It’s Women’s History Month, but this tale isn’t from the archives. On Thursday, March 11, a public charter school will argue before a U.S. court of appeals for the right to force girls to wear skirts to attend school.
Yes, you read that right: In 2021, there are still education officials who think girls should have to wear skirts in order to get an education.
Bonnie Peltier enrolled her daughter in an academically rigorous charter school in North Carolina, only to learn that the school required all girls to wear skirts as a condition of attendance. The school claimed that forcing girls to wear skirts would promote its goal of promoting “chivalry” and “traditional values.” When Peltier complained and the school refused to budge, she filed a lawsuit with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) — and won. But the school appealed, making the case the first of its kind to reach a federal appellate court.
At first blush, the skirts requirement may seem trivial to some. After all, most parents in that school community wanted a uniform, and many women and girls choose to wear skirts at least some of the time. But pants have also been an accepted form of clothing for women and girls for decades now — and kicking girls out of class for not wearing a skirt perpetuates harmful and antiquated gender stereotypes that have a lasting impact.
Threatening girls with punishment for wearing pants reinforces old-school conventions about how women and girls ought to dress, look, and behave — in this case, the notion that girls have to wear skirts to be proper, that girls are more “fragile” than boys, and that boys should “protect and honor” them. Unsurprisingly, the girls challenging the skirts requirement did not seem to feel protected or honored. Instead, they say they felt uncomfortable, distracted for fear of being teased by their peers if their underwear showed, or corrected by teachers for not sitting in a “ladylike” position in class. Ultimately, the message was clear that the girls were valued less than the boys.
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Although the dress code being challenged in this case is extreme, it is part of a much larger trend of dress codes being used to police gender in schools, usually with disproportionate effects on girls and subgroups of girls: girls of color, gender-nonconforming girls, and trans girls among others. Unfortunately, as this viral TikTok points out, thousands of women and girls can relate to being punished simply because of what they are wearing — from undergoing “the fingertip-length rule” to ensure skirts and dresses aren’t “too short or revealing,” to being slut-shamed and called out for wearing clothes like spaghetti-strap tanks that are deemed “too distracting” for male students and teachers. This type of enforcement sends the message that girls are a distraction to boys, that boys are incapable of behaving respectfully unless girls are dressed “modestly,” and ultimately, that girls’ comfort and ability to learn are less valuable than boys. And students have started speaking out, sending the clear message that sexist dress codes have no place in our schools.
Dress codes with different rules for boys and girls also reinforce binary sex categories, harming students who are transgender, nonbinary, or gender nonconforming. For example, a 17-year-old gay male student was suspended from a Texas public high school for wearing fingernail polish — though that would have been accepted if the student were female. Students across the country have also had to fight for their right to wear gender-nonconforming clothes to school and school events like prom.
The Link LonkMarch 11, 2021 at 08:00PM
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Dress Codes Forcing Girls to Wear Skirts Are Up for Debate at Appeals Court - Teen Vogue
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