When I first started my job as a high school art teacher, I was kind of irritated during the bit of our training where they covered the dresscode, when the hypothetical infracting student was invariably referred to as “she,” and we were given little 5" tall ‘measuring cards’ (basically index cards with ruler marks printed down the side) we were supposed to use to measure the distance of the skirt form the knee. As my first year went on, I also noticed that girls were disproportionately targeted by the dress code, both because it targeted gendered garb like leggings, and because in practice teachers tended to enforce it more with girls even w/r/t gender neutral garb (when male athletes and other students wear tank tops to school, they are technically in violation of the dress code, but girls are much more likely to be targeted for having their shoulders exposed).
Personally, I don’t have the time to waste instructional time policing my kids’ wardrobes, or teaching them to be ashamed of their bodies, or whatever. I’ve got, you know, actual shit to teach. Amazingly, despite the fact that I don’t write up girls for wearing tank tops or leggings, our art room hasn’t devolved into some bacchanalian disaster.
And in the unlikely event that someday a male student actually does try to claim his behavior or distraction was the result of some female student’s outfit, I’m going to hold, you know, the actual misbehaving student responsible, not the student he was ogling.
