Today my school was shown this video. So sad how ONLY girls are shown as the violators. I understand why my school has a dresscode, but what about the boys who wear shorts, or show their shoulders? It’s 2018...Why are we still over-sexualizing teen girls? pic.twitter.com/fCXymYAIEG— cat (@catmoring) August 16, 2018
Via "Texas high school causes outrage with dress code video targeting female students in athletic shorts."
1. Were any boys in the school wearing "athletic shorts" (that is, tight, very short shorts)? I'm picturing boys wearing exactly the opposite type of shorts — long and baggy.
2. The school probably thought it was being lighthearted and cool about it — what with the music, the teacher playing a parody of an old school marm, and the emphasis on just not wearing this sort of thing in school.
3. Was the video shown in an all-girls environment? If not, then there is a problem of deploying girls' bodies for the entertainment of boys. If it was just for girls, it might be construed as an attempt at saying something like: You're just fine, you're as cute as you think you are, but please understand that we can't have that in school. And yet, that's still a problem. It's saying: We have a dress code because you're so sexy, please see yourself as sexy so that you will agree with us about the importance of this dress code.
4. Back in 1965, I got sent to the vice-principal for wearing miniskirts. Eventually, they got tough and sent me to the principal, who, unlike the vice-principal, made an argument about the boys: It wasn't fair to the boys. It made school difficult for the boys. I took great offense at this, because he was raising the topic of sex as if I had implicitly made it the subject simply by wearing an article of clothing that was precisely the fashion. In an embarrassing display of how his thinking was grounded in sex, he posed the hypothetical: What if I had come to school in a bikini?
5. But I didn't have Twitter. In the actual Texas case, after the Twitter exposure, the school apologized.
6. The Twitter exposure...
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145 comments:
Maybe separate schools. Boys schools and girls schools
I’m sure those two bureaucrats regret the day they encountered Ann Althouse.
In all seriousness, a 1965 Ann in a mini-skirt would be a giant distraction for the boys. And the girls would be jealous.
The above is why I favor single-sex high schools with uniforms. My girls loved their uniforms and their high school. They still wear their Sacred Heart school rings, for the most part.
At what waistband circumference does a pair of shorts cease to be athletic and instead become corpulent?
Women have almost zero empathy for men. We are the way we evolved but let’s all pretend that we were created by a fair and loving God who made the sexes identical except for the obvious visible differences. Evolution never happened because feminist reasons. The power you were demanding was sexual power, and the principle was trying to deny you the use of your sexual power during school hours. You might have been oblivious to it, but the boys had hormones coursing through their veins, I guess maybe the boys should have all been chemically castrated somehow, or subjected to some equivalent of “conversion therapy” in order that you could indulge your fashion sense.
@David Begley - D?id you have sons in Catholic school also? Would they have enjoyed it as much?
The Amish have got it right. Make everybody equally plain. That stops all that horid sex.
@ Tim in Vermont - There is NOTHING that girls could have been compelled to wear in high school that would have made them uninteresting to me. Mini-skirts? Yum! Granny-skirts? Swish, swish. And EVERYTHING in between. My high school had a girls drum and bugle corps. I still remember the plaid skirts with affection, 43 years later.
I worked in a government office where we were sometimes told, via mass e-mail, that the AC would not be all that cool, so some flexibility in clothing should be allowed. However, employees shouldn't take this to mean ... going too far blah blah. I would joke: I guess I can't come to work in speedo trunks and a fishnet tank top. My female director said: they're not worried about that, they're thinking of young women in skimpy tops with spaghetti straps. I don't remember, but skimpy shorts may have come up as well.
Assuming all of this has something to do with courtship and display, is there anything attractive about a man in cargo shorts (other than to our host)? Are those shorts supposed to indicate in some vestigial way that he is ready to go kill a caribou for a nice girl (or do his own car maintenance, thereby saving money), and he probably has a few helpful tools with him at all times? Is there even a hint that he is so well endowed, he requires a lot of room, so to speak? Do men think mainly of their own comfort and convenience, without a thought as to what women think, whereas with women it is somewhat the other way around?
problem of deploying girls' bodies for the entertainment of boys
Yeah...a problem.
Just ignore the tent in my pants.
Yes. Jesuit high school. Jesuit education in America is the greatest enterprise in the world today.
I would have got to school on time.
"In all seriousness, a 1965 Ann in a mini-skirt would be a giant distraction for the boys. And the girls would be jealous."
But that was absolutely not my point of view. My lived experience was reading fashion and pop culture magazines and watching TV shows like "Shindig" and "Hullabaloo" and loving the music and the mod fashion. It was incredibly fun and joyous and the adult, heavy, sexuality revealed by the principal was either radical misinterpretation or complete lack of interest in understanding me. He was dealing with me, one on one, so why was he bringing up the boys. I didn't notice any boys struggling or misbehaving with regard to me. So who were these phantom boys he wanted me to limit my self-expression to take care of? I still think he was talking more about himself and it seems more inappropriate than ever.
And by the way, we were required to wear skirts. Pants were not an option. I would gladly have worn pants if that was permitted. Instead I was required to wear an unfashionable skirt.
