In worrying about middle school girls showing too much “hide,” are we seeking out problems that don’t exist?
When I was a kid, I often tagged along with my cousin Nancy and her pal Peggy. Although they were five years older than me, they would sometimes indulge my hero worship. On one such occasion, I walked down the street with Nancy to pick up Peggy as the two of them were going to a junior high dance. (I was allowed to come over only to ooh and ahh over their ensembles) As the very tall and very slim Peggy walked out to her front porch in her dress, her dad stopped her, telling her that her dress was far too short and should be just above the knee.
Why, a petulant Peggy asked him, did he always complain about her skirt lengths and not those of her older sister Ellen, who was a lot shorter with a much rounder profile.
“For one thing, I can’t even tell where her knees begin,” her dad replied. “There’s a lot more of you showing.”
I thought about that exchange when my own very tall and slim 11-year-old came home from sixth grade and told me that the principal said her skirt was too short. When she left for school that morning, I hadn’t even considered that she was wearing a skirt in the regular sense as she wore it over leggings/skinny jeans that she already worn to school. She had also worn the leggings earlier with running shorts over them, a Pippi Longstocking look popular with high school girls in the neighborhood. And again, that outfit passed muster.
Despite the obvious inconsistencies — the leggings are OK by themselves or with shorts over them, but you can’t layer a skirt over them – my sixth grader and I both agreed that this was the rule and she would abide by it. But then tonight, she came down to show me a simple, straight-forward T-shirt that she planned to wear tomorrow. “Would the principal think this shirt was see-through,” she asked me.
I wanted to reply, “Only if he wore X-ray glasses,” but I told her that the shirt was fine and that I couldn’t see any danger of it violating the dress code.
Up until three weeks ago, I never had a single discussion with my 11-year-old about the appropriateness of what she was wearing to school that day. She picked her own clothes to wear with little fanfare.
Yet, in the transition to middle school, sixth graders are suddenly confronted with inordinate attention to dress codes and particularly to how girls dress. My newbie middle schooler went from never thinking about what she would wear to school to thinking about it every day.
I don’t like the message that you are what you wear and that an inch this way or that spells the difference between wonk and tart. A researcher on self-image once told me that American girls learn early in life that they are under surveillance 24 hours a day and that the world will make judgments on how they look and project its own biases and fears on them. My neighbor told me that when she went to school in south Georgia, the principal would warn, “Girl, you’re showing too much hide!”
I have gone into high achieving private schools and seen outfits on girls that would get them sent home in public schools. Did the clothing distract the other students? Not based on their scores. There is no evidence that dress codes improve student performance.
I recognize that children turn into adolescents quickly, but we rush the passage when we worry about whether a run-of-the-mill T-shirt crosses the line or whether 11-year-olds with SpongeBob Band-Aids on their knees from climbing trees are showing two inches of thigh or three.
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130 comments Add your comment
Kate
August 25th, 2010
5:31 pm
I went to a private school with a strict dress code (dresses for girls, dress shirts and pants for boys-no jeans or shorts). In first grade, when I was 6 years old, we went on a field trip to a local dairy farm (exciting stuff). Since it was hot outside and we would be spending the majority of the day outdoors, it was decided, after A LOT of debate, that the boys would be allowed to wear shorts and the girls could wear “cool-otts” (I guess that’s how you spell it) on the day of the field trip. I will never forget the letter the principal sent home to all the girl’s parents giving specific instructions and measurements regarding this garment. Our parents were to make sure that our underwear was not visible through the fabric, did not come up more than one inch above our knee while standing or 2 inches while bent over. The letter also contained a dire warning that a ruler would be used to measure our cool-otts before we would be allowed to go on the field trip and if we didn’t pass inspection, we would not only not be allowed to participate, we would be sent home. I will also never forget my mother crumpling up the letter, calling the prinicipal a dirty old man, then asking “what the heck is a cool-ott?” She and I still laugh about it!
Now granted, this was the early 1980s, but I’ve got plenty of friends with kids in private school who’ve encountered the same nonsense.
majii
August 25th, 2010
5:57 pm
The school dress codes I’ve read about in these posts aren’t too difficult to follow. As one poster observed, following rules via the dress code prepares students for the way things are done in the wider world, especially the workplace.
