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The sexist dress code does surprise me! In this day and age, I didn't think any public institution could get away with discriminating between men and women.
Well, these are boys and girls, not men and women. And a lot of the court decisions that have allowed stricter dress codes in recent years revolve around the idea of the school being in loco parentis and needing to provide a safe environment that fosters learning and all that.
How different school districts interpret this is another matter, of course. But relatively few parents are probably going to sue on behalf of their kids' rights to have short skirts, double piercings, tattoos and heavy makeup. When a lawsuit is brought forth, it's usually about a
I remember my dad telling me about Disneyland's dress code, back when I was a kid. No beards were allowed! Not just on employees, but guests, too!
Disney still bans beards from at least some of their employees. Though to be fair, I suspect they do so for both genders. I think they also have hair length requirements that differ for men and women, however. Of course, so does the US military, and if that's not something that should respect the equal protection clause, I don't know what is.
Now that's a role reversal I wonder if they thought that uniforms were too paramilitary or if they encouraged mindless conformity or something. Maybe it was a reflection of the times. People in my own parents' (and slightly younger) generations were more suspicious of symbolic authority back in the 70s and early 80s than they are now.I always wanted to attend a school with uniforms. I even offered to design the uniforms for a private school I was thinking about attending, but my parents were against uniforms. I don't recall their reasoning, but they told me if the private school switched to uniforms, I wouldn't be allowed to go. No idea why! My baby sister had to attend a public school (20 years later) that had a uniform dress code, and my parents didn't make a fuss then. So I really don't know why they were so against it when I was a kid.
I don't remember, to be honest. I suspect the inviting sexual harassment thing (not that this was the terminology they used back then) was the real reason. It was just a rationalization. They didn't exactly tell us to stop wearing bras because they invited bra strap snapping or tell us to stop wearing skirts because they invited the boys to try to lift them.With the halter tops, were sewn versions allowed? I don't think I would wear one that tied, personally, because I'd be too afraid it would come undone in public.
I didn't really want to wear one at school anyway for the reason you gave. And when I wore tube tops a few years later, I always wore one with straps or with a shirt over. And the guys sometimes pulled those down in high school (and such incidents became fodder for lunchroom snickering and fond remembrances). They might get a verbal rebuke, but the teachers would then tell the girls that they shouldn't invite the harassment by dressing so provocatively.
It was one of those forms of logic that was so rational and logical at some level that we almost believed it. But on another level it was irritating.
Of course, there is that thing where girls are generally the ones who are expected to wear clothing that bares a lot of their flesh and is easy to pull up or down.
Except for the guys wore fairly short shorts that sometimes allowed their junk to hang out the bottom (because boxers started to get popular before those knee length shorts became came into fashion with guys), and they had elastic waist bands sometimes. I wonder if they'd have been banned in Jr. High if packs of pre-teen girls roamed the halls pulling them down.
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