Pictures or it didn't happen. ;-)
@ Althouse - Trust me on this one - my lived experience is that there were a dozen boys in class trying to get a glimpse of Christmas by looking up your skirt.
@Althouse - And we learned how to be sneaky about it so as not to "scare the wildlife"
School uniforms solve the problem. Young girls can exercise their fashion sense outside of school.
Maybe you didn’t see any boys misbehaving, but they were thinking about you instead of algebra and calculus. And they were talking. You gave them something to talk about. Something to figure out. I’d bet your male classmates recall you quite well. You alone probably lowered the male SAT scores by 20 points in Wilmington.
So tired of the "it's not about drawing attention, it's about dressing for myself." Women's fashion is for drawing attention. Full stop. Once we can all acknowledge that and dispense with the games we can have an actual constructive discussion about dress code.
It wasn't fair to the boys. It made school difficult for the boys. I took great offense at this, because he was raising the topic of sex as if I had implicitly made it the subject simply by wearing an article of clothing that was precisely the fashion.
The boys are thinking about your pussy all the time regardless.
OMG! How On Earth could anyone expect boys to be able to concentrate on anything OTHER than a young, redheaded Althouse walking around in a miniskirt?
Are there pix of this miniskirt? If so, please post them so that we can ogle; i mean discuss them!
Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct. Recall the looks on the cops’ faces.
the principal was either radical misinterpretation or complete lack of interest in understanding me
Well, somebody had a “complete lack of interest in understanding” anyway.
"I took great offense at this, because he was raising the topic of sex as if I had implicitly made it the subject simply by wearing an article of clothing that was precisely the fashion." That's exactly what you did: implicitly made it the subject, to the boys. That's how I was, that's how we all were.
It’s 2018...Why are we still over-sexualizing teen girls?
The answer, my friend, is blow me in the wind
The answer is blow me in the wind.
Teenage girls are clueless
The biggest problem with the liberal mind is the utter refusal to acknowledge human nature.
Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct.
I would have stopped the interview until I could go to the camera store and pick up an 8K video camera and set it up.
And by the way, we were required to wear skirts. Pants were not an option.
My daughters, when they got to be about 10, wore pants (shorts) under their skirts , which were required by the private schools they attended. The shorts were not required but the girls seemed to understand teenaged boys better than you did.
"If they knew what we were really thinking, they'd never stop slapping us."
I blame cryptic ovulation in this Era of Trump's America.
Just ignore the tent in my pants.
Right before the bell rings. Althouse never had uncontrollable boners at 14.
Boys showing their shoulders? Tubetops?
It's the pit hair.
We moved from SC to So Cal before 3rd grade in 1968. I was sent to school in shorts and was lectured to and mortified. They were forbidden.
Ah, yes, my favorite math teacher, Mr. Dinkle. He stood outside the room between classes, and caught all the girls with skirts too short and sent them to the office. There were so many, they finally gave up and relaxed the rule.
"Well, somebody had a “complete lack of interest in understanding” anyway.
++
The biggest problem with the liberal mind is the utter refusal to acknowledge human nature.
Yep, nothing wrong with those boys that a good dose of re-education, and maybe some time with some electrodes, a la A Clockwork Orange won’t cure!
Young ladies in school uniforms are a mainstay of British and Japanese porn, or so I'm told.
A Heather Mac Donald Person of Gender writes:
Gender Is a Construct—Except When It’s Not
"For academic feminists, male and female biology is either interchangeable or immutable, depending on what complaint they need to lodge."
The lamentations of the women continue apace.
"So tired of the "it's not about drawing attention, it's about dressing for myself."
Straw man.
I didn't say I was only dressing for myself. I said I was interested in fashion, I cared about looking good within the incredibly cool culture that I had the good fortune to be part of. I wanted the external appearance of being part of something that was happening around me, and I wanted to be admired as looking good. You're a physical being in the word, and it might be fun to be invisible -- though that's actually the creepiest thing -- but you will be wherever you are and you will be seen and you do need to wear clothes, so you are picking something out that expresses what you are and what you want to be. That's expression, which is not just something you do for yourself, but what you do toward and with other people.
Now some of those other people might decide they don't like your form of expression through clothing, and they may decide to characterize what you're doing as showing off or just trying to get attention. Want me to speculate on the psychological workings of those people? Because I could.
"Ah, yes, my favorite math teacher, Mr. Dinkle. He stood outside the room between classes, and caught all the girls with skirts too short and sent them to the office. There were so many, they finally gave up and relaxed the rule."
I was a style leader in my junior high school, the first to wear a mini skirt, so I had to take the brunt of the resistance.
and they may decide to characterize what you're doing as showing off or just trying to get attention.
Nope, that’s not the point at all. Nobody here, it seems to me, doubts the sincerity of your reasoning, we just doubt the completeness of it.
Want me to speculate on the psychological workings of those people? Because I could.
I think you just did. It’s almost as if it is about the assertion of sexual power.... Naah!
Love the comments this morning.
Was Ann really that oblivious? Is she still that oblivious?
I'm surprised more hasn't been said about Althouse and men wearing shorts (which I write while wearing shorts all August except for a dang biz meeting or two).
I'm also surprised nothing has been said about all the teachers having sex with students - including female teachers.