I attended, and graduated from, an all girls high school in Macon, GA in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Our dress code prohibited the wearing of pants for 2 of my 3 years in the school (high school began in 10th grade in this system.) We were finally allowed to wear pantsuits in my senior year. No separate pants and blouse combinations were allowed. The mandatory length for dresses was below the knee. This was the dress code at quite a few public schools in my area in the 1960s and 1970s. Following it didn’t kill any of us, and most of us went on to have very successful careers. As a retired teacher high school teacher, I definitely see the value of a school dress code.
Philosopher
August 25th, 2010
6:13 pm
I fought very hard for the right not to have to wear dresses to school.I fight uniforms with the same forocity- While it may be difficult, it is my responsibility to fight those fights and set the examples for my kids…not to control them. My kids will tell you that I decided many years ago that teachers would be truly happy if we would put our kids in strait jackets and velcro shoes, place a bladder catheter,ducttape their mouths, restrain them in a wheel chair and roll them in and out of school every day…right on time!
ScienceTeacher671
August 25th, 2010
7:01 pm
The trouble is, some 6th graders are still little girls playing with dolls, while others look a lot like grown women, and sadly, some are sexually active already. A few years ago, we had a pregnant 6th grader, and I’ve had a couple of 9th graders who already had a child, or in one case, children.
And how about 11 year old “Jessi Slaughter”?
Philosopher
August 25th, 2010
7:19 pm
Well,teachers do it all the time, but it is not OK to punish the whole group (all the time)for the infractions of a few, or to judge all parents against the lousy ones. Sometimes, the good guys ought to be allowed some freedom. Those sexually active kids are going to be sexually active even if you dress them in a uniform.
Mom of 4
August 25th, 2010
10:03 pm
After reading the comments about sex in middle schools, I wanted to add my 2 cents about what goes on where I work. From what I see, no, the majority of middle schoolers are not sexually active. However, there are quite a few that are. We have only been in school a few weeks and have had waaaaay too many issues with “oral” (which kids these days don’t really consider to be “sex”). This is the case from 6th all the way up to 8th. We are also having issues with girl-on-girl starting in 6th grade. Personal beliefs aside, this can be an issue because girls share bathroom facilities, etc.
While very little of the action seems to be happening at school (although some most definitely does!), we tend to find out or become involved when it reaches the “drama” stage (or the cellphone photo stage, which happens ALL THE TIME!). For example, “he broke up with me, and I don’t understand why because I (fill in blank) for him yesterday”. In the 6th grade, people!! Why, just last week I had 2 girls “dating” one another, only to have a huge spat when one decided that she no longer wanted to go with the other girl, now she liked a boy. Then the other girl decideed to also like the boy, and then major drama ensued when the boy went with the one girl over the other.
I can honestly say that we are a Title 1 school, low SES, etc. Why do I mention this? Because although this can happen anywhere, it does seem to be more prevalent at younger ages in schools with these types of populations. My own children previously attended a middle to upper middle class middle school in another county, and I have several teacher friends at both High and Low SES schools, and there definitely seems to be a difference in the prevalence of this type of behavior in middle school based on what type of school you are in. So I can see why some people do not believe that these types of things are common in middle school, and why dress codes don’t need to be so strict. But, I agree with the previous poster. Spend real time in your child’s middle school, because most things that go on each day would turn the heads of even moderately conservative parents. Furthermore, middle school is most definitely NOT college, or even high school. We have the most interesting mix of advanced physical maturity combined with (for many students) an almost complete inability to make sensical decisions. We have boys who are just starting to mature and who are inexperienced in dealing with their hormones combined with girls with breasts hanging out and huge holes in their pants all the way up to never-never land. You try trying to make teaching polynomials interesting enough to compete with that!
BTW, I also agree that the concept doesn’t work. Speaking from the perspective of a parent of girls, I sometimes wonder how many of these students’ parents really know what their kids are up to when they are at school.
another comment
August 25th, 2010
10:22 pm
We really need uniforms. My kids loved their uniforms in Catholic Schools, I do wish I could still afford to send them to Catholic School. Yes the uniforms are shorter. They allow the girls to wear skorts as a Summer uniform until October, and After April. But even the Jumper and Skirt uniform in Catholic school are 2″ above the knee. The girls love the saddle shoes. We only ended up spending $300 a year maximum on uniforms and I had 5 uniforms for each girl, because I am a lazy washer, so it could be less. My oldest didn’t grow much after 6th so she wore the same uniform from 6-8th all for $300, what a savings, only $50 a year for shoes and socks.
