Dress Code On Young Women

With messages like those examined by Zurbriggen, it can hardly be considered unreasonable for young girls to be doing what they see that society will reward them for and with models and standards like these as such a pervasive part of our day-to-day lives, what are girls expected to think when they try to decide what to wear to school in the morning? Many of the complaints from students affected by these policies that I’ve witnessed personally have been in regard to the weather (e.g.: shorts and tank tops) or the comfort level of the offending garments (leggings and yoga pants) and I began to wonder what the effect of adults dictating appropriate expressions of gender and sexuality may be on young women. Does this ubiquitous sexualization …show more content…
It’s not a great leap of logic, even to a middle school student, to understand that terms like “distracting” and “unladylike” are code for “slutty,” but punishing and shaming girls for doing what society has told them to do sends an extremely contradictory message, and possibly a dangerous one. Dress codes that utilize these code words force girls to ask themselves, “Will I be turning someone on if I wear this?” I can’t imagine that too many middle school girls would have been concerned about this without a dress code teaching them to think it. Moreover, if distractions from the business of learning are really what school officials are concerned about, I wonder just how distracting it is for girls to be forced to worry about what effect they might be having on their …show more content…
The case that I fid of particular interest in relation to this issue is Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District. In 1965, school officials in Des Moines, Iowa outlawed the wearing of black armbands which were then worn in protest of the Vietnam War, however, the school authorities did not ban the student body from sporting all divisive symbols, “students continued to wear political campaign buttons and Nazi symbols,” (Barbarosh). In the ensuing court battle, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that as the armbands did not significantly interfere with the operation of the school, nor the teaching of classes, the policy prohibiting them was a violation of the student’s constitutional rights to freedom of expression. According to the ruling in Tinker, the school authorities must be able to “forecast substantial disruption of or … interference with school activities.” From my perspective, forced absence from class because of suspension or compulsory wearing of “shame suits” would certainly constitute both “distraction” and a “substantial disruption” to the educations of female students. Justice Abe Fortas wrote in his Majority opinion for Tinker, “In order for ... school officials to justify prohibition of a particular expression of