I was a style leader in my junior high school, the first to wear a mini skirt, so I had to take the brunt of the resistance.
Pioneers take the arrows. Learn to trade for firewater.
Director Boots Riley issues a sharp critique of Spike Lee's 'BlacKkKlansman'
On Twitter!!!
I object to the video too. The production quality was poor, and the music was bad. Oh, and the girls' outfits weren't as skimpy as I had imagined they would be.
But that was absolutely not my point of view. My lived experience was reading fashion and pop culture magazines and watching TV shows like "Shindig" and "Hullabaloo" and loving the music and the mod fashion. It was incredibly fun and joyous and the adult, heavy, sexuality revealed by the principal was either radical misinterpretation or complete lack of interest in understanding me. He was dealing with me, one on one, so why was he bringing up the boys. I didn't notice any boys struggling or misbehaving with regard to me. So who were these phantom boys he wanted me to limit my self-expression to take care of? I still think he was talking more about himself and it seems more inappropriate than ever.
One, the Principal does NOT know your level of innocence, your state of mind, or your motives for the way you dressed. And frankly, I can't see any way to ask those sort of questions which wouldn't ALSO offend you. He was in a cleft stick.
Two, the Principal CERTAINLY knew the state of mind of being a young man. How much interest did you show in understanding HIS point of view? (Going by this post...)
Illuminating anecdote: My school did not have a dress code. Girls could essentially wear what they wanted, but this was the 80's so not much TOO out of bounds was worn.
Enter Michelle R in 10th Grade AP history. Prettiest girl in class. I can still see that short skirt she wore that Spring. Black. Certainly she wanted to be 'mod' and 'pop culture' and 'Hullabaloo' by wearing that skirt. I very much doubt it was her intention to cause boners in the boys around her.
But I can tell you that Mr. D did not teach me a single G-d Damn thing that day!
Every man you know has a similar story to tell unless they were gay.
The Principal knew that, but it seems that Althouse claims a girls right to be 'mod' and 'pop culture' and 'Hullabaloo' trumps any legitimate concerns the principal has (who understands boys however much he doesn't understand Althouses) to actually EDUCATE said boys.
This is akin to some asshole going into a bull pasture wearing a red jumpsuit with frills who wants to do interpretive dance practice while caring fuck all at how much more difficult said asshole is making the lives of the people who actually have a JOB to do!
Now, as a sixteen year old girl, her ignorance and lack of caring is understandable. Girls that age are shallow and lack empathy for everyone except for puppies and her girlfriends.
Sixty years later, one would have hoped that a Senior Citizen might have a broader, more educated and nuanced perspective. Alas no. She still begrudges being denied the right to be 'Hullabaloo'.
That is some serious grudging. That's okay. I can hold grudges too, though I'm trying to be better about it.
So...can't these school girls be 'Hullabaloo' someplace BESIDES school? Just asking.
Dress codes have always and ever been designed to accomplish two goals:
1. Prevent the boys from showing up in whatever dirty rags were lying on the bedroom floor that morning.
2. Prevent the girls from overexciting the boys.
Those reasons still apply. Self-expression -- both masculine and feminine -- was to be limited to free time and therefore the province of the parents.
My daughters, when they got to be about 10, wore pants (shorts) under their skirts , which were required by the private schools they attended. The shorts were not required but the girls seemed to understand teenaged boys better than you did.
(Doffs hat)
Sir...pithy, direct AND barbed. Well done. Well done.
Was Ann really that oblivious? Is she still that oblivious?
hmmm, maybe... I try to spell it out
Professor Althouse; you were, and ARE a sex Goddess. That's why we're here*
When you were 'a style leader' (and still now), there is NOT a man alive that didn't (doesn't) have dirty nasty naughty thoughts** about you: ALWAYS.
Don't take Our word for it, ask Meade
why we're here* well, AND you're Super Smart; and insightful
dirty nasty naughty thoughts** Not that we'd act on them, 'cause That Would BE WRONG
Moving from Cleveland to LA in 1970 I was impressed by the fact that my fourth grade teacher wore miniskirts. I was a little too young to know why, but over time . .
Professor Althouse; you were, and ARE a sex Goddess. That's why we're here*
When you were 'a style leader' (and still now), there is NOT a man alive that didn't (doesn't) have dirty nasty naughty thoughts** about you: ALWAYS.
Don't take Our word for it, ask Meade
why we're here* well, AND you're Super Smart; and insightful
dirty nasty naughty thoughts** Not that we'd act on them, 'cause That Would BE WRONG
Okay...I'm not with this guy!
Duuude!
Althouse
And by the way, we were required to wear skirts. Pants were not an option.
That was the rule at my high school. In my senior year there was a cold spell where the HIGHS were 20-25 below. When waiting for the bus in the morning, the temperatures were, of course, even colder. Some girls wore pants underneath their skirts as protection against the cold.
The administration started giving pants-wearing girls a hard time, but finally came to its senses and relented. IIRC, girls were then permitted to wear pants with skirts.