The Cobb County high School she goes to now has a ridiculous dress code. Dress and shorts must be down past the knee. Absolutely absurd, but the hispanic girls get around this by wearing tight ass jeans that show everything and spagetti straps. My daughter got yelled at on the first day wearing a cute coutoure skirt that was 2″ above her knee. The black boys all have jeans that they drop and show their under wear disqusting. These boys get away with it because they wear a belt and just pull them up when they see and administrator. They should just have uniforms, in Public Schools it is alot cheaper, and cuter.
Last night when I went to the Open House some of the parents showed the inapproprate dress, including the leggings and size tripple ZZ stripper boobs. Then there was School Board Member Holli Cash dressed in her to tight black pants that looked like they were thrift store finds too. So when your School Board Member can’t look like a professional either it is sad, especially when she is running for office.
ScienceTeacher671
August 25th, 2010
10:32 pm
Once we had a parent show up for a conference wearing Daisy Dukes over a bikini bathing suit with a loosely crocheted “coverup” on top. She also wore flip flops.
Then there was the parent who came in jeans and a tshirt with a very risque picture on it….
another comment
August 25th, 2010
11:29 pm
We have a Cobb County Board Member wearing too tight pants and looking ridiculous at Open House. Yes, that was Holli Cash who is still got a November fight for her office. She even gets up to make a presentation to the Principal. I guess she thought she would fit in with all the trash that attends the school.
Dr. John Trotter
August 26th, 2010
1:20 am
Maureen: I agree that the middle school concept is flawed. I have been against the middle school concept from the Jump Street and have openly spoken against it. But, the middle schools flourished in Georgia in the mid-1980s when the QBE legislation bribed school systems to switch to the middle school system. This was suppose to be some type of panacea, but it was another failed “savior” for our schools.
another APS teacher
August 26th, 2010
7:59 am
“The kids who attend private schools are much more cultured and intelligent than their lackluster public school run of the mill dumbbells.
This being the case our private school children are able to behave in a more mature fashion when confronted with possible dress code infractions and should be given some leeway.
The public school illiterates need to be monitored for infractions, especially in APS, Dekalb/Fulton/Clayton school systems and upon discovery of said infraction should be forced to change. In this way we might limit teen pregnancy and keep eliminate future welfare queens and food stamp moms and baby-mamas.”
Actually private schools are afraid of losing parent tuition money…
Middle grade students are sexual creatures. That’s what puberty is all about, sexualizing the body to ready it for procreation. even when boys are taught to keep their mouths shut and their hands off of the girls, there is no way to train a 13 year old to not have an involuntary erection.
I don’t let my girls show cleavage. And they all want to. And I don’t care if their mother’s purchased their clothes. My classroom is a “No Titty Zone”. I’m not showing mine. You can’t show yours either. Ditto bootie shorts, short skirts, too tight clothes or sagging pants.
Period.
Fericita
August 26th, 2010
8:03 am
Philosopher – punishing many for the offenses of a few is exactly what’s going on with dress codes, and it’s exactly what’s going on with the push for merit pay. Sure, there are a handful of teachers who are terrible. But instead of dealing with the individual teachers, we make blanket statements of teacher accountability and want to rework how we pay teachers. Instead of dealing logically with the individual student clothing offenses, we make blanket rules that don’t make sense in a “zero tolerance” enforcement.
Elizabeth
August 26th, 2010
9:13 am
Oh, please. What is right in elementrary school is not appropriate in middle school because older students ( boys especially) are present. When I taught 6th grade the hardest thing parents had to understand was that their kids were no longer elementary school babies. Expectations about everything ( including appropriate dress) change and grow more stringent as we get older. This subject should not even be contested by parents. The world of work demands a cetain type of dress and kids need to learn that early, not late. This is just another example of parents who can’t discipline their little darlings and want to give them everything they ask for. Rightly or wrongly we are judged by how we dress and how others see us. Present yourself as inappropriately dressed and you will be judged on that basis. Learning to follow rules of the wopkplace and school is a part of growing up top be a responsible adult. Teach your kids other wise and they will have trouble when it comes time for them to conform to dress code rules and other rules.
