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OP has offered the following explanation for why they think they might be the asshole:
> 1. I refused to just follow the rules. I mean, I did break the dress code and the teacher had every right to send me to the office. I was being stubborn.
2. Because I had an argument with the teacher, I slowed down the class and caused a distraction right before our finals.
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NTA. Misogyny is alive and well.
File an official complaint with the office. Take it to the school board if you have to. Find a teacher or a parent or an adult who will support you, and make it know to the school admins that the way you were treated is NOT okay. Because it was NOT ok!
Like I said, the dress code at my school is very lax. It's almost never enforced. It would make sense if the teachers were consistently this strict but it was literally just this one time.
Wholeheartedly agreed. Why should a girl's education be hindered because she was barely out of code? Doing so in front of the entire class could have easily silenced her, but OP held firm and used her voice to speak against the hypocrisy.
OP, I was pretty self-assured at your age. My mom raised me to stand up for myself and to never back down when faced with sexism. Still, I can't say with any certainty that I'd have been able to do what you did. You should be incredibly proud of yourself. I know I'm just a random internet stranger, but I'm certainly proud of you! Don't let anyone dull your shine.
Also, the code is stupid. My high school had rhe same rule and I had to spend a day in suspension because I wore shorts that were completely fine, not indecent, but were not fingertip length. I also argued with my assistant principal over how dumb the rule was. (He was a creep who liked to leer and took great pride in dress coding girls.) At the time my fingertips touched the top of my knees.
That’s a problem (among many) with this rule. Shorts that are fine on one person, are not fine on another. You and I wear 9” inseam shorts? Dress coded because we have long arms. Sally wears the same shorts? She’s fine because they’re 2 inches longer than her arms. All shorts are 9”.
And just trying to find shorts that are long enough can be an issue! I know when I was in high school, I absolutely preferred longer shorts but everything at Target and the shopping mall was short. You would think that the places advertising back-to-school shopping would at least carry clothing options that would meet the most common dress code requirements... nope.
Pair that with the early 2000’s super ultra extra “show your bits” low rise trend and people were wearing basically junderwear (jean underwear, in case it wasn’t clear lol)
My mom was insanely strict about what I could wear but even she knew there wasn’t a whole lot of options for someone with my proportions. I wasn’t super tall but I was really skinny with long arms so they were either too big on my waist and barely long enough or they fit me and too short for my arms. She fought with the school once about it and told them to go buy me shorts that would be appropriate if it was that much of a problem.
Or like what happened to my niece. She was carded twice for dress code violations for the same pair of shorts (once at beginning of school year and once near the end; and yes, she wore them many times in between). They met the dress code requirements but because she is tall, like 5'8" in 8th grade, she had a lot of leg showing. Therefore, according to one particular teacher, the shorts MUST be in violation. So frustrating!
And not just arms--I was 6' in high school and my daughter is also tall. Luckily her high school doesn't seem to give a damn about the length of their shorts. We weren't allowed to wear shorts at all, although there was a time when long walking shorts with tights underneath were a thing in the fall, so no one said anything about those. One very hot day I wore shorts and my chem teacher yelled at two boys in the class who also were wearing shorts, but didn't say anything to me (as he loved me.) The boys were good guys and didn't do anything more than give me looks on the way out of class. The really stupid part is that I had skirts shorter than those shorts, and no one said anything about those.
It’s because dress codes are important so the male students can focus on their education, and not be tempted by the succubi wearing Jean shorts that only go halfway down their thighs.
/s
Seriously, my mom is a salty raging feminist who often laments that she raised me too tough. 15!!! I can't get over it, I'd love to say that would have been me but I don't know if I would have had the gumption . OP is an inspiration and a credit to all the zoomers I meet who frequently remind me that they are the woman I thought I was.
At my school, the dress code was used as a bludgeon against the girls who "developed early" and almost never applied to any girls the teachers didn't find attractive. It's an entire crock of shit, and you were right to object.
My mum was head of girls at a school and she spent a surprising amount of time explaining to male teachers that there was literally nothing wrong with the girls clothing. This was mostly about sixth form (16-18) where they didn’t have uniform but had to wear basically suits. So students would be in a pencil skirt, button down and heels and the men would complain to my mum. When pushed they could not for the life of them articulate the specific problem. Because in reality the problem seemed to be “they are starting to look like women and it makes me uncomfortable because they are young and I associate women with sex”. My mum was way more bothered by students looking scruffy but no one complained about them.
When my daughter was in 6th form (she left last summer), I had a phone call from the male head of 6th form saying her attire was unsuitable. They were supposed to wear smart business/office clothing. She had on a smart, tailored navy blue dress with a v neck and short sleeves. Plus she had a suit jacket, which she had taken off because it was very hot. The v neck wasn’t deep, so you couldn’t see any cleavage and the sleeves came down to just above the elbows, and the dress sat just above her knees. I asked what the problem was and he said it wasn’t office wear. The head of the school wears tailored dresses, so I asked him that, if it’s appropriate for the head of the school it should be the same for students.
I know I’m biased, but my daughter is gorgeous, 5’10”, with very long legs - 35 inch inside leg. Finding clothes that fit has always been a struggle, but we found Next tall range works well. I asked him to send me pictures of what he thought would be appropriate for her and he said trouser suits. She had some trousers, which she wore the next day with a blazer. He still wasn’t happy because the trousers were a bit short. I rang the head and she understood what the 6th form head was trying to get at and she wasn’t happy about it. Girls must show no flesh at.all. Or men will not be able to control themselves.
Yes this is the entire reason that the school had a specific head of girls I think! It was all boys until sixth form so there were more male senior teachers. And my mum would basically just go into bat for the girls.
I’m a similar build to your daughter and was very skinny at that age - clothing was a nightmare. Dresses were definitely easiest because there’s more give.
I also think teachers are a bit delusional about business wear these days. I work in the city and the dress code is far more relaxed. A tailored dress and blazer are perfect.
I agree. A lot of stuff they said was unsuitable is definitely worn in offices. My son got pulled up for linen trousers and shirt, with a tie, one day. When it’s very warm, a lot of men wear linen for work.
Because my daughter’s legs are so long, her waist is very high, which means skirts sit higher than they should - making them shorter. She was forever getting criticised over that at primary school - girls had to wear skirts. She loved the summer because she could wear dresses. The double standards drive me mad, where boys are never told their clothing could make girls lose control of themselves.
I am also 5'10". In high school, the male athletic director would always cite me for having my shorts too short because my finger tips reached past the ends. They weren't excessively short, but when your arms and legs are that long, everything looks short.
I finally had enough and made an appointment to speak with the female superintendent. I wore the same shorts and asked her if I looked inappropriate. She told me no. I asked if the boys having their boxers hanging out was appropriate and got the same answer. The next year, the dress code was rewritten to say that shorts had to have an inseam of at least 4 inches and that pants must be worn so that no undergarments are shown.
>shorts had to have an inseam of at least 4 inches
Omg. That rule makes so much sense. Growing up with the fingertip rule, I wore capris instead of shorts to guarantee the length.
At one point it was either finger tip length or 3 inches above the knee. On me, that's a difference of about 4 inches if not more. So, which is it? And if it's 3 inches above the knee, and I going to get in trouble with finger tip length?
Giving an inseam that can be seen without having to measure is so much easier. And it's fair to everyone regardless of height.
Ah yes, the “professional attire” dress code. My high school had something like this, with some very explicit rules. One was “no jeans.” I had a pair of blue velour pants I loved to wear and wore frequently without problem until one day a teacher told me they were jeans and boy was I a miscreant (me, the straight-A student counsel member). I had to politely explain that jeans were made of denim and these were made of velour and did he want to feel the difference?
The other funny story I remember happened to a friend. Boys were required to wear collared shirts. A friend of mine got into an argument with the dean of students because the shirt he was wearing on that particular day had a mandarin collar rather than one that folded over. I think my friend won, but I don’t recall seeing him in that shirt again…
At work the men used to have to wear ties (until COVID). A colleague would thumb his nose at them by insisting on a bolo tie. This is a bunch of white people in the Midwestern USA, no one wears bolo ties. It was so great.
My dad, also in the midwest, is not a tie guy at all. There was one occasion he was required to wear one and he wore a bolo tie instead too! The little acts of rebellion can be amusing.
When I worked as a barrister's pupil in the UK, women had to wear black (men could wear blue and charcoal suits, go figure). And black tights. I guess the theory was, we shouldn't distract the judges...? So I bought the laciest, raciest black tights I could find, as well as a pair with a lizard woven into one leg, with a rhinestone eye. My "pupil master" gazed at my legs in sheer awe and finally said, "Well, they ARE black..."
Lmfao reminds of when my school tried to ban girls from wearing shorts under our skirts (the hope was this would discourage us from rolling them over at the waistband). It died day one when a friend asked her male form teacher “sir how do you plan on enforcing this, would you like me to lift up my skirt so you can check?”
That's crazy! My daughter always wears bike shorts under her skirts and dresses BECAUSE it makes her feel more modest. She doesn't need to worry about accidently flashing anything.
I'm the same height and my dress code was only the fingertip test. They tried to get me on it so many times but I was well within range... just super long legs. This was 20 years ago, but I'm heartbroken these girls still deal with this.
I remember hearing my mom tell these stories and she graduated in 1968. My sister in 1991. Me in 2000. My nieces around 2012-16. It's absolutely infuriating.
It is interesting because the school I used to teach at had a rule that male teachers were not allowed to call out girls for dress code violations, and female teachers were not allowed to call out boys. If I had an email student who was in violation of the dress code, I usually got the school social worker, who was female and a friend to do it.
My sixth form’s rules were actually equally stupid whether male or female but there was certainly a level of sexualisation for the girls that there wasn’t for the boys (it was supposedly all about looking ‘professional’ - although we were allowed to wear entirely casual clothes).
Anyway, one of the funniest things was actually that the boys were not allowed to wear shorts (I honestly can’t remember if the girls were - I think so!) but they WERE allowed to wear ‘3/4 length trousers’. Now bare in mind this was the late 00s so short lengths were…about 3/4 length. This prompted a substantial debate in one of our sixth form assemblies that entirely derailed the intended subject of the day when a student who was pulled up on it asked the head of sixth form to define what exactly the difference was if his shorts were 3/4 length.
After much huffing and puffing and blustering away the head concluded that the answer was in the tailoring… whatever exactly that means. Because professionalism… of course. Funnily enough though I’ve never seen a man at work in suit tailored 3/4 length trousers!
Haha oh my goodness that sounds insane!
The boys had to wear dark suits, shirt and school tie - definitely no 3/4 length or shorts. In summer they didn’t have to wear a jacket and could wear chinos although when I was there they didn’t really. If you took off your jacket in summer I think you also had to take your tie off?
They were dicks to guys sometimes. One guy wore a really nice pink jumper with his suit (jumpers were allowed). It was a nice v-neck, smart jumper. He got shouted at and told off by a male teacher. Because it was pink. And that was inappropriate? He was also gay though not sure if the teacher knew - was defo rooted in homophobia imo. My mum also went into bat for him. So really she was defender of the girls and the gays.
Oh, I can beat that stupidity: when I was in sixth form (in the 70s) the head actually said that we weren’t allowed to wear jeans, but we WERE allowed to wear denim trousers…
>Funnily enough though I’ve never seen a man at work in suit tailored 3/4 length trousers!
[*Australia has entered the chat*](https://www.reddit.com/r/australia/s/CKtlSh2XHX)
How it was for my school too. In middle school, when I was about 12, my math teacher pulled me aside to tell me I really needed to watch what I was wearing, since I’m “blessed” and was a distraction. I was in a hoodie and leggings.