That was the same year the administration stopped the no blue jeans rule for boys. I found the no blue jeans rule silly, as through 6th grade, jeans were all I wore. I suspect that the school began operation in the 1950s, the administration thought of Blackboard Jungle when banning jeans. We wouldn't want all these nice college prep kids looking like a bunch of hoods. In a student council meeting in the '60s, the principal informed us that the association of jeans with "work" was why the school banned them.
I once subbed at a middle school that had a dress code. My impression was that the school was a lot calmer than the ordinary middle school, and that the dress code was part of the reason.
As temperatures have been in the 90s for the last 3 months, I have been wearing shorts.
I wonder if they asked boys to be in the video. Any high school boy asked such a question would likely say "Hell No." With respect, of course. A couple of the girls are vamping nicely in the video.
what no spankings?
Y'all going to church with these thoughts?
You'd better!
As a card-carrying member of the school fashion police, I can definitely say I sent more boys home to change their clothes than girls. Male infractions come from a juvenile need to wear sexually inappropriate graphic tees and an innate sloppiness. Plumber's crack, over-sized wife beater tops where the neckline ends at the waist (although that one might be a need to show off newly sprouting chest hair), and socks you can smell coming down the hall. I did send one girl home because she was wearing white jeans that laced up the side leaving 2"-3" of bare skin showing from her waist to her ankle, and it wasn't the only way everyone knew she wasn't wearing underwear. Spaghetti strap tops are problematic for the fashion police. No one really cares if a girl who's a 30AAA wears one braless. Or if a 40DD wears one over a bra. Because no school in its right mind wants to write a dress code that sets limits on who can wear a braless tank top and who can't, it's easier to just ban them.
As far as Ann's mini-skirt in 1968 goes, they were not that short. Just as the Beatles original long hair would be short in comparison to what came later, skirts a couple of inches above the knee became standard length compared to how high they'd go before coming back down. A granny could wear a 1968 mini-skirt today and not attract any attention.
My Y doesn't want athletic clothes in the lobby, but the most used area is on one end of it, unconnected to the locker rooms on the other side. I doubt they want us changing in front of the glass wall, but I'm over 50, I don't care who sees what.
1964 -- "You mean like an itsy bitsy teenie weenie yellow polka dot bikini? Oh Principal Dirtymind, that is so 3 years ago. I'm a style leader, not some sort of repressed hey there, Georgy girl!"
Jane Birkin wore miniskirts that ended at the bottom of her knickers in 1966. If she were wearing any, that is.
It was WAR between the Irish nuns and priests At my. Catholic high school in 1968. The girls were rolli g up their plaid skirts and being made to kneel and pray while the distance between floor and hem line was measured with a ruler. The boys had short hair wigs with out long hair Dippity Do'd and bobby pinned up by the girls and tucked under said wigs. It was full on cultural war. Joyfully sexualized and politicized by us and culturally and reactionaly by the priests and nuns. The Jesuits as God's own SS. Fun time, fun times.
Some girls wore pants underneath their skirts as protection against the cold.
I remember girls wearing woolen tights in Chicago winters but our high schools were single sex. Mercy High, where my girlfriend went, was on the way home from Leo, where I went, so it was convenient.
Girls wore uniforms through high school and boys through 8th grade. We had to wear ties in high school.
My daughters all went to Catholic high schools and wore uniforms. By high school, I think, the shorts under the skirts had pretty much ended.
"The Jesuits as God's own SS. Fun time, fun times."
Isn't it the truth. The Christian Brothers were a bit less formal but just as inhibited.
"Nope, that’s not the point at all. Nobody here, it seems to me, doubts the sincerity of your reasoning, we just doubt the completeness of it."
Nobody? Did you read the person I was quoting — Chanie at 7:26?
End co-education now. It'll be better for the boys, it'll be better for the girls.
School uniforms, as has already been said, solves this problem.
Yes there a couple of other problems, but they have already been solved in the past when school uniforms were required. Alas, it seems that today’s education system likes to start things anew: which means somehow resolving all these problems. With the help of Twitter.
Read the comments gahrie...someone got it on the first comment.
School uniforms, as has already been said, solves this problem.
In a public school, parents will not support school uniforms. I've worked at two schools that tried.
The power you were demanding was sexual power, and the principle was trying to deny you the use of your sexual power during school hours
No woman must ever be made to feel bad about, or responsible for, anything, ever.
Hence the burqa.
@Gilbar
Ann physically is a 65 years old retiree with all the standard accoutrements.
This blog clearly illustrates that there is a difference between men and women.
Feminism is physically and academically a sham.
In 1972, a group of us incoming freshmen at an all-girl Catholic high school decided to protest the imposition of uniform jumpers by wearing nothing but socks and shoes to our third period english class.
We were instructed to find alternate education.
As for the actual length of the miniskirts I wore in 1965... it kept changing, depending on what I could get away with and what I thought looked right in terms of the fashion of the day. I was continually redoing the hems on things.
I think sometimes I tried to get just a little above the knee. The actual rule was middle of the knee, but that looked really stupid at the time and you didn't have to follow the literal rule. Then, something more like 3 inches above the knee is what I attempted, and I probably went for 5 inches above the knee at the height of my persecution. That's longer than mid-thigh, but it looked really short at the time, especially with a hip-hugger skirt. The look of the width of the skirt being more than the length was kind of cool.
