School Dress Codes Police Teen Girls\' Sexuality

School dress codes are part of establishing a set of societal rules women are expected to follow. These rules are developed from misogynist ideas around protecting young women from their own sexuality, while promoting middle-class respectability, and victim blaming. Young people are taught gender roles such as: girls are to be submissive and boys are to be conquerors. In connection to this, the education system dictates what is deemed proper conduct and dress. Girls clothing is expected to be modest and the rules are expected to be unquestioned. Immodest clothing can hint to a girl owning her own sexuality and not giving in to patriarchal narratives. Though dress codes are meant for both girls and boys, it is girls clothing that is targeted most. There does not seem to be any likewise vigilance in teaching the importance of sexual consent or how gender equity is not only a woman's issue. The idea that a girl's clothing choice determines whether or not she is victimized, without any consideration of our socially normalized rape culture is steadily reinforced in institutions that are supposed to be preparing young people for the "real" world. The education system places importance on a girl's respectability while ignoring the absence of boy's engagement and co-responsibility with issues of women's rights, and perpetuating rape culture.
Lindsay Stocker, a Grade 11 student at Beaconsfield High School, attracted media attention after challenging her school's policing of female students' bodies in May 2014. Stocker tells Global News on May 30, 2014, that she was in violation of showing her legs. The "violation" in question was caught after two vice-principals visited Stocker's class to make sure all shorts worn were longer than the length of their fingers when standing up with their arms at their sides. After failing the test, Stocker felt humiliated in front of her class. School officials ignored her questions regarding the justification behind the finger length rule. Later, she hung signs around the school reading: "Don't humiliate her because she is wearing shorts. It's hot outside. Instead of shaming girls for their bodies, teach boys that girls are not sexual objects." School authorities removed the posters, though not before photos of which were widely shared online. Stocker was suspended for a day. "There's a rape culture that educational systems aren't really paying attention to," she tells Global. "They're actually contributing to it."
Rape culture thrives on myths comprised of contemporary beliefs spawned from a patriarchal system that accepts and fosters rape. These stories are so imbedded in our culture's history that they have the potential to script human behaviour (Ryan, 2011, p. 1). Part of this scripting produces the social constructs of gender, where men act and women appear. For girls, these rules mean they do not own their bodies and that they must be passive and vulnerable (Kehily, 2012, p. 263). As for male sexuality, it is assumed that in the presence of an unguarded woman, a male's uncontrollable desire will render him crazed and not responsible for his actions (Ringrose & Renold, 2011, p. 334).
In order to regulate these gender norms and sexualities, policing tactics like gender targeting dress codes are employed. The school's director of the school board, Steven Colpitts, rationalizes the dress code to Global News, saying schools want to prevent hypersexualization. De-sexualizing is a protectionist discourse in schools whereby girls' bodies are made into bearers of a culture's morality (Ringrose & Renold, 2011, p. 334). When school officials tell the news station that the rules are for boys and girls, despite the fact that they target female scripted clothing specifically, and that Stocker should have known better than to wear those shorts, it is apparent that their concern is more about a girl's respectability than a boy's self control and respect. Regulations placed on fashion, in this case female fashion, is to distinguish individuals by race, class, and sex (Connell, 2013, p. 209).
Since the 18th century, class structure has determined what is and is not respectable (Phipps, 2009, p. 674). This emphasis on respectability is still prominent today. If a woman or girl looks immodest or knowing of their own sexuality, they are assumed to be working-class. The bodies of working-class women continue to be seen as deviant and morally beneath middle-class women (Phipps, 2009, p. 674). And so, class-based moral panic produces headlines like this one found by Kehily, "The generation of damaged girls" (2012, p. 255). Class politics continue to operate by projecting negative connotations, such as being unruly and uncivilized, unto the working-class (Phipps, 2009, p. 670).
It can be argued that institutions run by people who grew up between the 50s and 70s are hypocritical in their policing of contemporary teen female sexuality. Culturally deemed wholesome female characters like The Wizard of Oz's Dorothy and Little Orphan Annie fit the Daddy's Girl archetype, working as almost Lolita-like props. These idolized girls of yesteryear were often sexualized. Admittedly, not as sexualized women and girls are today through popular media. However, the school system may better serve their students by teaching media literacy. Students could benefit from being made aware of capitalistic media agendas, based in patriarchy. Knowledge is power (Grewal and Kaplan, 2006, p. 266). Instead, Stocker was punished for asking questions.
The 60s and 70s created a legacy of social movements, recognizing young female sexuality in ways that allow girls to be sexual without negative social vigilance (Kehily, 2012, p. 260). Instead of working from these lessons in sexual revolution, roles of heteronormativity are enforced. Young lives are shaped by concerns over a girls top, but little concern over the absence of boys' engagement with issues of women's equalities and rights, including domestic violence and girls' experiences of (hetero)sexual harassment (Ringrose & Renold, 2011, p. 341).
These attitudes feed the false but widely perceived to be true myths that are often used to justify rape culture. Myths like a woman can ask to be raped by her choice of clothing, serves as a cautionary tale for unguarded women (Ryan, 2011, p. 2). The prevailing rape culture is what allows a police officer like Toronto's constable Michael Sanguinetti to think telling young women not to dress like sluts in order not to be victimized is positive advice (Ringrose & Renold, 2011, p.333).
In regards to class, though working-class women are sexually victimized more, they receive less support in court. Working class women and girls become Other and the responsibility of proving they did not consent is placed on the victim and not the attacker (Phipps, 2009, p. 670). This victim-blaming mentality is founded on the belief that men act and women appear.
Catherine Solyom writes in a May 30, 2014 article, 'Quebec teen 'shamed' for jean shorts becomes latest in wave of students protesting dress code' for the National Post, "With a third of Quebec teenagers dropping out of high school and cyberbullying reaching epidemic proportions, wearing shorts to class seems a relatively minor affair." Logically, a pair of shorts would not be an education system's primary concern, however these institutions are based on the policing of women and their bodies the same way they have been throughout history. And just as fashion rules can be problematic, a piece of clothing like Stocker's jean shorts can be a sign of resistance against these systemic rules. Fashion can be a form of political engagement (Connell, 2013, p. 212). Females are set up to embody a culture's values, and the values at play here are about presenting middle-class, respectable women who are not in charge of their own sexuality, and instead give this control to the men in their lives. In the case of Stocker, the control over her own body is the assumed distraction it causes for her male peers who are supposedly unable to control themselves. This logic is victim blaming, the same way blaming a women's wardrobe choice for her being raped by a man is. When a state institution like a high school puts so much effort in regulating and enforcing deemed suitable gender scripts, it can call into question whether school is about providing an education or a guideline to how we must conform to our assigned gender roles. Though schools are vigilant in teaching female respectability, they lack the same energy to teach boys about women's equity. As Jezebel contributor Kelly Fairclough writes in June 2014, if classes were not interrupted for clothing inspections, teachers would have more time for their actual curriculum-based lessons, "Why, they might even have time for a couple of brief lessons about respect for women."


