Author:
Bru, my pet, this is right down your alley. Yer up darling!
https://dailycaller.com/2022/06/17/girls-wear-skirts-private...
Court: Making Girls Wear Skirts To Private School Is ‘Harmful’
The ruling asserted that Charter Day School, “has imposed the skirts requirement with the express purpose of telegraphing to children that girls are ‘fragile,’
Well, not all of us are "fragile". How do they get around the school uniform some schools impose is okay and this one is an offense? I receive a lot of really nice compliments when I'm wearing a dress or skirt and blouse. I'm approachable and more than one usually wants to stop and talk when I'm shopping. Must be the cowgirl hat and boots?
Back to the story..., criminal to make girls wear dresses as it belittles them? Makes them feel inferior? The judge must have felt like a servant if he-she wore a dress? Oh wait aren't they "public servants?"
How many of you think society as a whole has lost their ever loving minds?
Hugs People
Barb
How can anyone take life seriously when things like this are going on? Have fun with life.
Comments
A couple of times in the UK
A couple of times in the UK the opposite has happened. Girls in many schools have the options of skirts, dress or trousers. Boys have no choice. In the summer they are still required to wear shirt tie and trousers. Girls had the choice of skirt or summer dress, none would wear trousers in the heat.
A few times boys who wore shorts were suspended. So these schools did not state which uniform was gender specific. Lots of the boys wore skirts as a protest.
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/jun/22/teenage-bo...
“My 14-year-old son wanted to wear shorts. The headteacher told them: ‘Well, you can wear a skirt if you like’ – but I think she was being sarcastic. However, children tend to take you literally, and because she told them it was OK, there was nothing she could do as long as they were school skirts.”
This has happened more than once over here.
Leeanna
A Small Protest
The article you cite was the impetus of a story I wrote entitled, "A Small Protest". Unfortunately, the copyright of that story is now the property of Reluctant Press so I can't post it here.
Here's a Cover I designed for it.
Unfortunately Reluctant press didn't us it and used a hand drawn cover instead.
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Ich bin eine Mann
They messed up!
Patricia, your original cover has more eye appeal which pulls in the reader whether it is in electronic form or dead tree form. I would be more apt to read your book with your cover. Sorry love but I wouldn't touch the story behind the illustrated second cover.
Hugs Patricia
Oklahoma born and raised cowgirl
Read carefully
The term "fragile" was quoted from the school's dress code or the justification for it given by the defendant.
And I like it very much, that the court rejects the notion that girls *must* telegraph their assumed fragility by wearing skirts. Make it optional, no problems, but do not *force* them to wear skirts or dresses, with teh expressed intention that they shall feel inferior to and dependent on males.
I really think girls and boys
I really think girls and boys uniforms should be the same. Some UK schools have gone this way. Girls and boys both wear trousers. I think skirt length was the main problem.
A woman I work with told me, as a girl, as soon as she left her house and was out of sight, she used to roll the waistband up so the knee lenght skirt looked like a micro mini. She said the girls got into a competition about who dared go higher. I know a few schools got fed up with arguing with the girls about what was acceptable and just did away with skirts altogether. No gender bias, as troursers were an option in girls uniform.
Skirts are not good especially on younger girls. They like rough and tumble as much as the boys. It's wrong to be restricted to what they can do by their clothing. It's not the 50's.
Leeanna
40s, 50s, 60s
Not a single girl wore pants to school. They did wear pants, peddle pushers, around town at times, usually not, very rare. They also wore same and or shorts to the lake along with one piece swim suit. I never saw a bikini on any female in those years.
When Jean and I went to OSU to do research at the library she was stopped at the door. Girls wearing pants weren't allowed. She was wearing a blue pants suit. She pulled off the pants part. The top was long enough it gave her an ultra short mini dress. We did our research.
But then I live in a third world nation named Oklahoma.
Hugs LeeAnna
Barb
I was blessed to be born on a dairy farm with all the animals, in the right part of the world, at the right time. Wouldn't trade it with any of the girls with the beautiful dresses and their parties.
