The Dress Code is Sexist

What is a dress code? “A dress code is a set of rules, often written, with regards to what clothing certain groups of people must wear.”(Wikipedia)  Now, why do we have a dress code? I think the sole purpose of having a dress code should be to protect our students from harsh weather conditions like blistering heat or the freezing cold. A dress code implies that we should dress appropriately for the weather conditions. But most dress codes are to control what women wear. The basic dress code rules are No spaghetti straps, No ripped jeans, no shorts or skirts above fingertip length, the collar bones must be concealed, no crop tops, no cleavage, and no yoga pants/legging, the list goes on, but for the sake of this article, I only put the most basic rules. All of these codes target women. The dress code for men usually is no hats and no sagging. We can see how much the dress code targets and controls young women's bodies.

This is extremely harmful to young women because it teaches them to conceal their bodies to receive an education. These teachings are so outdated today that we have learned that women's bodies should not be shameful, and we should not need to conceal them as if they are dangerous. But the reason schools usually give for a dress code is “You're distracting your male peers/teachers.” Now, why would teachers over the age of 18 be distracted by a young women’s body? And for the boys, we need to teach them that it's not acceptable to be sexualizing women in a place where they are supposed to be learning. So now the real issue is instead of teaching young women to be ashamed of their bodies, we should be teaching young men it is not okay to shame women for their bodies.