So my wife tells a great story at dinner parties - she went to a very prestigious all-girls school for most of her collegiate career in downtown Toronto. She had to wear a kilt as part of the uniform. When she was in grade 8 or so a trend hits the school where the girls start wearing boxer shorts under their kilt. This was to signal to your classmates that you had a boyfriend and he had removed his boxers. Most times it was girls wearing their stolen brothers boxers to fit in.
So the administrations catches wind of this and warns the girls that itâs against school dress code policy. Nothing much changes. So on a Friday morning, the principal, a middle-aged man, and THE MUSIC TEACHER, another middle aged man, call all the girls into the gymnasium, line them up and ask them to lift up their skirts to reveal if they are wearing boxers or more appropriate undergarments. Every girl who was wearing boxers was sent home.
This happened for 3 fridays before someone told their parents. Needless to say it stopped after that.
Wow, thatâs super creepy. Iâm guessing that that may have been partially about stopping a weird trend, and just as much about underwear fetish wish fulfillment on the parts of the middle aged male teachers.
I had a few friends who went to catholic school, and the boring blue pants with lighter blue polo style shirts that the boys wore always seemed so drab compared to the pleated tartan skirt with short sleeved white button up that the girls wore. Maybe it was because I was a teenage boy, but the boys seemed drab while the girlsâ outfits seemed almost designed to be âsexyâ (think a slightly less revealing version of the Britney Spears Video outfit, but in blue tartan).
I always had a problem with uniforms as a tool to make kids more equal and less sexualized. I know it works for some people, but it never fully hides wealth differences. I got made fun of for my hair accessories and school supplies. Itâs a weak tool with many negative side effects.
Plus the more ugly/unflattering the outfit is the more it separates out the more attractive/ fit teens. The most attractive will still look cute and everyone else has to deal with not being able to use clothing tricks to hide whatever they donât like about their bodies. There is an endless war trying to make overweight kids tuck in their shirts, which bigger kids often find humiliating. I was really skinny but a little pear shaped and still obsessed with hiding my belly.
Plus, Iâm pretty sure that any uniform associated with teen girls for long enough will eventually be fetishized, no matter how ugly it is.
We also had to deal with the teachers policing wearing shorts under our skirts (in primary and junior high). They never made us lift them but would notice if we werenât âsitting correctlyâ. Of course the whole reason it was popular is because we wanted to avoid accidentally flashing our underwear when we shifted in our seats, or tripped over, or you know actually played during recess instead of sitting quietly like good girls. There were points when they relented and at least let us wear PE shorts under them, but even that was a fight.
âI want us to be known as the classy lady Bears.â
And asking girls to bend over is the epitome of classy? She really has no idea of how a lady behaves.
I had a similar thought: sheâs preparing these girls for a lifetime of being asked to bend over by authority figures.
The problem is sheâs going about it the wrong way. She should be teaching them to stand up against this rather than submit to it. Itâs another example of a lot of problems being caused by poorly educated educators.