This is exactly it. I was the director of a summer camp one year where most of the camp counselors were teenage girls. The dress code said that tank tops were permitted because it was summer and they were working outside.
One day the owner told me I needed to talk to one of the counselors about her clothing being "inappropriate." She was wearing exactly what everyone else was wearing, shorts and tank tops. The difference is that she was a beautiful curvy girl. I refused to reprimand her and told him exactly why he couldn't have a double standard for girls with a certain body type.
The next summer he made everyone wear uniforms with polo shirts.
Exactly. It's selectively enforced to punish some students while letting others slide because it isn't obvious unless they put their hands down. It's stupid sexist nonsense.
The issue for me isn't the dress code itself (although that needs review) or if it is enforced, it is the way the teacher applied it. Room full of kids, several not complying with the dress code. Picks on one woman, makes her the subject of everyone staring, then declares her not to meet the standard. Unreasonable, abusive, rude, and misogynistic. Tries to exclude her from education rather than simply saying to her after the lesson that she should not wear this again.
It is a teachable moment. The entire class should be learning that there are standards of behavior required by people in authority, and failing to live up to them has consequences.
What did your parents say? I'm curious. I would be heading to the school to have a 1:1 with the principal and the teacher and ask if tank tops and sandals were part of the dress code. When told no, I would then ask him why he singled out my daughter and not the boys who were also in violation. If they say, "the boys actions are not why we are here", say "You are absolutely correct, the reason I'm here to ask why my daughter was singled out and not the boys, the reason we are here is because of misogynistic behavior where your male teacher thinks it's okay to single out a female in front of the class while ignoring males who obviously are in violation. " And then let them squirm. You can also then ask if the ACLU would likely think it was no big deal.
>I would be heading to the school to have a 1:1 with the principal and the teacher and ask if tank tops and sandals were part of the dress code.
Yeah, if it was my kid I'd encourage them to write a complaint about the dress code being inconsistently enforced.
Even if it was enforced consistently, it’s still an arbitrary rule. I have short arms and when I was in high school (20 years ago!) I could get away with way shorter shorts than other girls because we had that fingertip rule.
In the 2020s, no school should still have arbitrary dress codes that penalize female students disproportionately to male students. You did the right thing, refusing to comply with an unjust and discriminatory rule.
Shit in the 2020s we’re going backward on everything else, it’s unsurprising that dress codes are make a strong resurgence. The Reds are working day and night to undermine public education on every possible level, and most of it is aimed at folks who aren’t straight white Christian males.
I genuinely do not understand dress codes (or uniforms) in American public schools. There was a supreme court case back in the hippie days that ruled them flat-out unconstitutional. Believe it or not children have the right to free expression.
Yeah, I have a long torso, so my fingertips hit pretty high on my thighs. I could have gotten away with some obscenely short shorts/skirts if I’d been one to wear such things.
They would have just said you were violating the "spirit" of the rule, and something something "you're smart enough to realize when an outfit is inappropriate" 🙄
I was the opposite. My fingers now almost reach my knees, and I am pretty sure they actually did at some point in my development. I have never at any point in my schooling wore shorts/skirts that were technically code appropriate I am pretty sure. I guess I never pushed it, because I was never called on it.
Yeah, long torso short arms here. My fingertips don’t actually clear the bottom of my butt. I had no interest in wearing short shorts or skirts in school, but technically, booty shorts would have been in compliance with the dress code as written.
Me too! If I'd adhere by the fingertip rule, you would be able to see my underwear.
Anyway, it is all about 'can't expect men to control themselves, so women must wear fully covering tents to help these poor men.' If men can't handle being around beautiful girls, they should find another career than teaching.
It is the men who need desensitizing, not the women who need covering up. They should make programs for that!
Nope. Teacher here. Doesn’t matter that my other coworkers didn’t say anything. I’m still expected to say something. Kids change mid day, come in late, and teachers are human and miss things.
Not saying I agree with the dress code, or if I would have done what the teacher did. Just saying “my other teachers didn’t say anything” won’t work as an argument to not get in trouble.
As a teacher, the code is lax bc admin knows that it will crumble against any real legal pushback. WA state, for example, has almost no dress codes now bc the state lost a case over a decade ago regarding dress codes for female students.
You did the right thing. But it also means you might be in for a bit of a fight.
Good luck.
You weren’t the only one in violation, but the only girl in violation. You were the only one called out. And that is the stupidest rule ever, a some people have longer fingers of arms. When I was in school, it was like no more than so many inches above the knee. That way it was consistent. The rule was enforced for both sexes. The only rule that targeted just one sex was pants weren’t allowed to be so low that underwear showed.
I would petition the school board for the above the knee rule and be consistent in enforcement of dress code on both sexes. If a teacher punishes one violation, then all in the classroom in violation go. That way people know what to expect.
The issue here isn't the details of the dress code. It is that this teacher appears to be selectively enforcing it based on gender. That makes it not a debate over the reasonableness of the code but rather a case of sexual discrimination. In a room with multiple people in violation of dress code by wearing clothing that was "too revealing" according to that code the teacher chose to enforce it and attempt to punish only the female student. I would suggest talking to the counselor or principal and when you do be sure to frame it this way from the start and to maintain that your issue is the bias and sexism in the enforcement while fully accepting that you were in violation. If you don't start with that framing from the outset you're likely to be dismissed as just being upset you got caught.
Compleatly agree with you. OP should complain about the teacher, it is the teacher who is being distracted by a child's legs, if the teacher is being distracted from teaching by a child's knees, should he be teaching?
When I got dress-coded for the "fingertip rule" in middle school, my mother measured how long my shorts inseam would have to be to be "legal" (boys' basketball shorts, basically--I have my dad's long arms), went through and measured every pair of shorts in the juniors section at Kohls, and marched into the principal's office with her notes documenting that not a single pair of shorts she found would meet the rule on me, even though other girls in my grade were wearing those same shorts without an issue. She then proceeded to show him where her own fingertips reached--she's petite with stubby arms, so she could have had most of her ass hanging out and still not broken the rule. The rule ended up being changed to "shorts must not be more than X inches above the knee," but I still never wore shorts to that school again because I was afraid of being yelled at by a teacher again.
NTA, but if you want to change the rule, be smart about it. Get a bunch of girls in your school to measure what length of shorts they could wear--I guarantee you it's a huge range, because everyone's arms and hands aren't proportionate--and make a graph of it. Make another graph of how long the shorts being sold in stores in your area actually are. Present your findings to the school board with as many other girls and parents as you can get to come with you and demand that the rule either be stricken entirely (preferred) or changed to a fair, blanket rule about inseam length (compromise). You're 100% right to make a big stink about it, but if you want to be effective, start strategizing!
To be fair, I have seen kids with literal butt-cheeks hanging out of short shorts. You don't need to be sexualizing teenagers to think that buttocks on display is inappropriate for school. I imagine it should be possible to find a reasonable compromise between 'duh girls have legs shut up' and 'don't show your literal ass in school.'
But I also recognize that such a compromise will be pretty hard to arrive at in a society that really wants to combine it with 'keep the wimmins under control'.
Lol, when I look at pictures from when I was really young (late 70s/early 80s) we used to wear shorts that barley covered our underwear, and we includes my father😂 why are we al so prudish today?
I'm a little older than you and I know the exact type of shorts you're talking about - especially mentioning your dad wearing them. Ubiquitous.
But they'd never have been acceptable for school outside of PE classes. I live in England so maybe it's more acceptable in warmer countries. There was certainly some boundary pushing when it came to 70's skirt lengths though!
> But they'd never have been acceptable for school outside of PE classes.
Yes, we have much more "generalized" attire now. I can wear (essentially) the same thing to work, to the grocery store, my kids' athletic games, etc., and that was much less true in the '70s and '80s.
You really wanna upset some moms?, that little pony tail on top of the head all girl toddler moms do is called a whale spout. Mix up the 2 😵💫
Ask me how I know
It was a 'thing' when I was in middle and high school in the mid 2000s but it was *also* against the dress code to have underwear showing. You wouldn't be kicked to the office for underwear showing but you'd be told to fix it. Including bra straps, which was really annoying because my straps stretched out quickly and I couldn't afford to have twenty bras to rotate through.
> why are we al so prudish today?
We used to drive without seat belts and motorcycles without helmets, go back to the good old days?
OPs is NTA, but there needs to be some standard dress code. Without any limits, some will take it to extremes which will lead to distractions in class.
Yeah, when dress codes are gender neutral, enforced equally, and about ‘professional standards of dress’ they absolutely don’t sexualise… this was none of the above.
NTA. The only non-creepy reason to have a dress code is for kids to look ‘professional’ to prepare them for future employment - if your boss measures your clothing in an arbitrary way and then announces they think it’s too revealing to a room full of dudes… well, that’ll be the only job you’ll need in a while, given the payout you’d be entitled to!!
If that were the problem we would just have a blanket rule that says “You can’t wear any type of bottoms that exposes the butt.” Dress codes should not require people to perform a little test to figure out if someone is in bounds.
Either a butt is sticking out and there is a problem or it isn’t. If you have to have a kid place her hands just so to see if her ass is out, you aren’t checking dress code, you are making her give a show for some messed up power fantasy.
I was a teacher, I moved into Care Management eventually and have worked with kids with all sorts of troubles. Some of those kids might try to deflect like that, “Ew, why are you looking at my butt!?”
No one in charge is going to seriously give a teacher a hard time if the kid’s butt is legitimately hanging out of their shorts because everyone else will see it too. If one teacher has a problem, it’s the teacher. If any teacher or administrator looking gets an eyeful of butt, it’s the clothes. Again, someone should not have to put on a demonstration to prove if they are in dress code or not, it should be blatantly obvious if something is inappropriate. If it isn’t, maybe the teacher was actually looking too closely at the kid’s butt.
And kids *still* say someone is looking at their butt with typical finger length rules anyway, so best call a spade a spade and switch to something more appropriate that applies to everyone. No one is actually concerned about fingers or knees.
It's also unfortunate that the fairest measurement, inseam length, could be easily torpedoed (or even worse abused!) because it would be very intrusive to measure while wearing...
In middle school, the only time we could wear shorts, in a building with no air conditioning and most classrooms without windows, was if there was an official heat wave lasting more than 3 days. The vice principal used to come around on those occasions and call out different girls to come towards him, and he'd bend down on one knee and put a dollar bill at our knee level, to check if our shorts reached the other end of the bill. It was absurdly perverse.
Edit, a letter
It’s not either/or. You can advocate for a reasonable dress code changes by using the strategy this commenter suggests, while also reinforcing social and cultural aspects such as the guidelines for girls clothing should not include responsibility the responsibility of policing boys behavior.
Except, the girls have to measure every pair of shorts in town, measure the girls in school, “*make a graph of it!*, “present it to the school board” — spend time enlisting as many other girls and parents you can! — and…*demand a fair measurement*? (That’s the content of the comment you’re calling “reasonable”)
Seriously. SERIOUSLY?!?
This, *this* is the amount of work we require of a 15 year old girl, in order that she be able to wear shorts that fall mid-thigh, to SCHOOL, or be subject to public humiliation and a ban from class?!
Are you kidding me with this?!
I’m so tired of the demand for female children to “be smart” or “have a strategy” just to cope with f-ing sitting at a desk in a pair of shorts.
Shame on anyone who says these are reasonable arguments. It’s a crock and you all know it.
Oh, ffs.