Ole Guy
August 26th, 2010
10:35 am
When I get on that train to the airport, a battalion of kids, bound for whatever private school that is one stop prior to ATL, always seem to get on the same car in which I’m riding. They all seem to be from a broad swath of grade levels and, of course, they all wear a “uniform” of sorts. I don’t know if those unis have been “modified”, in terms of skirt lengths, but they’re definitely not…in the Ole Guy’s observations…in keeping with the concept of concervative school wear. What becomes increasingly amazing is the fact that the school’s leadership appears to be accepting of this uniform.
In viewing my hs yearbooks from the prehistoric era, skirt lengths appeared to be a whole lot closer to terra firma. While this did not seem to place a damper on the “HEin and SHEin”, somehow, dress codes seemed to be accepted as the norm…and this was at a sleepy ole public hs in Lower Alabama!
WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?
Laurie
August 27th, 2010
10:11 am
“I don’t like the message that you are what you wear and that an inch this way or that spells the difference between wonk and tart. A researcher on self-image once told me that American girls learn early in life that they are under surveillance 24 hours a day and that the world will make judgments on how they look and project its own biases and fears on them.”
Fantastic post, Maureen. I read all of these responsive posts, especially the ones that seem to blame teenage pregnancy and rape on the way girls dress, and just think: Q.E.D.
Laurie
August 27th, 2010
10:18 am
Oh, and for those who justify the “no skirts over leggings, even though the leggings themselves are acceptable” rule (how Lewis Carroll!) by saying that the kids might go in the bathroom and take the leggings off … um, assuming that they are allowed to go to the bathroom at all, couldn’t they just bring a skirt with them, take the leggings off, and put the skirt on? And if the skirt by itself violates a rule, couldn’t the school just punish the girls who take the leggings off, rather than the ones who keep them on?
Maureen Downey
August 27th, 2010
10:42 am
@Laurie, Thanks. I was surprised to see some of these responses as they suggest to me that the attitudes toward women haven’t actually changed much in 50 years.
Maureen
Ole Guy
August 27th, 2010
5:38 pm
Maureen, I do not mean to nit pick your response, however, I believe the attitudes, unchanged as they seem to have been, are not necessarily restricted toward women but toward anyone within the educational realm. Inasmuch as we seem to be dragging the bottom in terms of educational achievement and, more importantly, educational competitiveness on the global arena, the attitudes expressed, I feel, are more in line with what’s best in order to achieve a semblence of our global eminence of an era long past.
Whether it’s students of the female persuasion wearing appropriate attire in the classroom, or the guys steering clear of the “butt crack” style of clothing, something…ANYTHING…needs to be pursued if it’s in the name of educational improvements.
ben
August 28th, 2010
12:53 pm
“I have gone into high achieving private schools and seen outfits on girls that would get them sent home in public schools. Did the clothing distract the other students? Not based on their scores.”
I’m sure the weekend binge drinking and drug use doesn’t affect their test scores either, but your absurd reductionist reasoning would suggest that those behaviors are therefore tolerable.
By the way, Paideia’s CRCT scores didn’t appear in the AJC this year. Wonder why?
Maureen Downey
August 28th, 2010
1:06 pm
@Ben, Because private schools don’t take the CRCT. And because private schools are under no obligation to share their scores on any test with the public.
ben
August 28th, 2010
2:22 pm
Of course, you are correct. Which prompted my question about “their scores” which you didn’t specify. When discussing public middle schools in Georgia, CRCT would probably be generally agreed on as the test scores most people refer to. So when reading the comparison to private schools where CRCT is not taken, I was left to wonder which scores you were citing in your anecdote, or the age of the children you were observing.
I am curious if any districts keep up with numbers of students that are sent home for dress code violations as opposed to being asked to put on a belt, turn a shirt inside out, or change into something the school has on site?
Cissy
August 28th, 2010
7:45 pm
Maureen, you are probably right; our society’s ideas about the way girls dress probably hasn’t changed much in the past 50 years… but let’s face it, most of the commercial messages are directed at them, not the guys. Even now, girls are expected to have to attract the guys, not the other way round. And so some pretty awful ideas about what’s OK to wear get published–remember Versace’s comment that he was proud to have been a big factor in getting upper-class women to dress like hookers? (For the mothers-of-little-girls version of this problem, see that great book “Stop Dressing Your Six-Year-Old Like a Skank,” written by a newspaper columnist from NC, in which she laments the difficulty of finding age-appropriate clothes in department stores.)