"Ann physically is a 65 years old retiree with all the standard accoutrements."
I'm 67, the same age Hunter S. Thompson was when he left a suicide note observing that he'd already lived 17 years past the age of 50. Someone quoted that yesterday. It hurt my feelings.
"The look of the width of the skirt being more than the length was kind of cool."
Doesn't that describe most cheerleader skirts? No wonder we couldn't hit our damn free throws.
I am almost exactly one year older than Althouse and remember the run in's at school for the dress code...for girls. I assume the boys had a dress code but in general it was jeans and t-shirts or cotton button up shirts.
First run in was in junior high when Pant's outfits were becoming popular and of course jeans for girls. However, the school was adamant that girls were to wear skirts or dresses with the length being appropriately at or slightly above knee level. We had to wait for the bus, none of us were old enough to drive, and it was freaking cold in the winter. I wanted to wear pants. I knew that jeans were probably going to be out. SO I was advocating for nice pants outfits like THESE
They said no. So I wore them anyway and was also sent to the principle's office and threatened to be sent home. Fine, I'm freezing anyway and WANT to go home. You stand around in the rain, cold weather in pants. See how you like it. Do it. It wasn't long before the rules were relaxed and we could wear pants to school.
Then the skirts started to rise and when mini skirts at 8 inches above the knees became popular.....another clothing fight.
The pants fight was about comfort and style. The skirts fight was about fashion. No girl in high school wants to be seen as being out of fashion, dowdy, wearing her mother's clothes. You need to be in and trendy or you are socially ostracized. Girls are mean. The boys don't give a shit, although I'm sure they appreciated the mini skirts way more than the polyester pants outfits.
:-)
I meant.....stand around in the cold in a skirt and see how you like it.
The vision of the principal in a skirt, did make me laugh.
The principal should have played the law school game. Okay, you agree that a bikini is inappropriate. What about the bathing suit your mother wears? Would a skirt below the knees be appropriate? Two inches above? Ten? What about short enough to show your panties?
When you're dealing with 15 year old males, sex is already there. Saying "well, it shouldn't be" is kind of like thinking that we can solve the problems of teenage pregnancy and drug use by telling everyome to "just say no."
The principal was correct
65 vs 67. I was being kind :-).But not so kind , only a 0.0298507462 difference.
Actually in another year it will be a big difference, Ann will have to pay her RMD.
Whats more every year thereafter it will get bigger! Welcome to the club Ann.
The Tough Guy who was the dress code enforcer in my High School dressed ten years out of date. He wore what we called Zoot Suits, double breasted with wide lapels, wide multicoloured neckties, and baggy pleated pants. At the time, early 1960;s, the well-dressed gentleman wore skinny lapels, even skinnier monochrome ties, and tight pants. One day we staged a protest against one of his rules, I forget what, by showing up in our fathers' old clothes, i.e. dressed like him, He didn't think it was a damn bit funny, and if he could have expelled every one of us he would have.
In my Catholic junior high school, right after school, the Italian girls would put on make up and use safety pins to raise the hems of their school uniforms. I'm not sure if the Italian girls were the first ones to develop breasts, but those were the first breasts I noticed. They really left a mark when they hit puberty. School uniforms were not a restrictive base line but more like a trampoline which allowed girls to jump higher......In my father's generation, there was quite a lot of conflict between the Eyetalians and the Irish. In my generation, they mostly got married, so maybe it was all good.
Ann will have to pay her RMD.
Not until 70 1/2.
I don't mean this to be unkind but I think you are honest when you say you believed that you had NOT "implicitly made it [sex] the subject simply by wearing an article of clothing that was precisely the fashion." However, in so believing, you showed a profound lack of understanding of the 15 and 16 year old males you went to class with.
However, in so believing, you showed a profound lack of understanding of the 15 and 16 year old males you went to class with.
Althouse has persistently exposed her lack of understanding of, or compassion for, male sexuality.
@tcrosse. Thanks for the correction. Poor Ann, miniskirt and all, having to pay her RMD. Sorry that's cruel but when you read this blog and then you read her blogs on feminism(this blog was intended to be about fashion but it shows you the stark difference between genders) you realize she is a con artist at worse or a disillusioned thinker at best.
Woman should be allowed to dress sexually provocatively without having to worry that men will be sexually provoked.
Uniforms are the way to go. Boys and Girls entering puberty should be segregated.
Since there are more than two genders today, the sub-genders should be segregated using one of the two main genders.
This is all explained in my book: "Education and Socialization of Pubescent Students"
I wonder what is their policy is on yoga "pants".
I have a friend who has put his kids trough private Lutheran schools and was pretty disgusted by the ridiculously skimpy "panties" of his daughter's volleyball team.
So, Althouse. What should have Principle have said to you? What line of reasoning would have convinced your young self to not wear a mini-skirt?
I wonder what is their policy is on yoga "pants".
Particularly for chicks with dicks.
Principle = Principal.
Remember the Principal is your pal.
But that was absolutely not my point of view.
When I go to the zoo I stay out of the lion enclosure, even though I don't view myself as lunch.
I have a friend who has put his kids trough private Lutheran schools and was pretty disgusted by the ridiculously skimpy "panties" of his daughter's volleyball team.