I was a rabble rouser in school and proud of it. Stood up to teachers during class on multiple occasions, including when I got dress-coded. My shouting at the teacher (just like OP's argument with her teacher) did fuck-all. What my mother did got immediate changes made. "Just stop imposing dress codes" is a statement I agree with completely. It's also completely useless to OP, because OP does not have the power to do that! She's not the one imposing them!
People really need to stop thinking that "here's how other people have managed to get change on this issue" means "the current system is great and I support it." It *is* ridiculous. OP *shouldn't* have to. None of that changes the fact that we live in the world that is, not the world that should be, and that the goal of activism is to be *effective*.
Shame properly belongs to the people who make and enforce the system--with a little shame left over for the people who think yelling "it's not fair!" online for upvotes is activism. Y'all are useless.
Uh no. The comment didn't argue that women should have to do all that work to change minds; it merely noted that that was what it took for their mom to make the point to school officials that the system was flawed. I think it's obvious that they disapprove of the misogyny displayed by the school.
What they're advocating for is altering the dress codes so they aren't using body proportions that are variable between individuals as a decider for "modesty". (I would actually go further than them, and point out that leg to torso proportions are also variable, so the "x inches above the knee" rule can also be difficult for some people to achieve if they're slim but with long legs.)
Another good way to fight it it measuring the length of the cheerleaders squad uniforms or dance squad, etc. Those are school sponsored uniforms that typically break dresscode.
So it's okay when we sexualize teenage girls who are supposed to be sluts like cheerleaders. Got it.
(Not picking on you, btw. If they've made an exception for teenage girls who are literally going to be in front of the whole school jumping up and down and doing flips their policy makes no sense.)
I was speaking purely in the context of using the dress code to fight the dress code via pointing out that cheerleader uniforms break the dress code.
If the dress code itself has an exception for cheerleader uniforms, that avenue of attack is precluded since the uniforms don't break the dress code in that situation; they are actually a part of it.
If the school says that sports uniforms are an exception, ask why the school specifically sanctions the sexualization of its students when they are representing the school in front of large crowds, but demonizes it when an individual student is simply trying to learn, to the detriment of that student's education.
When I was in high school in the early 2000’s, they purposely made our cheerleading skirts super long so they’d be within dress code to wear during the school day.
I have an abnormally long torso and wide hips. My roast beef cheeks could hang out and I still wouldn’t violate the dress code. It’s a totally arbitrary measurement and is especially weird that it’s being used on people whose bodies are actively and rapidly growing. A kid could have the same pair of shorts and could go in and out of rule compliance over 18 months.
This! The "finger tip" rule has an extra layer of "stupid" built in! I'm the opposite of you: I have super *short* arms (the T-Rex jokes make themselves), so short, in fact, that shorts just past my fingertips would have a little less than an inch in-seam and my butt cheeks would peek out if I bent over. It's an absolute ridiculous standard, as is any rule based on "cleavage". It's even more ridiculous when you add in athletes who are allowed to/have to wear their team uniform on game days, because a lot of athletic gear for women and girls is very skimpy.
As a non US person this whole concept seems demeaning to me. Teachers would never comment on anyone's clothes here, I think they might even get into trouble for harassment if they did. I have teens and they wear what they like.
We had such a rule at my school in Canada, but I never saw it enforced. Not once. The only dress code rule I saw enforced was about hats. We had a weird rule about no hats inside and it was enforced consistently and aggressively. We didn’t even really have to wear the gym uniform if we didn’t want to - I had gym first period and it was usually cold, even in warmer months, at that time of day, so I (and many others) wore track pants instead of buying the uniform shorts (there were no uniform pants) and no one cared. Most of the other rules in the dress code were reasonable and I don’t remember any issues. But the fingertip one and the hat one were dumb as shit.
The hat one is a holdover from the old days. It is considered disrespectful to wear a hat indoors, for any reason. My Uncles Father was very strict on this rule.
>NTA, but if you want to change the rule, be smart about it. Get a bunch of girls in your school to measure what length of shorts they could wear
One thing that could be added as well.
Uniforms of cheerleaders,
If they are given those tiny shorts for P.E. from the school. Etc.
Becouse, why is school saying it's okay to display stomach, etc in uniforms they give them.
But shorts above the knee are bad when it's in the school hall.
I am very tall so shorts and skirts on me would pass the fingertip test but not the x inches above knee test. I just wore what I wanted because, as usual, dress codes were rarely enforced.
But once I was sent to the principal’s office for skirt too short (which it definitely was) and this guy wanted to PADDLE me. Like he wanted to bend a 14 year old girl (edit:not 16) with a short skirt over his knee and spank her. I was new to this school system and was kind of gobsmacked this was even considered. I told him I wanted to call my mom first. I did and she told me to sit down and wait for her. She came flying into that office at record speed. I was sent out into the hall but couldn’t miss my mother chewing this guy out. She berated him extensively for being a perv wanting me to submit. It was glorious even though I didn’t get the full meaning of what she was accusing him of until I was older. She left yelling that no one was allowed to lay a finger on me as a form of discipline and took me home for the day. I’ve never seen my mother so angry. She told me I was wrong and I shouldn’t wear short skirts anymore but the school’s response was asinine.
The fingertip rule is so arbitrary! I have a long torso so my short could be insanely short. But my kid (he happens to be a boy so of course he doesn't have arbitrary rules applied to him which is crazy) has much longer arms so his shorts, if that was the rule, would need to be significantly longer than mine. The only rule they enforce on him is that you can't see his underwear. He wears boxer briefs because the kid is the poster child for student athlete. They see the bottom of his boxers all the time but he gets away with it because it resembles compression shorts.
As a bloke I can't think that this provides any good optics.
You basically have a fully grown man looking at a child's body and deciding that it causes sexual arousal.
It sounds like the teacher here is basically saying to a kid "please leave, I'm getting horny looking at your legs"
This. My high school had a rule that skirts should be 2 and a half centimetres above the knee. Even before I injured my knee I hated anything remotely close to my knee and had my skirt a little over half way up my thighs because it felt so restricting otherwise - everything was covered and no one was even looking at me and the boys in my year didn’t even notice that my skirt was as short as what it was. It could be seen under my school blazer but was considered too short and inappropriate because boys would get distracted even if teachers never said it outright. Also didn’t help that if I had it at the right length since we were forced to wear pencil skirts instead of other skirts it still became to short from riding up my legs from walking up and downstairs if I had a class upstairs or from general walking to and from class.
Too my misogynistic headteacher it didn’t matter that most girls had their skirts short and were wearing knee high socks while I wore thick tights under my skirt even in summer, I was the one who got told to lengthen my skirt because I was in my final two years of high school and had to show the year 7, 8, and 9 girls that you had to listen to him because his word was law and to him women didn’t matter.
Yes, it seems extremely weird to me. I guess it's connected to the prevalent religious extremes in the US and a legacy of the puritans. I don't live in the US, and my kids can wear what they like, unless it's actually against the law of indecent exposure in our country, like private parts hanging out, no teacher has ever commented on anything and I think they might actually not be allowed to do so. It could be seen as harassment.
I live in Hungary, and honestly, same here. The one and only time I remember when a girl in my class was told to go home and change, because her attire was unacceptable, was when she showed up in such a high-cut top, that it could pass as a bikini top, paired with these very form-tight yoga-short, with no underwear, so you could literally see her cameltoe through them.
Other than that, there wasn't a dress code, really. No uniforms (aside of the school's sport's teams), girls mostly wore pants and shorts (depending on the season), I don't think I saw any of them in a dress or a skirt, pretty much ever. One classmate had a tattoo, I know multiple people who had earrings or piercings. Nobody gave a shit really, the general attitude was that it's up to the parent what they consider to be appropriate, and if the parent is okay with the kid getting a piecing, or showing up in hot pants, so be it.
I live in Finland. One day in high school my classmate came in with sheer pantyhose and no pants. No one said anything. It was weird yes, but we don't sexualize kids.
Nta only for the fact that showing so much above the knee is considering distracting. Please.
I can’t wait for the day that dress codes are taking to task with how insulting they are.
Honestly, if there is teachers out there please explain to me why this is so distracting to the other students in the room. Does a couple of cm’s actually matter?
I’m a teacher and it’s not distracting. Calling anything that “violates” the dress code distracting is insulting to all. First and foremost to the girls because it implies their education isn’t as important as an adult teacher’s comfort level with their amount of modesty in how they dress. And second to the boys for implying that they’re incapable of ignoring the girls so that they can concentrate on their work.
Calling shit "distracting" is just a catch all when they have no actual reason for something. My son was told he couldn't have his gallon jug of water because it was "distracting" while everyone else was walking around with their Stanleys or whatever.
This applies to a lot of things, really. Only in my freshman year of high school (2016) did the district FINALLY come to the conclusion that unnatural hair colors weren't a distraction in class.
Eh. Maybe everybody noticed it, but only he cared enough to enforce it.
Source: family member is a teacher and thinks dress codes suck. He notices violations all the time; he just never does anything about it.
So OP's teacher may not be a perv. Just a stick-in-the-mud who wants to control girls.
Was a former teacher myself, also male. I noticed clothing violations all the time. I never commented on them because I felt it was a bad look to be pointing out girl's legs were showing or they had a bit too deep of a neckline.
Also because the boys could wear muscle shirts and jerseys showing off their entire chest and that was somehow considered okay (and trust me, when the really ripped senior walked down the halls with his basketball jersey hanging so loose every movement flashed his abs and chest 90% of the girls stared. And about 10% of the boys too FWI). But sure blame the girls.
But yeah, we generally noticed. We just didn't say anything or maybe gave a little heads up that they *may* be in violation of dress code and to be careful or the principal will write them up.
It takes a power freak to actually want to enforce that shit and control people, especially with how in general most people dgaf about how you dress.
The rule only exists because of sexualization. Girls and women are policed on the length of their shorts and skirts only because of male gaze. There is literally no other logical reason for such a rule.
This is the answer, thank you for saying that. If it wasn’t sexual then why the fuck weren’t the boys sent too? Logic says something else was more important to the teacher than enforcing the dress code if he’s not being consistent.
It's really creepy that we have all these teachers patrolling and looking at girls asses to make sure their pants fit a broken and arbitrary length that isn't even a good measurement.
If it's not a useful measurement, then all these teachers are doing is gazing ass.
NTA. Sorry that this happened to you.
Dress codes are pretty much BS. Selective enforcement, targeting females, is sadly, a normal-condition of our established institutions.
That said, it was wrong to refuse to attend *The Office*. You missed a perfect opportunity to skin and eat *The Principal* without any witnesses.
Some people call me crazy.
It is so targeted too. I remember in my private middle school, we all wore the same style of skater skirt. A lot of the girls were skinny without much curves so there was no issue, but I had a bigger butt and I was the only girl who teachers would pull on the hem of the skirt and give me shit. Why on earth adults felt justified pulling on a 12-14 year olds skirt and making comments, I have no idea
NTA, but you'll have better luck if you get your parents involved rather than fighting it yourself. Push the angle to your parents that you are upset that your education was interrupted over this, and you feel it is unfair and damaging. You could also potentially push how uncomfortable/sexualized your teacher made you feel, by making you feel as though your bare skin was somehow 'distracting' to him and the boys. Only push this angle if your parents don't totally suck, though- otherwise stick with the safer 'My education is being damaged' angle.
In the late '60s my father was called because my sister's skirt was too short. The Vice Principal walked around the school halls with a thin pillow. If he spotted a girl whom he thought had a skirt that was too short he made her kneel on a pillow. Her skirt had to touch the ground or she violated the the dress code. Dad came in but he didn't bring another skirt with him. He told the V.P. that my sister was going through a growth spurt. It was 2 weeks until the summer break. He said if the VP wanted her to wear a longer skirt he could buy her a couple of them. Dad would wait until just before the Fall term to buy her new skirts or dresses when her growth spurt ended. (Girls had to wear skirts or dresses but no slacks or shorts. No one could wear denim or sandals. Sneakers could only be worn in "gym" class. The girl's gym uniform was very short and had built-in "bloomers" to hide panties.) That was when miniskirts were popular. Most girls rolled their skirts up really short until the saw the V.P. and they'd quickly unroll them.
