administrators are in full power to change; but, for inexplicable reasons, won’t.
Do you know what it is?
The archaic, sexist public school dress codes.
School dress codes spell trouble for girls
Only a few weeks into a new academic year and public schools around the country are once again objectifying girls, sexualizing their bodies, and creating a hostile learning atmosphere where it’s all but impossible to focus on education.
This issue has already come into play in my district. However, we are by no means the only school grappling with this issue. In Georgia, students are protesting the school dress code that they assert unfairly targets girls. And a now-viral Tik Tok video highlights the sexist nature of school dress codes. Two students, one male and one female, dress in similar outfits. But only one gets in trouble.
On the first day of school in my district, each grade attended a welcome assembly. While administrators glossed over issues like drugs and vaping, they spent a lot of time reviewing the dress code. In fact, the dress code was important enough to occupy eight slides. Guess how many of them depicted male students?
Did you guess zero?