Our son’s private school had to send home a long memo this summer explaining that they would be STRICTLY ENFORCING the dress code for girls….which had, if the girls I saw last year walking into school were representative, gotten a little out of hand. (The boys all wear the same thing…. shorts/ pants/ polo shirts.) But this is not a new problem: remember that series of articles the Wall Street Journal published last year about women wearing inappropriate clothes to the office or to office functions, and the probems it created with clients and co-workers? I know you think that letting girls dress as they please is evolution, not devolution, but maybe you should reconsider the logical consequences of that belief. Like it or not, a lot of people are still much more, um, un-evolved in their ideas about girls’ clothing; and do we teach our girls about them and help them protect themselves from censure and worse; or do we ignore them and hope they will never have an effect on our girls’ lives?
Laurie
August 28th, 2010
9:33 pm
We’ll know that we’ve “evolved”, in this sense, when the words “slut” and “skank” (or at at least, these words *as derogatively applied uniquely to females*) are not acceptable, no more acceptable than the “n” word.
At this point, on a board like this – apparently we’re not even close.
Maureen Downey
August 29th, 2010
8:53 am
@Ben, I meant the scores that we do know about based on college admissions that these schools enjoy, which would be SAT, ACT, AP and SAT II etc.
I don’t believe dress code violations are maintained as they are not a state issue, but entirely local.
Pippi
September 1st, 2010
1:44 pm
Modest clothing is out there; you just have to damand it from the retailers. Not all of us are enthralled with the Paris Hilton “look.”
Natasha
September 1st, 2010
3:32 pm
No, I don’t think it’s looking for a problem where none exists. Everyone, male and female alike, old and young, needs to put on some decent clothes that fit. I am equally tired of seeing girls looking like video hoes and boys looking like escaped convicts. And it has nothing to do with whether or not it is appropriate for school. It is a question of appropriate period. Too tight, too short, too baggy, too loose, all wrong. No one should be running around everyday looking like they belong on Fulton Street or Stewart Avenue.
Tuckergirl
September 1st, 2010
3:32 pm
I feel sorry for today’s girls because they are being flooded with conflicting messages. But the worst I see are the mothers trying to dress too young. That’s where I think problems start. I used to pick up my niece at her middle school and I can tell you, the mothers coming in often dressed in skimpier, trashier clothes than any of the kids. No wonder these girls are mixed up. Their mothers are trying to capture their youth again and it is long gone.
Even in my own adult Sunday School class, the women often wear mini skirts or short short dresses. I am not a prude and I understand wanting to be trendy. But frankly, I don’t want to see up the side of your skirt during Bible study. And I am a woman myself, so it’s not a male/testosterone issue.
Natasha
September 1st, 2010
3:33 pm
I meant Rice Street or Stewart Avenue.
Daniel
September 1st, 2010
3:41 pm
As a father of two daughters and a pediatrician, I have witnessed an increase in general aggressiveness and sexualization of girls even over the last 8-10 years. Young girls are preyed upon through media, “fashion”, and music to be the inguene that it distorts their image of themselves. Having stricter dress codes in middle school is very simple logic. The fact that you can’t understand that Maureen is disturbing. You do know that 6th graders are different from 4th graders and freshman and so on??? We do not protect young girls in this society and hurts them. The fact that you defend the clothing because it represents a change in fashion or “views of women” in modern society is sad bordering on dangerous. I would hope in the future you actually consider the issues involved and have a higher expectation of the readership to understand simple logic in the future.
Simply an embarrasment that you published this.
Maureen Downey
September 1st, 2010
4:40 pm
@Daniel, I don’t think kids change dramatically when the cross the street from the fifth grade to the sixth. I was talking to a middle school teacher about this the other day and she was lamenting all the time she has to spend correcting dress code violations, including three-inch straps on tank tops, for 11-year-olds. (She also noted that all the attention is heaped on what girls wear as if they are the source of all the problems.)
These shirts from the kids department in Target were not a problem 12 weeks ago in 5th grade and yet now they are so worrisome/provocative that kids can be sent home for wearing them?
I think the change in attitude toward the kids and how they dress actually spurs problems rather than prevents them. We are the ones foisting adult perspectives on kids.
Maureen