Work Cited
Connell, C. (2013). Fashionable Resistance: Queer "Fa(t)shion' Blogging as Counterdiscourse.
Women's Studies Quarterly. 41. 209-224.
Fairclough, K. (2014, June 2). Teen Protests Her School's Dress Code: No More 'Shaming
Girls'. Jezebel. Retrieved from http://www.jezebel.com
Grewal, I. and Kaplan, C. (2006). Introductory Essay. An Introduction to Women's Studies, 2,
265.
Kehily, M. J. (2012). Contextualising the sexualisation of girls debate: innocence, experience
and young female sexuality . Gender and Education, 24(3), 255-268.

Kelly, A. (2014, May 30). Montreal teen protests high school dress code. Global News.
Retrieved from http://www.globalnews.ca

Phipps, A. (2009). Rape and Respectability: Ideas About Sexual Violence and Social Class.
Sociology, 43(4), 667-683.

Renold, E. & Ringrose, J. (2011). Slut-shaming, girl power and 'sexualisation': thinking through
the politics of the international SlutWalks with teen girls. Gender and Education, 24(3), 333-343.
Ryan, K. (2011). The Relationship between Rape Myths and Sexual Scripts: The Social
Construction of Rape. Sex Roles, 59, 1-6.
Solyum, C. (2014, May 30). Quebec teen 'shamed' for jean shorts becomes latest in wave of
students protesting dress code. The National Post. Retrieved from http://www.news.nationalpost.com













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