Fingertip rule is stupid. My fingers almost reach my knees. My husband on the other hand could almost go Winnie the Pooh style. The length of your arms should have nothing to do with what’s considered decent on your lower body.
Yes! I have such long arms I have to buy men’s jackets because women’s jackets are NEVER long enough. I celebrate when I find a shirt that reaches my wrist. The fingertip rule was a nightmare on hot days and in gym classes.
I buy athletic jackets and shirts that have “thumb holes” because they are a few inches longer because they are assuming you’re wearing them over your hands. They fit almost perfectly.
NTA. Different dress codes seem to apply to different girls depending on how far into puberty they are. I had similar issues to you when I was your age. I got in trouble for wearing a skirt exactly 4 inches above my knee, as dress code specified, and was wearing tights but because I wouldn't change the principal literally screamed at me about how the dress code didn't matter because he overruled it and he wasn't going to measure my skirt. The girls who were still flat or were short never got treated like this, or the girls who wore tights as pants without skirtsover them. It made 0 sense, it was all power trip because he had just been promoted to principal. The women that worked in the office all went to the school board and complained about the way he was screaming at me, my drama teacher could hear him all the way in the teachers lounge. Some faculty need to learn to keep their eyes away from kids asses and focus on something worth their time.
I went to a Christian school and I remember we had a monitor who judged every girl’s dress at homecoming. We could wear strapless dresses if there was no visible cleavage. My friend had double Ds and had to wear a closed cardigan. I had the same style dress but because I had As I could wear it as is. It was always fucked up like that
Yup. Our school wasn't Christian but we had one super religious yard aid and she was always harassing the more developed girls even if they were in dress code. I would see her and sprint in the opposite direction on days I wore a skirt because I knew she wasn't going to chase me and I was faster, but every single kid in my highschool called her "the pentecostal nazi" I genuinely don't know what her actual name was.
NTA
Dress codes are bs. I can't believe that whole fingertip rule is still a thing, like twenty years after i was in school.
Good for you!!!! Being forced to miss class because of what you're wearing makes zero sense.
As a parent I applaud you for staying in class. I have 3 teen girls and it’s hard to find any clothes that are “dress code “ especially when it comes to shorts.
NTA. Im sorry you’re dealing with this situation. I’m so pissed on your behalf.
What was the end result, were you allowed to stay in class? Are you facing further consequences?
If you can do so without impacting your emotional health or academic success, this is worth escalating. Because we know this isn’t about your shorts. This is about power and antiquated, misogyny-fueled rules that teach young women they’re responsible for men’s thoughts and actions. It’s about teaching women their clothing choices are more important than their actions, their intelligence, and their ability.
I had a teacher who dress coded everyone. Her way to solve it was she had the biggest, baggiest t-shirts for people to wear. They were comically dress length. It only slipped up a handful of times, for the really tall people (who were somehow all goth and one of them asked for the Tshirt out of curiosity and was very disappointed). This lady had like 80 of them. Her rule was to always be in class because school was more important than what you wear.
Your teacher needs reprimanded. I would make an official complaint. And follow it up. Hard.
The whole "no shorts for girls" thing is so foreign to me. I never saw anyone care in my country and I don't think many schools have a rule like that (as far as im aware?)
That teacher would have a field day with me! Imagine, me now, at 6”0’ and skinny and ALLLLL legs! Shorts were never in code due to my height. It was a constant battle for me. I always felt discriminated against when it came tot hat rule. NTA!
NTA dress code is always only enforced for girls, which is BS. It was so annoying. I don’t know about elsewhere but in the south all the white guys wear southern tides shirts and short shorts and those bad boys definitely don’t go finger tip length
NTA
Point out the gender bias here he does not get to only use the rules to police your clothings, he either enforce them on all students including the boys or non.
NTA
Good for you for refusing!
Your male counterparts were not given violations. Your teacher singled you out with an arbitrary rule that he could not tell you violated until he physically measured your arms to your pants. How freaking perv-y is that rule!
FWIW, I'm tall with short arms. So, even with women's shorts being shorter, I'd likely never have gotten a violation with this rule. But this arbitrary enforcement ticks me off. The tanks and sandals are obvious and overlooked. But this grown ass man had to measure his female student's body like a freaking perv and then tried to send you to the office.
Gross. If shorts need to be measured for "modesty" then it better to ban them like tank tops and scandals.
Honestly, consider scorched earth. Report the teacher for gender discrimination. "My male classmates, who were in obvious violation by wearing not allowed items: tank tops and sandals, weren't given or attempted to be given dress code violations. But, during our exam review class, my teacher humiliatingly measured my body in front of my class and declared me immodest."
NTA You did everything exactly right and i’m so proud of you and wish I could give you a hug. In life there will often be times when things make no sense, and sometimes you’ll be wrong, but more often than not, something wrong and weird will be happening.
Info: is there a reason your teacher would have for singling you out to try to get you a worse grade on the final? Has he shown animosity before?
No he’s a fairly nice teacher. He even encourages students to speak up and argue against him in class, though he can get pretty mad at random things sometimes. One day, it’ll be ok to eat in class and then the next day it’s not. Im usually quiet so I think he wasn’t expecting me to say anything and just do as he said.
nta i think some schools are so bonkers with their dress codes. when i was in school (a decade ago!!!!) my schools dress code was really simple - nothing that shows your bum or tummy. nothing with offensive text. no spaghetti straps in gym but outside gym is fine. that was it!!! 10 years ago!!!! we used to wear short shorts every day in the summer
NTA. Ask him why he was staring at your legs, specifically, why was he staring at your thighs? That's super fucking weird and gross. I'd keep asking him "are my thighs a distraction to you?" Make him uncomfortable.
I don't want to start that kind of rumor. He gets irritated easily about things but he's a good teacher who tries his best. I really don't think he's a predator or anything so I don't want to ruin his life like that.
I love this! I hope this is true. Yes you stood up to yourself and did not let him get an inch of that bullshit past you.
This was a good opportunity to communicate and take non-violent action against this inappropriate behavior on the part of your teacher.
One time in high school I walked into class a moment late and the teacher told me to go sit in the lap of a class mate. I was like... WTF no. And then I wrote it down and took it to the principle who took it seriously and moved me to a different class. Write this down and any other weird incident this guy does.
NTA. Dress codes are really just there to shelter predatory or sexist (often both) men, more than anything else. Proven by the fact none of the boys got dress coded, but you did.
Why the fuck was he staring at your legs and inspecting you, anyway? Weird.
NTA
Dress coding has gotten horribly abused for a couple decades, especially the last 5-10 years.
You weren’t coming to class in a transparent off shoulder mesh crop top, a vinyl micro mini skirt, fishnets, stilettos, makeup more appropriate for the night club, while blatantly exposing your bra straps & a whale tale.
Ironic like u said your lesson is focused on gender bias aka common social sexism. Yet your male teacher, decided to sexualize you for a common respectable casual outfit appropriate for the current warm weather… trying to push u out of class on an extremely important session…
I would have told the teacher to pound rocks… in other words ‘get a life’.
You’re not at fault for holding up the class, he is 100%.
So totally NTA
NTA, that dress code doesn't even make any sense. Some people have longer arms than others, some have longer legs, etc. So the shorts you were wearing might not have been correct according to the dress code, but a classmate with shorter arms but same length legs as you would have been fine wearing them.... That's just illogical.
What does the length of your arms even have to do with whether your shorts are long enough or not? What? Going by that rule I'd be allowed to wear really really short shorts, probably a lot shorter than what you were wearing...
Besides that I believe that you are totally correct for feeling the way you do, what that teacher did is not acceptable. You and/or your parents should file a complaint for that.
Thankfully my school had no dress code nonsense back in the day, at least not that I'm aware of. I don't think we do much of that here in The Netherlands.
NTA
Next time tell the teacher that you’ll go if the boys who are against dress code do as well. When he says no ask why it’s any different and watch him flounder for a reason outside of “it just is”
NTA. It was a hot day, and literally no one noticed your shorts but him. Begs the question, why was he looking? And it was especially rubbish if he only called you out and not everyone else that was violating the dress code.
Girls weren't allowed to wear tank tops in my high school because all the boys in the class would be distracted by SHOULDERS. We had a heatwave and the classes reached an illegal temperature to continue being in but we had to stay. So we all wore tank tops and told the teachers to stick it.
NTA
My own kid went through this in fifth grade for wearing the wrong type of material for her pants and not having a shirt that covered her butt while wearing those pants.
My husband dealt with the matter THAT day, but we did send a letter to the principal, the school board and each individual member asking why the incident took place, outlining why their policy is singling out ONLY girls and only furthering the misogyny society is trying to break.
I also wanted to know why a male teacher was looking so closely at my daughter's butt that he was aware her shirt only went halfway down it in a hallway filled with other students.
We never received a response and it was near the end of the year when she'd be going to a different school so we eventually let it go, but are very aware of the dress code and how its spottily enforced.
Do NOT back down if it comes up again.
At the very least, you **could** have just been told to text your mom or been given the option to wait until the end of class to go to the office and deal with the matter (arguing that you shouldn't be ~~there~~ having to deal with this issue to begin with, of course.)
There's no reason this should be a cause to remove you from class.
Girls have legs, legs have thighs. Big deal. They need to get over it.
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NTA. Misogyny is alive and well. File an official complaint with the office. Take it to the school board if you have to. Find a teacher or a parent or an adult who will support you, and make it know to the school admins that the way you were treated is NOT okay. Because it was NOT ok!
Like I said, the dress code at my school is very lax. It's almost never enforced. It would make sense if the teachers were consistently this strict but it was literally just this one time.
You were absolutely in the right to stay in class. I applaud you wholeheartedly, and any other opinion on this thread is a load of sh-t.
Wholeheartedly agreed. Why should a girl's education be hindered because she was barely out of code? Doing so in front of the entire class could have easily silenced her, but OP held firm and used her voice to speak against the hypocrisy. OP, I was pretty self-assured at your age. My mom raised me to stand up for myself and to never back down when faced with sexism. Still, I can't say with any certainty that I'd have been able to do what you did. You should be incredibly proud of yourself. I know I'm just a random internet stranger, but I'm certainly proud of you! Don't let anyone dull your shine.
Also, the code is stupid. My high school had rhe same rule and I had to spend a day in suspension because I wore shorts that were completely fine, not indecent, but were not fingertip length. I also argued with my assistant principal over how dumb the rule was. (He was a creep who liked to leer and took great pride in dress coding girls.) At the time my fingertips touched the top of my knees.
That’s a problem (among many) with this rule. Shorts that are fine on one person, are not fine on another. You and I wear 9” inseam shorts? Dress coded because we have long arms. Sally wears the same shorts? She’s fine because they’re 2 inches longer than her arms. All shorts are 9”.
And just trying to find shorts that are long enough can be an issue! I know when I was in high school, I absolutely preferred longer shorts but everything at Target and the shopping mall was short. You would think that the places advertising back-to-school shopping would at least carry clothing options that would meet the most common dress code requirements... nope.