I am sure he is paying very close attention.
I took great offense at this, because he was raising the topic of sex as if I had implicitly made it the subject simply by wearing an article of clothing that was precisely the fashion. In an embarrassing display of how his thinking was grounded in sex, he posed the hypothetical: What if I had come to school in a bikini?
Oh, it was always about sex. Ask us poor folks who went to school in the age of flannel.
"And by the way, we were required to wear skirts"
My school had the same requirements for girls, blue skirts only and blue or white tops, no jewelry. The purpose was to minimize the display of wealth because 15% of us were on scholarship and the rest were either rich or extremely rich. I think it worked.
No one was allowed to wear jeans or tennis shoes. The main disadvantage is that my friends and I played basketball at every break. We had to play in socks because regular shoes were not allowed on the courts.
Boys were allowed to wear untucked shirts (mercifully) because by 7th grade we had constant boner issues. It seems that the girls dress code did not matter to most of us.
. Prevent the boys from showing up in whatever dirty rags were lying on the bedroom floor that morning.
2. Prevent the girls from overexciting the boys.
I'll add
3) No gang symbols.
The problem is that middle schoolers and high schoolers know what the older kids are doing, but they don't know why they're doing it yet. So they're sending out a lot of stray messages when they think they're just being cool.
To quote the only person who has ever looked sexy in flannel:
He's the one / he likes all our pretty songs / and he likes to sing along / and he likes to shoot his gun / but he don't know what it means / he don't know what it means
plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
It's a high school. Teenage girls will push the envelope wearing provocative clothing, and teenage boys will get distracted by it. They eventually outgrow it. And thus it ever was.
The underlying assumptions may have changed. It is now assumed boys are defective girls, and boys need to be controlled, medicated if they are too masculine. As well, the video focuses only on girls, which tells us the school thinks they are the only ones worth their time. That is consistent with how universities view young men today -- problems that need to be controlled or medicated, and if that does not work dismissed.
I would have been on Althouse's side in the great miniskirt debate.
Actually, I would have been on her left and about three rows in front assuming a standard desk/classroom set-up.
You should have ID’d yourself as a Scottish male and said it’s part if your religion.
Or attended a school of the blind and wore a bikini.
You poor cucks. I have been a competitive swimmer since the age of 3. It was always coed. The single best invention in the history of man was the swim goggles. Also, girls tend to swim breast stroke faster, so you end up behind them studying their frog kick technique. The best summer was senior lifesaving class when I was 13. Since I was so tall, I was in the 16-18 yo class. Nothing like rescue practice on a 16 yo girl using the cross chest carry.
As the great Steve Martin said;
"I believe in putting women on a pedestal so high you can see up their skirts."
I’m in Tucson helping my son get his apartment set up for the school year. We made a trip to campus so I could visit the bookstore (at 10:00 a.m.). Sorority rush is in progress. There are hundreds of young women walking around campus in what in my day would have clubwear. Skin tight dresses (all hail elasticized fabric) that come down to at best an inch below the curve of their derrière. The majority of these women were high school seniors last year.
But please no judgement.
Mr. Dinkle was a smart man. Probably knew the quadratic equation and everything!
"It's saying: We have a dress code because you're so sexy, please see yourself as sexy so that you will agree with us about the importance of this dress code." Actually, that's not what it's saying. Ask the parents.
"I took great offense at this, because he was raising the topic of sex as if I had implicitly made it the subject simply by wearing an article of clothing that was precisely the fashion. In an embarrassing display of how his thinking was grounded in sex, he posed the hypothetical: What if I had come to school in a bikini?"
"I said I was interested in fashion, I cared about looking good within the incredibly cool culture that I had the good fortune to be part of. I wanted the external appearance of being part of something that was happening around me, and I wanted to be admired as looking good."
"But that was absolutely not my point of view. My lived experience was"
I. I. Me. My.
Didn't learn much there, I guess.
It's not about you.
Is what codes say.
"The majority of these women were high school seniors last year. "
My daughter graduated from U of A about five years ago. The drinking was my biggest concern but she worked as a waitress during school and did good.
I was happy she did not get the sorority she wanted so dropped out of rush.
Alcohol is the cause of most of the rape hysteria. I wish your son well. My daughter dated a black football player and was shocked one day to see him on TV accused of sexual assault. A lot of the boys accused in college are black. You don't see that in the news.
I'm going to suggest to my younger son that his boy, my only grandson, joint the Marines before college.
He is hoping for a baseball scholarship but, if that doesn't happen, I hope he chooses the military then goes on GI Bill.
I see lots of kids doing that and think it is a good idea.
Of course they think they have no time but they have all the time in the world.
There was a girl in my high school that had a crush on one of my friends. He wasn't all that interested because he had his own crush, and we told him to ignore the attention. Like clockwork, over time her outfits when we hung out (or on days when they had class together) became more and more skimpy. Eventually another friend made a move and scored, and the first friend became jealous. But in the intervening period, the rest of us got an eyeful.
@ Zack
"He's the one / he likes all our pretty songs / and he likes to sing along / and he likes to shoot his gun / but he don't know what it means / he don't know what it means"
The words are actually "Knows not what it means". It takes a few times.