Oklahoma born and raised cowgirl
Girls wearing dresses
I went to high school in small town Ontario, Canada in the 1970's. Looking back in the year books I have yet to find a single picture of a girl wearing a skirt or dress on a normal day. They might be wearing them as a costume during a special event but that was it.
Rolling up a skirt
Ohhhhhhhh.... that brings back memories of Shiela A******. She used to do that circa 1966-67. Her mother tried to stop it my making her wear stockings but... flashing her stocking tops was never an issue for Sheila. She knew that she was driving the boys mad. She ended up getting pregnant in early '68 and that was the last that we saw of her at school. I later found out that she ended up marrying a teacher but I'd escaped Gulag Crawley by then.
Other girls did it but to a lesser extent. The didn't want to face the wrath of Mrs Greenwood.
If any girl came to school wearing trousers they were sent home with a flea in their ear.
Today? I see a lot of girls wearing skirts to school. If you have the legs for it then why not. But... the skirt has to be pleated.
Thanks for the memory.
Samantha
I've heard of girls doing the roll the waste band trick before
When my wife went to parochial school the girls wore skirts and if challenged the had to kneel to test the length of the skirt. It had to touch the floor when they knelt on both knees.
After reading the report on the ruling I asked her if she thought she needed counseling to overcome the damage done by forcing her to wear skirts to grade school. She was not amused and told me that it was ridiculous to worry about such things.
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Ich bin eine Mann
The school thinks that rain will melt the girls...
Don't forget this beautiful little quote...
The school code actually REQUIRES boys hold the door for the girls, and carry an umbrella to keep the rain off the girls. I personally think that is the fucking absurd part.
Personally I think it's time we throw "traditional gender roles" out the window and just work on being our best selves no matter what that looks like.
Vulnerable, not fragile
It has nothing to do with women/girls being more "fragile," that's just male supremacist BS. The point of making skirts (and skirts of a prescribed length, cut, color, etc.) compulsory is to make girls feel vulnerable, so they will feel the need to be protected, and make them restrict their behavior to fit in with society's notion of "ladylike." After all, the purpose of school is to train children to accept the role society has prescribed for them, and for women, it is to fit into men's expectations (and desires!) enough that the men will protect them, since they aren't supposed to protect themselves. (Cf.: the scene in The World According to Garp where the nurse defends herself from a molester using a scalpel.) This is why skirts that are "too long" are as forbidden as ones that are too short -- it's about control, about restricting girls agency.
(Perhaps not exactly rape culture, but related to it.)
Note that it is the fact that skirts are required that is the problem. It is the (mostly male) people who make the decisions for schools that get to decide how vulnerable the girls must be. This also teaches the lesson that their bodies are not their own, their bodies exist to please those in power over them. If a girl wears a skirt (or any sort of revealing clothing) when and only when she wants to, it doesn't make her feel vulnerable, since she is getting to decide how much of her body to display and when.
I've noticed that women of my age or old rather rarely wear skirts or dresses, and I think that's because they grew up in a world where they were required to wear them, so they represented oppression. People in my children's generation and younger seem to wear them more freely, I assume because they don't associate skirts and dresses with being controlled.
Dresses and skirts are controlling?
Only in the sense of how much sizzle a woman puts into it. Rape is a culture problem not a dress problem. Women wear slacks or pants the same reason men do. It hides a whole lot of body fat and as a society as a whole, most are over weight. A dress or a blouse and skirt can't hide those pounds. They do just the opposite and expose every single ounce of excess. It takes time and effort to look good or exceptionally better than good in a dress. Three minutes to pull on jeans, sneakers, bra, and blouse. Thirty minutes or possibly and hour to find the right dress, nylons, heels, matching purse, makeup, fix my hair, appropriate earrings, jewelry, and finally chose what signals I giving out by what perfume I choose. I work like hell to keep a figure I can put in those dresses and skirts. What I feel is the truth is our society no longer has any concept of social class. It began with the hippy movement when everyone was rebelling against social structure. It got passed on from generation to generation and the majority have no concept of color coordination or class. They are still lost in the hippy movement even when they weren't there. If it feels good do it.
Hugs Asche
This is a good example of a female's control wearing a dress.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epQz4v6uvLM
Oklahoma born and raised cowgirl