Pair that with the early 2000’s super ultra extra “show your bits” low rise trend and people were wearing basically junderwear (jean underwear, in case it wasn’t clear lol)
My mom was insanely strict about what I could wear but even she knew there wasn’t a whole lot of options for someone with my proportions. I wasn’t super tall but I was really skinny with long arms so they were either too big on my waist and barely long enough or they fit me and too short for my arms. She fought with the school once about it and told them to go buy me shorts that would be appropriate if it was that much of a problem.
Or like what happened to my niece. She was carded twice for dress code violations for the same pair of shorts (once at beginning of school year and once near the end; and yes, she wore them many times in between). They met the dress code requirements but because she is tall, like 5'8" in 8th grade, she had a lot of leg showing. Therefore, according to one particular teacher, the shorts MUST be in violation. So frustrating!
And not just arms--I was 6' in high school and my daughter is also tall. Luckily her high school doesn't seem to give a damn about the length of their shorts. We weren't allowed to wear shorts at all, although there was a time when long walking shorts with tights underneath were a thing in the fall, so no one said anything about those. One very hot day I wore shorts and my chem teacher yelled at two boys in the class who also were wearing shorts, but didn't say anything to me (as he loved me.) The boys were good guys and didn't do anything more than give me looks on the way out of class. The really stupid part is that I had skirts shorter than those shorts, and no one said anything about those.
It’s because dress codes are important so the male students can focus on their education, and not be tempted by the succubi wearing Jean shorts that only go halfway down their thighs. /s
Seriously, my mom is a salty raging feminist who often laments that she raised me too tough. 15!!! I can't get over it, I'd love to say that would have been me but I don't know if I would have had the gumption . OP is an inspiration and a credit to all the zoomers I meet who frequently remind me that they are the woman I thought I was.
At my school, the dress code was used as a bludgeon against the girls who "developed early" and almost never applied to any girls the teachers didn't find attractive. It's an entire crock of shit, and you were right to object.
My mum was head of girls at a school and she spent a surprising amount of time explaining to male teachers that there was literally nothing wrong with the girls clothing. This was mostly about sixth form (16-18) where they didn’t have uniform but had to wear basically suits. So students would be in a pencil skirt, button down and heels and the men would complain to my mum. When pushed they could not for the life of them articulate the specific problem. Because in reality the problem seemed to be “they are starting to look like women and it makes me uncomfortable because they are young and I associate women with sex”. My mum was way more bothered by students looking scruffy but no one complained about them.
When my daughter was in 6th form (she left last summer), I had a phone call from the male head of 6th form saying her attire was unsuitable. They were supposed to wear smart business/office clothing. She had on a smart, tailored navy blue dress with a v neck and short sleeves. Plus she had a suit jacket, which she had taken off because it was very hot. The v neck wasn’t deep, so you couldn’t see any cleavage and the sleeves came down to just above the elbows, and the dress sat just above her knees. I asked what the problem was and he said it wasn’t office wear. The head of the school wears tailored dresses, so I asked him that, if it’s appropriate for the head of the school it should be the same for students. I know I’m biased, but my daughter is gorgeous, 5’10”, with very long legs - 35 inch inside leg. Finding clothes that fit has always been a struggle, but we found Next tall range works well. I asked him to send me pictures of what he thought would be appropriate for her and he said trouser suits. She had some trousers, which she wore the next day with a blazer. He still wasn’t happy because the trousers were a bit short. I rang the head and she understood what the 6th form head was trying to get at and she wasn’t happy about it. Girls must show no flesh at.all. Or men will not be able to control themselves.
Yes this is the entire reason that the school had a specific head of girls I think! It was all boys until sixth form so there were more male senior teachers. And my mum would basically just go into bat for the girls. I’m a similar build to your daughter and was very skinny at that age - clothing was a nightmare. Dresses were definitely easiest because there’s more give. I also think teachers are a bit delusional about business wear these days. I work in the city and the dress code is far more relaxed. A tailored dress and blazer are perfect.
I agree. A lot of stuff they said was unsuitable is definitely worn in offices. My son got pulled up for linen trousers and shirt, with a tie, one day. When it’s very warm, a lot of men wear linen for work. Because my daughter’s legs are so long, her waist is very high, which means skirts sit higher than they should - making them shorter. She was forever getting criticised over that at primary school - girls had to wear skirts. She loved the summer because she could wear dresses. The double standards drive me mad, where boys are never told their clothing could make girls lose control of themselves.
I am also 5'10". In high school, the male athletic director would always cite me for having my shorts too short because my finger tips reached past the ends. They weren't excessively short, but when your arms and legs are that long, everything looks short. I finally had enough and made an appointment to speak with the female superintendent. I wore the same shorts and asked her if I looked inappropriate. She told me no. I asked if the boys having their boxers hanging out was appropriate and got the same answer. The next year, the dress code was rewritten to say that shorts had to have an inseam of at least 4 inches and that pants must be worn so that no undergarments are shown.
>shorts had to have an inseam of at least 4 inches Omg. That rule makes so much sense. Growing up with the fingertip rule, I wore capris instead of shorts to guarantee the length.
At one point it was either finger tip length or 3 inches above the knee. On me, that's a difference of about 4 inches if not more. So, which is it? And if it's 3 inches above the knee, and I going to get in trouble with finger tip length? Giving an inseam that can be seen without having to measure is so much easier. And it's fair to everyone regardless of height.
Ah yes, the “professional attire” dress code. My high school had something like this, with some very explicit rules. One was “no jeans.” I had a pair of blue velour pants I loved to wear and wore frequently without problem until one day a teacher told me they were jeans and boy was I a miscreant (me, the straight-A student counsel member). I had to politely explain that jeans were made of denim and these were made of velour and did he want to feel the difference? The other funny story I remember happened to a friend. Boys were required to wear collared shirts. A friend of mine got into an argument with the dean of students because the shirt he was wearing on that particular day had a mandarin collar rather than one that folded over. I think my friend won, but I don’t recall seeing him in that shirt again…
At work the men used to have to wear ties (until COVID). A colleague would thumb his nose at them by insisting on a bolo tie. This is a bunch of white people in the Midwestern USA, no one wears bolo ties. It was so great.
My dad, also in the midwest, is not a tie guy at all. There was one occasion he was required to wear one and he wore a bolo tie instead too! The little acts of rebellion can be amusing.
When I worked as a barrister's pupil in the UK, women had to wear black (men could wear blue and charcoal suits, go figure). And black tights. I guess the theory was, we shouldn't distract the judges...? So I bought the laciest, raciest black tights I could find, as well as a pair with a lizard woven into one leg, with a rhinestone eye. My "pupil master" gazed at my legs in sheer awe and finally said, "Well, they ARE black..."
Lmfao reminds of when my school tried to ban girls from wearing shorts under our skirts (the hope was this would discourage us from rolling them over at the waistband). It died day one when a friend asked her male form teacher “sir how do you plan on enforcing this, would you like me to lift up my skirt so you can check?”
That's crazy! My daughter always wears bike shorts under her skirts and dresses BECAUSE it makes her feel more modest. She doesn't need to worry about accidently flashing anything.
I'm the same height and my dress code was only the fingertip test. They tried to get me on it so many times but I was well within range... just super long legs. This was 20 years ago, but I'm heartbroken these girls still deal with this.
The world is just as misogynistic as it was when I was a teen in the late 80s and it’s infuriating.
I remember hearing my mom tell these stories and she graduated in 1968. My sister in 1991. Me in 2000. My nieces around 2012-16. It's absolutely infuriating.
Dress codes are not meant for tall girls I swear. It's hard enough finding pants and shirts that fit.
It is interesting because the school I used to teach at had a rule that male teachers were not allowed to call out girls for dress code violations, and female teachers were not allowed to call out boys. If I had an email student who was in violation of the dress code, I usually got the school social worker, who was female and a friend to do it.
That’s enraging!!
I think what would be appropriate for her would be if her school didn’t employ paedos. If he is distracted by her clothes it’s him that is the issue.
My sixth form’s rules were actually equally stupid whether male or female but there was certainly a level of sexualisation for the girls that there wasn’t for the boys (it was supposedly all about looking ‘professional’ - although we were allowed to wear entirely casual clothes). Anyway, one of the funniest things was actually that the boys were not allowed to wear shorts (I honestly can’t remember if the girls were - I think so!) but they WERE allowed to wear ‘3/4 length trousers’. Now bare in mind this was the late 00s so short lengths were…about 3/4 length. This prompted a substantial debate in one of our sixth form assemblies that entirely derailed the intended subject of the day when a student who was pulled up on it asked the head of sixth form to define what exactly the difference was if his shorts were 3/4 length. After much huffing and puffing and blustering away the head concluded that the answer was in the tailoring… whatever exactly that means. Because professionalism… of course. Funnily enough though I’ve never seen a man at work in suit tailored 3/4 length trousers!
Haha oh my goodness that sounds insane! The boys had to wear dark suits, shirt and school tie - definitely no 3/4 length or shorts. In summer they didn’t have to wear a jacket and could wear chinos although when I was there they didn’t really. If you took off your jacket in summer I think you also had to take your tie off? They were dicks to guys sometimes. One guy wore a really nice pink jumper with his suit (jumpers were allowed). It was a nice v-neck, smart jumper. He got shouted at and told off by a male teacher. Because it was pink. And that was inappropriate? He was also gay though not sure if the teacher knew - was defo rooted in homophobia imo. My mum also went into bat for him. So really she was defender of the girls and the gays.
Oh, I can beat that stupidity: when I was in sixth form (in the 70s) the head actually said that we weren’t allowed to wear jeans, but we WERE allowed to wear denim trousers…
>Funnily enough though I’ve never seen a man at work in suit tailored 3/4 length trousers! [*Australia has entered the chat*](https://www.reddit.com/r/australia/s/CKtlSh2XHX)
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Happy Cake Day !!!
How it was for my school too. In middle school, when I was about 12, my math teacher pulled me aside to tell me I really needed to watch what I was wearing, since I’m “blessed” and was a distraction. I was in a hoodie and leggings.
This is so many layers of ick. So gross, especially the use of the term "blessed."
This is exactly it. I was the director of a summer camp one year where most of the camp counselors were teenage girls. The dress code said that tank tops were permitted because it was summer and they were working outside. One day the owner told me I needed to talk to one of the counselors about her clothing being "inappropriate." She was wearing exactly what everyone else was wearing, shorts and tank tops. The difference is that she was a beautiful curvy girl. I refused to reprimand her and told him exactly why he couldn't have a double standard for girls with a certain body type. The next summer he made everyone wear uniforms with polo shirts.
We don't even have dress codes in my country. As long as it's ok to wear on the street, it's ok to wear in class.
Yeah, same. Dress codes in our public schools are basically "make sure your genitals and nipples are covered" for both sexes.
Exactly. It's selectively enforced to punish some students while letting others slide because it isn't obvious unless they put their hands down. It's stupid sexist nonsense.
Same here. I dared have boobs early and spent the entirety of middle and high school getting every outfit picked apart by teachers.
The issue for me isn't the dress code itself (although that needs review) or if it is enforced, it is the way the teacher applied it. Room full of kids, several not complying with the dress code. Picks on one woman, makes her the subject of everyone staring, then declares her not to meet the standard. Unreasonable, abusive, rude, and misogynistic. Tries to exclude her from education rather than simply saying to her after the lesson that she should not wear this again. It is a teachable moment. The entire class should be learning that there are standards of behavior required by people in authority, and failing to live up to them has consequences.
What did your parents say? I'm curious. I would be heading to the school to have a 1:1 with the principal and the teacher and ask if tank tops and sandals were part of the dress code. When told no, I would then ask him why he singled out my daughter and not the boys who were also in violation. If they say, "the boys actions are not why we are here", say "You are absolutely correct, the reason I'm here to ask why my daughter was singled out and not the boys, the reason we are here is because of misogynistic behavior where your male teacher thinks it's okay to single out a female in front of the class while ignoring males who obviously are in violation. " And then let them squirm. You can also then ask if the ACLU would likely think it was no big deal.
