Following up on yesterday's post, I want to discuss the many issues these articles and the ensuing discussions raised.
There are SO many issues at play here--there is our Culture, race, gender, class, religion. I want to start with Culture.
As we are probably all aware, the culture for girls and women these days is intensely sexual. Clothing, especially for young women, is becoming increasingly skimpy. We know this. Everything--from makeup to clothing to how young women are taught to act--is incredibly sexual and objectifying.
But we know this already. We have to make a choice of what to DO with it.
Let me start by saying that I went to a school with a strict uniform. I liked it, honestly. It made my life easy. I didn't have to worry about buying "the cool clothes" for school. To be honest, I wasn't even comfortable in those "cool" clothes. I will say that I am, in general, a semi-conservative dresser. I was raised to think about the messages I send with my outward appearance--both by my parents and my 3-8th grade school.
I'll bring the issue of class in here for a minute. The schools I attended through High School were private institutions. My 3rd-8th grade school's imposing a strict uniform leveled the playing field in terms of what one would see of someone's socio-economic status. No one had to know that the girl who sat next to me was on financial aid. No one had to know that the girl who sat on the other side of me was the heiress to a huge fortune. Instead, that outward visible "class" was a non-issue in school. One of my friends commented that this made us ALL more comfortable. No one had to worry about showing off and trying to show others up.
On the other hand, my High School was a different story. We had a dress code, but it was that...not a uniform. It became quickly apparent to me that the nice, quality clothes I had, with moderate length skirts and reasonable v-neck shirts just was not going to do. I did not have "the cool clothes" and I looked "like a grandmother," as one girl notably put it to me. Now, I don't know about you, but My grandmother wouldn't dress like this. This is too young for her.
It also became quite apparent to me that if you were a friend of the Dean or were an extremely attractive girl, the dress code meant nothing. No one asked THOSE girls to cover up. No one asked the athletic boys--the jocks with the muscular arms--to put a shirt on over their "wife beater." No one.
I asked a friend of mine who went to the same school about this issue. She WAS one of Those Pretty Girls. Most of the time, she was reasonably dressed, but I do remember one time that she wore a strapless dress "just to see what would happen." She never got asked to cover up, never got sent to the office, but remembers that "all the male TEACHERS stared at me as I walked down the hall. Not the male students. The Teachers."
So, perhaps we really need to look again at our culture. What are we telling the students? What is with our lack of self control? Why do we expect our students to have it when we don't have it ourselves? And how are we helping our students by "removing temptation," when that temptation won't be removed in the "real world" and in college?
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