High School Students Protest 'Slut Shaming' Dress Codes with Mass Walkouts 26SEP14

I remember when my older sister Sheila was in high school she was sent home for wearing jeans (this was around 1968 or '69 in rural Warren County, PA). My family is working middle class. Both my parents worked, Dad days, Mom nights, nothing was handed to them or us but we were (are) loved and never lacked for anything. And our clothes, while not the latest fashions, were clean and not ragged. So when the school called and woke Mom up (she had worked the night before) telling her she had to come get Sheila because she was wearing jeans, Mom went to the high school and told the principle and everyone in the office that Sheila's jeans were clean, were not obscene, didn't have holes in them, and until the school started buying Sheila's clothes she would be wearing what she had in her closet. Sheila stayed at school that day and the office never called our parents again about what we were wearing to school. A students clothes should be clean and shouldn't be obscene (no swear or racist words, no images of those words or sexual acts, no nipples poking through a shirt, skirts so short when a girl sits it's a porn shot, no pants so tight you know just what a guys junk looks like or you can read a girls "lips"). But students, girls especially, need to be protected from some of these fanatical purist who probably would mandate some sort of "christian burka" as a dress code for their female students. Get used to being told what to do you young ladies in school. Today they are telling you what to wear. In a few years, if not all ready, you'll be told what you can and can't do with your own body. From +AlterNet .....

High School Students Protest 'Slut Shaming' Dress Codes with Mass Walkouts

Around the country, teenagers are organizing protests after administrators have made them wear ‘shame suits’ or mandated hemlines.

September 26, 2014  |  

A spate of revolts against school dress codes appears to be gaining momentum across the United States, with students staging walkouts and other protests to complain at the way girls have been “humiliated” and forced to cover up.
A vocal campaign has emerged after recent incidents angered students in New York, Utah, Florida, Oklahoma and other states, with some accusing schools of sexism and so-called “slut shaming”.
The protests have spawned a hashtag, #iammorethanadistraction, and expressions of support from some parents who say the application of dress codes can be capricious and unjust.
“I do think these protests are a trend and I think it’s a good trend,” said Ruthann Robson, a City University of New York law professor and author of Dressing Constitutionally: Hierarchy, Sexuality and Democracy.
The mass walkouts showed that dress codes related to public policy and were not just confined to individual students and schools, she said. “Such resistance points out the larger structural issues. There is a problem here of state power getting confused with matters of good taste.”
The recent protests have coincided with the resumption of the school year but the controversy is not new. In March a group of middle-school girls in Evanston, Illinois picketed their school for the right to wear leggings. In August a  school superintendent in Oklahoma allegedly referred to “skanks” with inappropriate clothing, prompting calls for her resignation.
Previous dress code battles have focused on issues such as the length of boys’ hair or sagging trousers. The current round centres on girls revealing skin or wearing figure-hugging attire such as leggings or yoga pants.
Schools have expressed concern such attire could “distract” other pupils and responded by sending students home or obliging them to wear oversized, baggy “shame suits”.
Since such punishment predominantly affects girls  some commentators think it could violate Title IX, the federal law that ensures non-discrimination in educational environments.
There were laws against indecent exposure but some schools went further by decreeing what was and was not good taste, said Robson. “Just because someone wears something that we consider bad taste doesn’t mean the state should mandate.”
In the most recent backlash about 100 pupils walked out of Bingham high school in South Jordan, Utah, on Monday to protest the turning away of female classmates from a homecoming dance last weekend.