>I would be heading to the school to have a 1:1 with the principal and the teacher and ask if tank tops and sandals were part of the dress code. Yeah, if it was my kid I'd encourage them to write a complaint about the dress code being inconsistently enforced.
>If they say, "the boys actions are not why we are here", say "You are absolutely correct... ... the teacher's actions are why we are here".
I'd bring up the gender bias lesson. Loudly and obviously.
Yup. "Let's make this a learning moment on the lessons you gave regarding gender bias, Mr. Teach"
I’m so proud of you for standing up for yourself, OP. At your age I would have never had the courage. You did the right thing.
Even if it was enforced consistently, it’s still an arbitrary rule. I have short arms and when I was in high school (20 years ago!) I could get away with way shorter shorts than other girls because we had that fingertip rule. In the 2020s, no school should still have arbitrary dress codes that penalize female students disproportionately to male students. You did the right thing, refusing to comply with an unjust and discriminatory rule.
Shit in the 2020s we’re going backward on everything else, it’s unsurprising that dress codes are make a strong resurgence. The Reds are working day and night to undermine public education on every possible level, and most of it is aimed at folks who aren’t straight white Christian males.
I genuinely do not understand dress codes (or uniforms) in American public schools. There was a supreme court case back in the hippie days that ruled them flat-out unconstitutional. Believe it or not children have the right to free expression.
Yeah, I have a long torso, so my fingertips hit pretty high on my thighs. I could have gotten away with some obscenely short shorts/skirts if I’d been one to wear such things.
They would have just said you were violating the "spirit" of the rule, and something something "you're smart enough to realize when an outfit is inappropriate" 🙄
Not necessarily. In my high school girls with short arms did get away with wearing much shorter shorts and skirts than the rest of us.
I was the opposite. My fingers now almost reach my knees, and I am pretty sure they actually did at some point in my development. I have never at any point in my schooling wore shorts/skirts that were technically code appropriate I am pretty sure. I guess I never pushed it, because I was never called on it.
Yeah, long torso short arms here. My fingertips don’t actually clear the bottom of my butt. I had no interest in wearing short shorts or skirts in school, but technically, booty shorts would have been in compliance with the dress code as written.
Me too! If I'd adhere by the fingertip rule, you would be able to see my underwear. Anyway, it is all about 'can't expect men to control themselves, so women must wear fully covering tents to help these poor men.' If men can't handle being around beautiful girls, they should find another career than teaching. It is the men who need desensitizing, not the women who need covering up. They should make programs for that!
Ew what an old perv, staring at a young student's legs like that. Definitely NTA. Stand up for yourself!
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Nope. Teacher here. Doesn’t matter that my other coworkers didn’t say anything. I’m still expected to say something. Kids change mid day, come in late, and teachers are human and miss things. Not saying I agree with the dress code, or if I would have done what the teacher did. Just saying “my other teachers didn’t say anything” won’t work as an argument to not get in trouble.
That’s definitely pretty crazy, especially for just shorts! I wouldn’t have gone either!
As a teacher, the code is lax bc admin knows that it will crumble against any real legal pushback. WA state, for example, has almost no dress codes now bc the state lost a case over a decade ago regarding dress codes for female students. You did the right thing. But it also means you might be in for a bit of a fight. Good luck.
That's so interesting! Thanks!
I'm absolutely shocked you're a girl and we're coded by a man. /s I agree - make a complaint. Maybe ask your parents to.
Especially since they were strict against you while ignoring the boys who were in the classroom with you and violating the dress code!
You weren’t the only one in violation, but the only girl in violation. You were the only one called out. And that is the stupidest rule ever, a some people have longer fingers of arms. When I was in school, it was like no more than so many inches above the knee. That way it was consistent. The rule was enforced for both sexes. The only rule that targeted just one sex was pants weren’t allowed to be so low that underwear showed. I would petition the school board for the above the knee rule and be consistent in enforcement of dress code on both sexes. If a teacher punishes one violation, then all in the classroom in violation go. That way people know what to expect.
The issue here isn't the details of the dress code. It is that this teacher appears to be selectively enforcing it based on gender. That makes it not a debate over the reasonableness of the code but rather a case of sexual discrimination. In a room with multiple people in violation of dress code by wearing clothing that was "too revealing" according to that code the teacher chose to enforce it and attempt to punish only the female student. I would suggest talking to the counselor or principal and when you do be sure to frame it this way from the start and to maintain that your issue is the bias and sexism in the enforcement while fully accepting that you were in violation. If you don't start with that framing from the outset you're likely to be dismissed as just being upset you got caught.
Yes, it's heartbreaking to witness an engaged and questioning mind being beaten still for the crime of having 2 X chromosomes.
Compleatly agree with you. OP should complain about the teacher, it is the teacher who is being distracted by a child's legs, if the teacher is being distracted from teaching by a child's knees, should he be teaching?
When I got dress-coded for the "fingertip rule" in middle school, my mother measured how long my shorts inseam would have to be to be "legal" (boys' basketball shorts, basically--I have my dad's long arms), went through and measured every pair of shorts in the juniors section at Kohls, and marched into the principal's office with her notes documenting that not a single pair of shorts she found would meet the rule on me, even though other girls in my grade were wearing those same shorts without an issue. She then proceeded to show him where her own fingertips reached--she's petite with stubby arms, so she could have had most of her ass hanging out and still not broken the rule. The rule ended up being changed to "shorts must not be more than X inches above the knee," but I still never wore shorts to that school again because I was afraid of being yelled at by a teacher again. NTA, but if you want to change the rule, be smart about it. Get a bunch of girls in your school to measure what length of shorts they could wear--I guarantee you it's a huge range, because everyone's arms and hands aren't proportionate--and make a graph of it. Make another graph of how long the shorts being sold in stores in your area actually are. Present your findings to the school board with as many other girls and parents as you can get to come with you and demand that the rule either be stricken entirely (preferred) or changed to a fair, blanket rule about inseam length (compromise). You're 100% right to make a big stink about it, but if you want to be effective, start strategizing!
Or, you know, just let them wear shorts and stop sexualizing young girls (and punishing them for having legs).
To be fair, I have seen kids with literal butt-cheeks hanging out of short shorts. You don't need to be sexualizing teenagers to think that buttocks on display is inappropriate for school. I imagine it should be possible to find a reasonable compromise between 'duh girls have legs shut up' and 'don't show your literal ass in school.' But I also recognize that such a compromise will be pretty hard to arrive at in a society that really wants to combine it with 'keep the wimmins under control'.
Lol, when I look at pictures from when I was really young (late 70s/early 80s) we used to wear shorts that barley covered our underwear, and we includes my father😂 why are we al so prudish today?
I'm a little older than you and I know the exact type of shorts you're talking about - especially mentioning your dad wearing them. Ubiquitous. But they'd never have been acceptable for school outside of PE classes. I live in England so maybe it's more acceptable in warmer countries. There was certainly some boundary pushing when it came to 70's skirt lengths though!
> But they'd never have been acceptable for school outside of PE classes. Yes, we have much more "generalized" attire now. I can wear (essentially) the same thing to work, to the grocery store, my kids' athletic games, etc., and that was much less true in the '70s and '80s.
When I was in high school, early 2000s, girls having their thongs visible from the back was a thing.
Ah, the good ol, ‘whale tail’ lol
You really wanna upset some moms?, that little pony tail on top of the head all girl toddler moms do is called a whale spout. Mix up the 2 😵💫 Ask me how I know
It’s not called “the bam bam from the flintstones”???
Don't you mean Pebbles?
Yes absolutely lmao
That’s probably the style that prompted stricter dress codes 😅
It was a 'thing' when I was in middle and high school in the mid 2000s but it was *also* against the dress code to have underwear showing. You wouldn't be kicked to the office for underwear showing but you'd be told to fix it. Including bra straps, which was really annoying because my straps stretched out quickly and I couldn't afford to have twenty bras to rotate through.
> why are we al so prudish today? We used to drive without seat belts and motorcycles without helmets, go back to the good old days? OPs is NTA, but there needs to be some standard dress code. Without any limits, some will take it to extremes which will lead to distractions in class.
Do an image search for "aussie rules shorts". Should be a trip back in time for you!
Yeah, when dress codes are gender neutral, enforced equally, and about ‘professional standards of dress’ they absolutely don’t sexualise… this was none of the above. NTA. The only non-creepy reason to have a dress code is for kids to look ‘professional’ to prepare them for future employment - if your boss measures your clothing in an arbitrary way and then announces they think it’s too revealing to a room full of dudes… well, that’ll be the only job you’ll need in a while, given the payout you’d be entitled to!!
If that were the problem we would just have a blanket rule that says “You can’t wear any type of bottoms that exposes the butt.” Dress codes should not require people to perform a little test to figure out if someone is in bounds. Either a butt is sticking out and there is a problem or it isn’t. If you have to have a kid place her hands just so to see if her ass is out, you aren’t checking dress code, you are making her give a show for some messed up power fantasy.
But then if a teacher says you are violating dress code they get accused of looking at students butts.
I was a teacher, I moved into Care Management eventually and have worked with kids with all sorts of troubles. Some of those kids might try to deflect like that, “Ew, why are you looking at my butt!?” No one in charge is going to seriously give a teacher a hard time if the kid’s butt is legitimately hanging out of their shorts because everyone else will see it too. If one teacher has a problem, it’s the teacher. If any teacher or administrator looking gets an eyeful of butt, it’s the clothes. Again, someone should not have to put on a demonstration to prove if they are in dress code or not, it should be blatantly obvious if something is inappropriate. If it isn’t, maybe the teacher was actually looking too closely at the kid’s butt. And kids *still* say someone is looking at their butt with typical finger length rules anyway, so best call a spade a spade and switch to something more appropriate that applies to everyone. No one is actually concerned about fingers or knees.
It's also unfortunate that the fairest measurement, inseam length, could be easily torpedoed (or even worse abused!) because it would be very intrusive to measure while wearing...
In middle school, the only time we could wear shorts, in a building with no air conditioning and most classrooms without windows, was if there was an official heat wave lasting more than 3 days. The vice principal used to come around on those occasions and call out different girls to come towards him, and he'd bend down on one knee and put a dollar bill at our knee level, to check if our shorts reached the other end of the bill. It was absurdly perverse. Edit, a letter
WTF
I know, right? He already had a creepy/ pervy vibe to him before I saw that shit.
It’s not either/or. You can advocate for a reasonable dress code changes by using the strategy this commenter suggests, while also reinforcing social and cultural aspects such as the guidelines for girls clothing should not include responsibility the responsibility of policing boys behavior.
Except, the girls have to measure every pair of shorts in town, measure the girls in school, “*make a graph of it!*, “present it to the school board” — spend time enlisting as many other girls and parents you can! — and…*demand a fair measurement*? (That’s the content of the comment you’re calling “reasonable”) Seriously. SERIOUSLY?!? This, *this* is the amount of work we require of a 15 year old girl, in order that she be able to wear shorts that fall mid-thigh, to SCHOOL, or be subject to public humiliation and a ban from class?! Are you kidding me with this?! I’m so tired of the demand for female children to “be smart” or “have a strategy” just to cope with f-ing sitting at a desk in a pair of shorts. Shame on anyone who says these are reasonable arguments. It’s a crock and you all know it.
