Undressing the dress code: stop the shaming

We live in a world where everything is sexualized.  Our natural bodies are considered risqué, and everybody judges everybody.

Refreshingly, in school we are taught to accept people.  It should be a safe, judgment-free place.

However, judgments are provoked when a student dares to wear a pair of shorts or a tank top.  Items of clothing like these are prohibited in school.

By making certain items of clothing unacceptable, it’s over-sexualizing those items of clothing, as well as the part of the body exposed.

When certain parts of the body are looked at as “inappropriate,” it creates the idea that women’s bodies are strictly sexual.

I could go off on a tangent about the over-sexualization of bodies in the western world, but that’s too great of an issue.  The problem here is that we are bringing sexist judgments in from society and placing them on high school girls.

It’s sexist because the restrictions in place make it so that only girls have the potential to show off too much skin (unless boys want to start wearing tiny shorts and halter tops).

That sets the precedent that men’s bodies are fine and appropriate while women’s bodies need to be hidden.

It sends a message saying that it’s not okay to have certain female parts of the body.  Are we supposed to apologize for our gender?

Some people want to make the argument that short shorts are distracting in an educational environment.  With that, they’d be saying that people simply don’t have the ability to look beyond a girl wearing shorts and are unable to just focus on the class work.

My argument is this: how about instead of shaming girls into telling them their bodies are inappropriate and wrong, we go and teach our apparently ‘hopeless’ students and staff to accept a pair of legs and the occasional exposed shoulder.