Michael K - my son decided not to rush. I was pleased, my husband was worried he would miss out on the deep relationships that the Greek system fosters. It’s no surprise that I didn’t belong to a sorority while my husband did belong to a fraternity. He’s golfing with a fraternity brother this weekend.
The majority of my son’s friends are ROTC and/or engineering mathematics majors. The one thing I regret is that my son didn’t purue ROTC in high school. It was nearly nonexistent at our high school and he wouldn’t have been able to golf.
I wish your children and grandchildren the best of luck.
Re: dress codes and partying it seems as though young adults need to learn that just because you can doesn’t mean you should.
Why no concern for The Gays? These complaints about sex-pot teens are amplified when in a hot shower NAKED after a sweaty, pheromone-fueled-and-fueling gym class, yet no empathy for their plight is to be found here.
Sad.
These finest of the fine human beings ought to have been a lesson in integrity, restraint, and honor to God over beastliness, but the The Straights are blinded by out of control hormones they will always choose to serve over more divine masters.
Char Char Binks said...
Mr. Dinkle was a smart man. Probably knew the quadratic equation and everything!
He seemed like sort of a pain in the ass at the time, but my views have mellowed.
@Howard - ha ha. Been there! Who did you swim for?
@ Cronus Titan - you outgrew being distracted by attractive women? Sad.
Some years ago I read somewhere that the English authorities prepare national rankings of their secondary schools every year. That particular year, I recall, all but 2 or 3 of the top-ranked 30 or 40 schools were single-sex. I'm sure that was pure coincidence.
The majority of my son’s friends are ROTC and/or engineering mathematics majors.
That will provide him some friends and social life. I tell Engineering jokes, like most engineers (I was one before medical school) but that is a good group to be a member of.
When I went to college long ago, fraternities were the cheapest place to live. It also provided social life but it was not all rich kids.
Now, I'm not so sure. I have two friends in Tucson who have raised three great boys. The oldest, now a Marine pilot, got his degree in Civil Engineering, the second in Chemical Engineering and stayed for a Masters. The youngest is there now, I think, and I don't know his major but they all did fine.
@Oso Negro
We outgrow being distracted by anything that wiggles past. We admire it, salute it and move on with our lives. That's what Clinton should have done with Lewinsky when he met her for the first time and she lifted her skirt to show him her thongs. A grown man would have enjoyed the moment, thanked her and called security.
When I was in high school, I played second base. The pitcher's girlfriend went Sharon Stone and flashed her hoo-ha at him before each pitch. The rest of us stared in wide wonder. That is, until the first baseman got a line drive in the crotch. Important lesson in there.
An argument for school uniforms.
I hate, absolutely hate, the term "lived experience"! Pretentious signalling.
Teenage girls absolutely don't get it. I can't tell you how many times I've explained to my poor 14 year old with the DD bra size that she can't wear low cut tank tops and shortie shorts to NJROTC practice where she is going to be twirling rifles, etc, with several dozen boys. She thinks "what's the big deal; it's hot out, no one cares what my boobs look like!" Oh honey. /sigh
Just tell us you were wearing white go go boots.
My school days were over before the miniskirt became fashionable. Well, the girls in my High School were kind short-legged anyway. Later on I spent a few years in the UK at the height of the up-to-there miniskirt craze to make up for it, and those British girls had marvellous gams.
The scene in question involves a young girl unknowingly masturbating for the first time and experiencing an orgasm after watching a John Ford cowboy film with a friend and imitating the horse riding using a pillow.
Kaplan disputed the child pornography categorization and told Indiewire that the filming of the scenes was done “under the careful surveillance of the girls’ mothers” and neither of the girls were aware of what they were depicting
“Everything works inside the spectators’ heads, and how you think this scene was filmed will depend on your level of depravity.” - Diego Kaplan
Well, yeah, that much is true.
It's funny. I think of Althouse as about the same age as I am. She's 67 and I'm 75, so yeah about the same age. But when she was a 15-year old high school student wearing that miniskirt, I was a 23-year old law student, and if I'd leered at her, as several commenters here imagine doing, I'd have been a "dirty old man". [Of course if I leered at her today (and I might) I'd have to deal with Meade, and I wouldn't want to do that.]
Nowadays, if the young girls wear underpants that's about as much modesty as we can expect.
I wonder how Jessica Valenti would look in a mini-skirt.
Oh and by the way, Gretchen Wilson understands: "I wear my jeans a little tight just to watch the little boys come undone"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KlsG_x2E9E
Pants braggin' about her daughter's curves.
I was 6'2" and 125 when I graduated. No one bragged about my angles.
I did find Ann's clueless, selfish, naïvety charming. My memory of much of high school was trying to see flashes of underwear under the knee length skirts and dresses required at the time (3 months older than Ann, but a year ahead, due to the dividing line between classes falling between our birthdays). It was constant - every time the girls around me shifted in their seats to get more comfortable, I sneaked a peek. I expect that she didn't have brothers close to her in age - I think that part of my problem was lack of sisters. Thus, I really didn't know what was underneath those skirts, or understand when those girls in my class switched from being naive to signaling sexual availability. I went away to college a virgin, never realizing all the sex going on around me throughout high school, and even junior high.