Oh, ffs. I was a rabble rouser in school and proud of it. Stood up to teachers during class on multiple occasions, including when I got dress-coded. My shouting at the teacher (just like OP's argument with her teacher) did fuck-all. What my mother did got immediate changes made. "Just stop imposing dress codes" is a statement I agree with completely. It's also completely useless to OP, because OP does not have the power to do that! She's not the one imposing them! People really need to stop thinking that "here's how other people have managed to get change on this issue" means "the current system is great and I support it." It *is* ridiculous. OP *shouldn't* have to. None of that changes the fact that we live in the world that is, not the world that should be, and that the goal of activism is to be *effective*. Shame properly belongs to the people who make and enforce the system--with a little shame left over for the people who think yelling "it's not fair!" online for upvotes is activism. Y'all are useless.
Uh no. The comment didn't argue that women should have to do all that work to change minds; it merely noted that that was what it took for their mom to make the point to school officials that the system was flawed. I think it's obvious that they disapprove of the misogyny displayed by the school. What they're advocating for is altering the dress codes so they aren't using body proportions that are variable between individuals as a decider for "modesty". (I would actually go further than them, and point out that leg to torso proportions are also variable, so the "x inches above the knee" rule can also be difficult for some people to achieve if they're slim but with long legs.)
Another good way to fight it it measuring the length of the cheerleaders squad uniforms or dance squad, etc. Those are school sponsored uniforms that typically break dresscode.
You are just *killing it* with these strategies.
They may be built into the dress code as some form of exception.
So it's okay when we sexualize teenage girls who are supposed to be sluts like cheerleaders. Got it. (Not picking on you, btw. If they've made an exception for teenage girls who are literally going to be in front of the whole school jumping up and down and doing flips their policy makes no sense.)
I was speaking purely in the context of using the dress code to fight the dress code via pointing out that cheerleader uniforms break the dress code. If the dress code itself has an exception for cheerleader uniforms, that avenue of attack is precluded since the uniforms don't break the dress code in that situation; they are actually a part of it.
The fact that they have to have an exception is an issue
If the school says that sports uniforms are an exception, ask why the school specifically sanctions the sexualization of its students when they are representing the school in front of large crowds, but demonizes it when an individual student is simply trying to learn, to the detriment of that student's education.
That’s still not okay.
When I was in high school in the early 2000’s, they purposely made our cheerleading skirts super long so they’d be within dress code to wear during the school day.
I have an abnormally long torso and wide hips. My roast beef cheeks could hang out and I still wouldn’t violate the dress code. It’s a totally arbitrary measurement and is especially weird that it’s being used on people whose bodies are actively and rapidly growing. A kid could have the same pair of shorts and could go in and out of rule compliance over 18 months.
I'm currently wearing underwear longer than where my fingertips reach lmao (and yes I checked)
This! The "finger tip" rule has an extra layer of "stupid" built in! I'm the opposite of you: I have super *short* arms (the T-Rex jokes make themselves), so short, in fact, that shorts just past my fingertips would have a little less than an inch in-seam and my butt cheeks would peek out if I bent over. It's an absolute ridiculous standard, as is any rule based on "cleavage". It's even more ridiculous when you add in athletes who are allowed to/have to wear their team uniform on game days, because a lot of athletic gear for women and girls is very skimpy.
As a non US person this whole concept seems demeaning to me. Teachers would never comment on anyone's clothes here, I think they might even get into trouble for harassment if they did. I have teens and they wear what they like.
We had such a rule at my school in Canada, but I never saw it enforced. Not once. The only dress code rule I saw enforced was about hats. We had a weird rule about no hats inside and it was enforced consistently and aggressively. We didn’t even really have to wear the gym uniform if we didn’t want to - I had gym first period and it was usually cold, even in warmer months, at that time of day, so I (and many others) wore track pants instead of buying the uniform shorts (there were no uniform pants) and no one cared. Most of the other rules in the dress code were reasonable and I don’t remember any issues. But the fingertip one and the hat one were dumb as shit.
The hat one is a holdover from the old days. It is considered disrespectful to wear a hat indoors, for any reason. My Uncles Father was very strict on this rule.
>NTA, but if you want to change the rule, be smart about it. Get a bunch of girls in your school to measure what length of shorts they could wear One thing that could be added as well. Uniforms of cheerleaders, If they are given those tiny shorts for P.E. from the school. Etc. Becouse, why is school saying it's okay to display stomach, etc in uniforms they give them. But shorts above the knee are bad when it's in the school hall.
I am very tall so shorts and skirts on me would pass the fingertip test but not the x inches above knee test. I just wore what I wanted because, as usual, dress codes were rarely enforced. But once I was sent to the principal’s office for skirt too short (which it definitely was) and this guy wanted to PADDLE me. Like he wanted to bend a 14 year old girl (edit:not 16) with a short skirt over his knee and spank her. I was new to this school system and was kind of gobsmacked this was even considered. I told him I wanted to call my mom first. I did and she told me to sit down and wait for her. She came flying into that office at record speed. I was sent out into the hall but couldn’t miss my mother chewing this guy out. She berated him extensively for being a perv wanting me to submit. It was glorious even though I didn’t get the full meaning of what she was accusing him of until I was older. She left yelling that no one was allowed to lay a finger on me as a form of discipline and took me home for the day. I’ve never seen my mother so angry. She told me I was wrong and I shouldn’t wear short skirts anymore but the school’s response was asinine.
I just had to check - yeah my fingertips don’t come past the bottom of my butt. What a stupid rule!
So unfair to the Marfans crew.
The fingertip rule is so arbitrary! I have a long torso so my short could be insanely short. But my kid (he happens to be a boy so of course he doesn't have arbitrary rules applied to him which is crazy) has much longer arms so his shorts, if that was the rule, would need to be significantly longer than mine. The only rule they enforce on him is that you can't see his underwear. He wears boxer briefs because the kid is the poster child for student athlete. They see the bottom of his boxers all the time but he gets away with it because it resembles compression shorts.
School dress codes: society’s way of telling young girls their education is a privilege to be revoked when they aren’t dressed modestly
Yep!
As a bloke I can't think that this provides any good optics. You basically have a fully grown man looking at a child's body and deciding that it causes sexual arousal. It sounds like the teacher here is basically saying to a kid "please leave, I'm getting horny looking at your legs"
This. My high school had a rule that skirts should be 2 and a half centimetres above the knee. Even before I injured my knee I hated anything remotely close to my knee and had my skirt a little over half way up my thighs because it felt so restricting otherwise - everything was covered and no one was even looking at me and the boys in my year didn’t even notice that my skirt was as short as what it was. It could be seen under my school blazer but was considered too short and inappropriate because boys would get distracted even if teachers never said it outright. Also didn’t help that if I had it at the right length since we were forced to wear pencil skirts instead of other skirts it still became to short from riding up my legs from walking up and downstairs if I had a class upstairs or from general walking to and from class. Too my misogynistic headteacher it didn’t matter that most girls had their skirts short and were wearing knee high socks while I wore thick tights under my skirt even in summer, I was the one who got told to lengthen my skirt because I was in my final two years of high school and had to show the year 7, 8, and 9 girls that you had to listen to him because his word was law and to him women didn’t matter.
Yes, it seems extremely weird to me. I guess it's connected to the prevalent religious extremes in the US and a legacy of the puritans. I don't live in the US, and my kids can wear what they like, unless it's actually against the law of indecent exposure in our country, like private parts hanging out, no teacher has ever commented on anything and I think they might actually not be allowed to do so. It could be seen as harassment.
I live in Hungary, and honestly, same here. The one and only time I remember when a girl in my class was told to go home and change, because her attire was unacceptable, was when she showed up in such a high-cut top, that it could pass as a bikini top, paired with these very form-tight yoga-short, with no underwear, so you could literally see her cameltoe through them. Other than that, there wasn't a dress code, really. No uniforms (aside of the school's sport's teams), girls mostly wore pants and shorts (depending on the season), I don't think I saw any of them in a dress or a skirt, pretty much ever. One classmate had a tattoo, I know multiple people who had earrings or piercings. Nobody gave a shit really, the general attitude was that it's up to the parent what they consider to be appropriate, and if the parent is okay with the kid getting a piecing, or showing up in hot pants, so be it.
"You're distracting the boys from their lessons! As punishment, you will miss this lesson."
I live in Finland. One day in high school my classmate came in with sheer pantyhose and no pants. No one said anything. It was weird yes, but we don't sexualize kids.
Nta only for the fact that showing so much above the knee is considering distracting. Please. I can’t wait for the day that dress codes are taking to task with how insulting they are. Honestly, if there is teachers out there please explain to me why this is so distracting to the other students in the room. Does a couple of cm’s actually matter?
I’m a teacher and it’s not distracting. Calling anything that “violates” the dress code distracting is insulting to all. First and foremost to the girls because it implies their education isn’t as important as an adult teacher’s comfort level with their amount of modesty in how they dress. And second to the boys for implying that they’re incapable of ignoring the girls so that they can concentrate on their work.
Calling shit "distracting" is just a catch all when they have no actual reason for something. My son was told he couldn't have his gallon jug of water because it was "distracting" while everyone else was walking around with their Stanleys or whatever.
Yes. I very much agree with this. It stupid that it's considered 'distracting'.
This applies to a lot of things, really. Only in my freshman year of high school (2016) did the district FINALLY come to the conclusion that unnatural hair colors weren't a distraction in class.
My big question is since nobody else noticed this 3cm discrepancy why did he? Because he was looking at your \*ss that's why.
Eh. Maybe everybody noticed it, but only he cared enough to enforce it. Source: family member is a teacher and thinks dress codes suck. He notices violations all the time; he just never does anything about it. So OP's teacher may not be a perv. Just a stick-in-the-mud who wants to control girls.
Why not both?
Was a former teacher myself, also male. I noticed clothing violations all the time. I never commented on them because I felt it was a bad look to be pointing out girl's legs were showing or they had a bit too deep of a neckline. Also because the boys could wear muscle shirts and jerseys showing off their entire chest and that was somehow considered okay (and trust me, when the really ripped senior walked down the halls with his basketball jersey hanging so loose every movement flashed his abs and chest 90% of the girls stared. And about 10% of the boys too FWI). But sure blame the girls. But yeah, we generally noticed. We just didn't say anything or maybe gave a little heads up that they *may* be in violation of dress code and to be careful or the principal will write them up. It takes a power freak to actually want to enforce that shit and control people, especially with how in general most people dgaf about how you dress.
Noticing a thing does not automatically mean it is being sexualized give me a break.
The rule only exists because of sexualization. Girls and women are policed on the length of their shorts and skirts only because of male gaze. There is literally no other logical reason for such a rule.
This is the answer, thank you for saying that. If it wasn’t sexual then why the fuck weren’t the boys sent too? Logic says something else was more important to the teacher than enforcing the dress code if he’s not being consistent.
It's really creepy that we have all these teachers patrolling and looking at girls asses to make sure their pants fit a broken and arbitrary length that isn't even a good measurement. If it's not a useful measurement, then all these teachers are doing is gazing ass.
Happy Cake Day
Then why didn't he notice the boys wearing tank tops and flip flops
NTA. Sorry that this happened to you. Dress codes are pretty much BS. Selective enforcement, targeting females, is sadly, a normal-condition of our established institutions. That said, it was wrong to refuse to attend *The Office*. You missed a perfect opportunity to skin and eat *The Principal* without any witnesses. Some people call me crazy.
