Dress Codes Connection to Sexual Harassment

 

 

 

What is one thing that everyone can agree with is obnoxious and pointless—dress code. Dress codes are rules provided by both public and private schools that control how a student can and cannot dress when they attend school. Why are these rules created? To stop “distraction” and to lessen the chance of unwanted attention, at least that is what the Board of Education has taught us.  

As students get into high school, the young girls who are picked on and scolded for wearing a tank top to class on a day when it is 90 degrees might be told “well if you wear something like that in public, a man might start following you and do unspeakable things” but the truth is, the stronger schools enforce a dress code by saying wearing a tank top is costing a girl her safety, will not stop acts like sexual harassment from happening to these girls.  

The rates of sexual harassment connect to the dress codes set in middle school because they set a stereotype for girls of what clothes are “appropriate” and what clothes can be considered “asking for it.” 

Some schools will say a skirt must be a certain length and cannot be shorter or expose one's thigh, for example, an article from the Washington Post states, “When news broke that deputy principal Cherith Telford at Henderson High School in New Zealand told female students that their uniform skirts must be knee-length in order to “keep our girls safe, stop boys from getting ideas and create a good work environment for male staff,” reactions were mixed. Singer Erykah Badu felt that the girls had no business wearing skirts that stopped above their knee to school, while actress Reagan Gomez argued that it wasn’t the responsibility of the girls to avoid being a temptation to grown men.”.  

    The responsibility and fault of not getting sexually harassed are put onto the girls and not the men harassing young females. It is true that some outfits people wear in public will catch the eye of passersby but the clothes a girl wears are never an invitation for unwanted conversation. Some may say “well if she doesn’t want attention then she shouldn’t wear a short skirt” this conveys the same message as “boys will be boys.” No, it is not all men who cannot respect a woman's boundaries, but it is a noticeable amount that has a sense of entitlement.  

Where can sexual harassment happen? Anywhere! The food store, the park, the city, even in the schools where the precautions are first made. The reason why sexual harassment can happen anywhere is not because of the length of clothes people wear, it is the science behind the brain! It is why the brain sees certain things in a specific way and why it causes a person to act in a certain way.  

For example, a study states “A number of studies have examined the objectification of bodies in the context of whether they were covered or uncovered. It was found that when wearing underwear or a swimsuit, a person could be viewed as a mere body that exists for the pleasure and use of others (Bartky, 1990).”.  

Because humans are animals, when we see a person wearing little clothing it may not register as an outfit in the brain, it is a part of humans that are still developing. The amount of clothing a person wears in public and how it is seen is also because of Hollywood. Girls with little clothing have been sexualized and objectified through films and social media. Society has sexualized the female body instead of normalizing it and see it as a natural being.  

When researched conducted a study, the results were not surprising. Scores were taken on how severe of a punishment a harasser should receive by both men and women, “The current study found that women were less likely than men to agree with No Punishment consequences for the harasser if the victim in the case was provocatively dressed. We can infer from this finding that men and women disagree with consequence severity for SH behavior and men, in particular, base part of their decision on the dress style of the victim.”. 

 Men will give a lighter punishment to the harasser if the girl were wearing a less conservative outfit and women would give a harsher punishment regardless. It just solidifies the stereotypes that society lives in by blaming the girl for her clothes and not the man harassing her. 

Scenarios like this are what cause dress codes to be enforced, but dress codes do not help eventually, they just do harm to a girl's mental health and self-esteem. Clothes do not give permission to harassment or anything further, a voice does. The world needs to learn that dress coding and telling girls that a certain dress style is considered “asking for it” does not help or lower the rates of sexual harassment. Instead, schools should be teaching their students how to respect their bodies of both males and females instead of sexualizing tank tops and shorts, especially at such young ages.  

The world needs to change its viewpoint and start educating in schools that bodies are not objects and then maybe the number of harassments will be lowered. But that all starts with this generation and the next, we need to be the difference.

                        Provide a better education to our children than what we received.