School dress codes reinforce the message that women’s bodies are dangerous

As pupils go back to school this month, one institution has hit the headlines for sending up to 150 girls home for wearing skirts that were deemed “too short”. Pupils at Tring School in Hertfordshire were either placed in seclusion or had to be picked up by their parents, reported ITV news.

A statement from Tring School’s headteacher, Sue Collings, said: “We believe that students looking smart and professional is an important element of being a successful school. We also believe that, if students are consistently dressed in the correct uniform, it enables us to focus on teaching and learning. As such, we have a school uniform policy that has been in place for some time that is adhered to by the large majority of the students. The most contentious issue, though, is the style and length of the skirt worn by the girls.” It also stressed that parents and pupils had been warned in advance that uniform regulations would be tightened after a decision by school leadership in the summer.

But parents commenting below the statement on the school’s Facebook page expressed frustration at their struggle to find skirts that would fit their daughters’ waists while fulfilling the length requirement some said their daughters’ heights or body shapes simply made the skirt sit higher. One parent commented: “My daughter wore ‘regular’, not skinny, trousers from a school uniform shop, they had no external pockets as per guidance and [she] was told they showed every bone in her body and was put in internal for four lessons today.” On another post a parent said her daughter had been forced to wear a skirt several sizes too big safety-pinned round her waist in order to obey the length requirement.

Tring wasn’t the only school to take such measures – other reports have described children being sent home from various schools in the past week for wearing the wrong footwear, or even the wrong kind of socks. But while boys have been punished for some dress code violations too, it is clear that the majority of cases involve girls’ appearance being policed.

A number of pupils at South Shields Community College were made to change because their trousers were deemed “too tight”. And these cases follow hot on the heels of two schools that have banned female pupils from wearing skirts altogether. In May, Bridlington School in East Yorkshire, reportedly banned skirts after a male staff member was made to feel “uncomfortable” when implementing rules over their length. And in July it was reported that Trentham High School in Stoke-on-Trent was banning skirts, with the head teacher saying: “It’s not pleasant for male members of staff and students either, the girls have to walk up stairs and sit down and it’s a complete distraction.” This week the same school is reported to have sent home 10 girls whose trousers were deemed too tight because they would prove a “distraction” to male teachers.

The media images of the Tring schoolgirls in their “inappropriate” skirts, worn over thick black tights, powerfully remind me of another recent case, in which a US teenager was sent home from school for wearing an outfit that revealed her collarbones. What is so shocking, or offensive, about the bottom inch of a teenage girl’s thigh, or the bones below her neck?

In fact, that case was just the latest in a recent string of high-profile dress code battles in the US and Canada, where students have been protesting for some time about dress codes that unfairly target girls, using the hashtag #IAmMoreThanADistraction and turning up at school with placards asking: “Are my pants lowering your test scores?”

While the principle of asking students to attend school smartly dressed sounds reasonable, the problem comes when wider sexist attitudes towards women and their bodies are projected on to young women by schools in their attempt to define what constitutes smartness. It’s no coincidence that many school dress codes contain far more rules pertaining to girls’ clothing than to boys’, as we live in a world where women’s bodies are policed and fought over to a far greater extent than men’s. When girls are denied time in the classroom because their knees, shoulders or upper arms are considered inappropriate and in need of covering up, it privileges the societal sexualisation of their adolescent bodies over their own right to learn. We don’t have the same qualms about seeing those parts of their male peers’ anatomy.

All this is before we can even begin to explore the potentially negative impact of draconian dress codes on trans or non-gender-conforming pupils, many of whom have reported being blocked from their school yearbooks because of clothing choices.

Another common refrain is that it is important to prepare pupils for the “world of work” – this was the explanation given by the headmaster of Ryde Academy on the Isle of Wight last year when more than 250 girls were taken out of lessons because their skirts were too short. But if schools pull girls out of lessons and publicly shame them for exposing too much of their bodies, they are only preparing them for a sexist and unfair working world in which women are constantly judged and berated on their appearance. Men, by comparison, get a free pass. Look at the endless articles about whether women “should” or “shouldn’t” wear makeup to be taken seriously at work, or cringe-worthy instructions from firms on how female staff should dress.

Wouldn’t it be refreshing to see a school taking a stand against the idea that girls’ bodies are irresistibly dangerous and sexualised, instead of reinforcing it?