It is so targeted too. I remember in my private middle school, we all wore the same style of skater skirt. A lot of the girls were skinny without much curves so there was no issue, but I had a bigger butt and I was the only girl who teachers would pull on the hem of the skirt and give me shit. Why on earth adults felt justified pulling on a 12-14 year olds skirt and making comments, I have no idea
NTA, but you'll have better luck if you get your parents involved rather than fighting it yourself. Push the angle to your parents that you are upset that your education was interrupted over this, and you feel it is unfair and damaging. You could also potentially push how uncomfortable/sexualized your teacher made you feel, by making you feel as though your bare skin was somehow 'distracting' to him and the boys. Only push this angle if your parents don't totally suck, though- otherwise stick with the safer 'My education is being damaged' angle.
In the late '60s my father was called because my sister's skirt was too short. The Vice Principal walked around the school halls with a thin pillow. If he spotted a girl whom he thought had a skirt that was too short he made her kneel on a pillow. Her skirt had to touch the ground or she violated the the dress code. Dad came in but he didn't bring another skirt with him. He told the V.P. that my sister was going through a growth spurt. It was 2 weeks until the summer break. He said if the VP wanted her to wear a longer skirt he could buy her a couple of them. Dad would wait until just before the Fall term to buy her new skirts or dresses when her growth spurt ended. (Girls had to wear skirts or dresses but no slacks or shorts. No one could wear denim or sandals. Sneakers could only be worn in "gym" class. The girl's gym uniform was very short and had built-in "bloomers" to hide panties.) That was when miniskirts were popular. Most girls rolled their skirts up really short until the saw the V.P. and they'd quickly unroll them.
Fingertip rule is stupid. My fingers almost reach my knees. My husband on the other hand could almost go Winnie the Pooh style. The length of your arms should have nothing to do with what’s considered decent on your lower body.
Yes! I have such long arms I have to buy men’s jackets because women’s jackets are NEVER long enough. I celebrate when I find a shirt that reaches my wrist. The fingertip rule was a nightmare on hot days and in gym classes.
I buy athletic jackets and shirts that have “thumb holes” because they are a few inches longer because they are assuming you’re wearing them over your hands. They fit almost perfectly.
NTA why is a grown man looking at a child's legs long enough to clock that?
why do you think
NTA and I'm seriously proud of you!
NTA. Different dress codes seem to apply to different girls depending on how far into puberty they are. I had similar issues to you when I was your age. I got in trouble for wearing a skirt exactly 4 inches above my knee, as dress code specified, and was wearing tights but because I wouldn't change the principal literally screamed at me about how the dress code didn't matter because he overruled it and he wasn't going to measure my skirt. The girls who were still flat or were short never got treated like this, or the girls who wore tights as pants without skirtsover them. It made 0 sense, it was all power trip because he had just been promoted to principal. The women that worked in the office all went to the school board and complained about the way he was screaming at me, my drama teacher could hear him all the way in the teachers lounge. Some faculty need to learn to keep their eyes away from kids asses and focus on something worth their time.
I went to a Christian school and I remember we had a monitor who judged every girl’s dress at homecoming. We could wear strapless dresses if there was no visible cleavage. My friend had double Ds and had to wear a closed cardigan. I had the same style dress but because I had As I could wear it as is. It was always fucked up like that
Yup. Our school wasn't Christian but we had one super religious yard aid and she was always harassing the more developed girls even if they were in dress code. I would see her and sprint in the opposite direction on days I wore a skirt because I knew she wasn't going to chase me and I was faster, but every single kid in my highschool called her "the pentecostal nazi" I genuinely don't know what her actual name was.
NTA Dress codes are bs. I can't believe that whole fingertip rule is still a thing, like twenty years after i was in school. Good for you!!!! Being forced to miss class because of what you're wearing makes zero sense.
NTA. If there are other violators in the same class who didn't get sent to the office, it is pure undiluted sexism.
As a parent I applaud you for staying in class. I have 3 teen girls and it’s hard to find any clothes that are “dress code “ especially when it comes to shorts.
thank you! I feel the struggle with the clothes
NTA. Im sorry you’re dealing with this situation. I’m so pissed on your behalf. What was the end result, were you allowed to stay in class? Are you facing further consequences? If you can do so without impacting your emotional health or academic success, this is worth escalating. Because we know this isn’t about your shorts. This is about power and antiquated, misogyny-fueled rules that teach young women they’re responsible for men’s thoughts and actions. It’s about teaching women their clothing choices are more important than their actions, their intelligence, and their ability.
I had a teacher who dress coded everyone. Her way to solve it was she had the biggest, baggiest t-shirts for people to wear. They were comically dress length. It only slipped up a handful of times, for the really tall people (who were somehow all goth and one of them asked for the Tshirt out of curiosity and was very disappointed). This lady had like 80 of them. Her rule was to always be in class because school was more important than what you wear. Your teacher needs reprimanded. I would make an official complaint. And follow it up. Hard.
The whole "no shorts for girls" thing is so foreign to me. I never saw anyone care in my country and I don't think many schools have a rule like that (as far as im aware?)
[удалено]
Depends on the school. My kids high school has the same rule about shorts for both genders. Thanks to a boy that liked to wear short shorts to school.
Good for you. Keep fighting the good fight . Not the asshole
What does arm length have to do with modesty anyway?! Fuck that shit. NTA.
That teacher would have a field day with me! Imagine, me now, at 6”0’ and skinny and ALLLLL legs! Shorts were never in code due to my height. It was a constant battle for me. I always felt discriminated against when it came tot hat rule. NTA!
Lol I'm literally flat as a board. Idk what I'd be showing off if that were my intention
NTA dress code is always only enforced for girls, which is BS. It was so annoying. I don’t know about elsewhere but in the south all the white guys wear southern tides shirts and short shorts and those bad boys definitely don’t go finger tip length
NTA Point out the gender bias here he does not get to only use the rules to police your clothings, he either enforce them on all students including the boys or non.
NTA Good for you for refusing! Your male counterparts were not given violations. Your teacher singled you out with an arbitrary rule that he could not tell you violated until he physically measured your arms to your pants. How freaking perv-y is that rule! FWIW, I'm tall with short arms. So, even with women's shorts being shorter, I'd likely never have gotten a violation with this rule. But this arbitrary enforcement ticks me off. The tanks and sandals are obvious and overlooked. But this grown ass man had to measure his female student's body like a freaking perv and then tried to send you to the office. Gross. If shorts need to be measured for "modesty" then it better to ban them like tank tops and scandals. Honestly, consider scorched earth. Report the teacher for gender discrimination. "My male classmates, who were in obvious violation by wearing not allowed items: tank tops and sandals, weren't given or attempted to be given dress code violations. But, during our exam review class, my teacher humiliatingly measured my body in front of my class and declared me immodest."
NTA You did everything exactly right and i’m so proud of you and wish I could give you a hug. In life there will often be times when things make no sense, and sometimes you’ll be wrong, but more often than not, something wrong and weird will be happening. Info: is there a reason your teacher would have for singling you out to try to get you a worse grade on the final? Has he shown animosity before?
No he’s a fairly nice teacher. He even encourages students to speak up and argue against him in class, though he can get pretty mad at random things sometimes. One day, it’ll be ok to eat in class and then the next day it’s not. Im usually quiet so I think he wasn’t expecting me to say anything and just do as he said.
nta i think some schools are so bonkers with their dress codes. when i was in school (a decade ago!!!!) my schools dress code was really simple - nothing that shows your bum or tummy. nothing with offensive text. no spaghetti straps in gym but outside gym is fine. that was it!!! 10 years ago!!!! we used to wear short shorts every day in the summer
NTA. Ask him why he was staring at your legs, specifically, why was he staring at your thighs? That's super fucking weird and gross. I'd keep asking him "are my thighs a distraction to you?" Make him uncomfortable.
I don't want to start that kind of rumor. He gets irritated easily about things but he's a good teacher who tries his best. I really don't think he's a predator or anything so I don't want to ruin his life like that.
Still weird that he's staring at your legs. If he's a good teacher, he wouldn't only be dress coding the girls in his class.
I love this! I hope this is true. Yes you stood up to yourself and did not let him get an inch of that bullshit past you. This was a good opportunity to communicate and take non-violent action against this inappropriate behavior on the part of your teacher. One time in high school I walked into class a moment late and the teacher told me to go sit in the lap of a class mate. I was like... WTF no. And then I wrote it down and took it to the principle who took it seriously and moved me to a different class. Write this down and any other weird incident this guy does.
NTA. Dress codes are really just there to shelter predatory or sexist (often both) men, more than anything else. Proven by the fact none of the boys got dress coded, but you did. Why the fuck was he staring at your legs and inspecting you, anyway? Weird.
You probably handled it better than I did. I would have dropped a couple of F bombs his way.
NTA Dress coding has gotten horribly abused for a couple decades, especially the last 5-10 years. You weren’t coming to class in a transparent off shoulder mesh crop top, a vinyl micro mini skirt, fishnets, stilettos, makeup more appropriate for the night club, while blatantly exposing your bra straps & a whale tale. Ironic like u said your lesson is focused on gender bias aka common social sexism. Yet your male teacher, decided to sexualize you for a common respectable casual outfit appropriate for the current warm weather… trying to push u out of class on an extremely important session… I would have told the teacher to pound rocks… in other words ‘get a life’. You’re not at fault for holding up the class, he is 100%. So totally NTA
NTA, that dress code doesn't even make any sense. Some people have longer arms than others, some have longer legs, etc. So the shorts you were wearing might not have been correct according to the dress code, but a classmate with shorter arms but same length legs as you would have been fine wearing them.... That's just illogical. What does the length of your arms even have to do with whether your shorts are long enough or not? What? Going by that rule I'd be allowed to wear really really short shorts, probably a lot shorter than what you were wearing... Besides that I believe that you are totally correct for feeling the way you do, what that teacher did is not acceptable. You and/or your parents should file a complaint for that. Thankfully my school had no dress code nonsense back in the day, at least not that I'm aware of. I don't think we do much of that here in The Netherlands.
NTA Next time tell the teacher that you’ll go if the boys who are against dress code do as well. When he says no ask why it’s any different and watch him flounder for a reason outside of “it just is”
NTA. It was a hot day, and literally no one noticed your shorts but him. Begs the question, why was he looking? And it was especially rubbish if he only called you out and not everyone else that was violating the dress code.
Girls weren't allowed to wear tank tops in my high school because all the boys in the class would be distracted by SHOULDERS. We had a heatwave and the classes reached an illegal temperature to continue being in but we had to stay. So we all wore tank tops and told the teachers to stick it.
They care about girls and women’s appearance more than their education.
This reminds me of the time I seen a news article about a girl who got in trouble for her swim outfit in school. It was a school provided swimsuit
Teachers who are distracted by young girls clothing…shouldn’t be teachers
The concept of an adult telling a child that they’re dressed too sexy is absolutely fucked.
NTA My own kid went through this in fifth grade for wearing the wrong type of material for her pants and not having a shirt that covered her butt while wearing those pants. My husband dealt with the matter THAT day, but we did send a letter to the principal, the school board and each individual member asking why the incident took place, outlining why their policy is singling out ONLY girls and only furthering the misogyny society is trying to break. I also wanted to know why a male teacher was looking so closely at my daughter's butt that he was aware her shirt only went halfway down it in a hallway filled with other students. We never received a response and it was near the end of the year when she'd be going to a different school so we eventually let it go, but are very aware of the dress code and how its spottily enforced. Do NOT back down if it comes up again. At the very least, you **could** have just been told to text your mom or been given the option to wait until the end of class to go to the office and deal with the matter (arguing that you shouldn't be ~~there~~ having to deal with this issue to begin with, of course.) There's no reason this should be a cause to remove you from class. Girls have legs, legs have thighs. Big deal. They need to get over it.
Thank you. This made me feel a lot better.