"Nobody? Did you read the person I was quoting — Chanie at 7:26?"
I wasn't so much doubting the sincerity of the explanation as calling the explanation naive (as others also suggested) and unhelpful in advancing the ultimate discussion of what should be permitted to be worn.
Ann's further explanation is actually consistent with my original criticism, but we still seem to be like ships in the night. Ann wanted to dress cool and wear fashion that reflected the cool culture of the day. But what is cool is cool because it attracts the attention of others. And it's not all male-on-female sexual attention, though that plays a large part in what is seen as cool in the under 25 crowd. Ann admits she wanted to dress a certain way to draw be part of the hip culture--i.e., to draw attention to herself as fitting in with that culture--and the principal reasonably pushed back on attention seeking behavior. Because it's school, and children are there to learn, not to express themselves.
Eleanor talks about a student "wearing white jeans that laced up the side leaving 2"-3" of bare skin showing from her waist to her ankle, and it wasn't the only way everyone knew she wasn't wearing underwear." Maybe that's what's cool today. I don't know. But it doesn't make it okay to wear that to school. Is Ann going to defend those jeans because they're the fashion, or is there a line, and if there's a line where is it being drawn and why?
Finally, it seems that women (girls) get particularly bent out of shape when the boys' attention is supposedly at fault, as if it weren't for those damned boys and their raging hormones it would be perfectly appropriate to wear this "fashionable" outfit. But how often are those administrators sparing feelings and avoiding uncomfortable conversations, just another form of "it's not you it's me" or more accurately "it's not you it's those damned boys." But the truth is it is you, and you're dressing like a slut, but I don't want to tell you that and deal with the hurt, outrage, angry phone calls, or whatever else may follow. So, it's the boys' fault, now lower your hem, go back to class, and learn because, after all, that is why you're here.
Re: dress codes and partying it seems as though young adults need to learn that just because you can doesn’t mean you should.
I tell my juniors and seniors all year long: "Just because you have the right to do something doesn't mean it is the right thing to do".
@Althouse, back in 1965 the Beach Boys were singing how you "east coast girls are hip" and how they "dig those styles you wear."
But I assume you wore your miniskirt to show off your panties to the boys, because I was a teenaged boy back then myself and thus I know that back in the 1960s we enjoyed checking out the knees, thighs, and -- if the girl wasn't careful how she sat and moved and which way the wind was blowing -- her panties. No sense saying that we guys should have been cool about it all; teenaged boys are little more than hormones with arms, legs, and a penis and that's that.
If you shoot any more beavers we'll call the Game Warden.
"I did find Ann's clueless, selfish, naïvety charming"
Ah, yes, that's what you would have told her, back then. You go, girl! You're hip! Those old fogies, they know nothing about fashion! You would have said it selflessly, of course. Admiringly. It might have worked, too.
But, leaving aside the possibility that we are being craftily trolled, persisting in "clueless, selfish, naïvety," without even the pretense of taking the other person's point of view, seems a little less charming half a century later.
It does clarify certain notions of "feminism" that have been bandied about here.
The video made the NBC Evening News tonight. The perps have apologized after outrage.
Idiots.
And suddenly, there are a lot more non-mentally ill homeless, enough for a whole program after the news. My dad pointed out how fat they were.
OK, I gave it the whole day and Lazlo hasn't commented. Worried about him.
"In an embarrassing display of how his thinking was grounded in sex, he posed the hypothetical: What if I had come to school in a bikini?".
He mentioned that swimwear was inappropriate for school, and you thought he was talking about sex?
Unlike the rest of you sorry old bastards, in 1969 or so I got shipped off to a coed boarding school in the Vermont woods that was a kind of a cross between a prep school and a New Age academy. We read William Burroughs, and skinny-dipped in the pond, and hung out in the girls dorms at night. And I don't think I was under-sexed, but I did not spend much time trying to see panties under a miniskirt. I do remember the first time a 16-year-old girl did a very slow reverse flip in the pond, and I realized it was covered with hair. I was not prepared for that one, Playboy was still not showing pubic hair.
Who are your parents--Auntie Mame?
I considered deleting that post, and reposting it with "sorry" changed to "horny", but I'll let it stand. My point is just that in 1910, young men were deeply excited by a glimpse of an ankle. Synecdoche works by association, not by resemblance. And I don't doubt but what that girl believed that all she was displaying to the naked boys sitting on the grass with our knees together was her admirable freedom from out-moded inhibitions. At least, I don't suppose she imagined she was participating in fashion. If my calculations are correct, she would have been a year younger than Althouse. Blonde, but not down there. I think her name was Amy, I never really got to know her.
"So, Althouse. What should have Principle have said to you? What line of reasoning would have convinced your young self to not wear a mini-skirt?"
Only punishment.
Leaving aside the merits of the debate, I can't help thinking that the principal must have known he was arguing with (a) a person who was a future con law professor, or something like that and (b) that Time and Progress were, for the foreseeable future, on her side, not his. It must have been an interesting conversation for the principal.
When I was in the military, I knew a lot of guys who were amazingly heroic and who, when they were younger, were probably treated as soft by their gym teachers, their "greatest generation" parents (former GIs or not), and so forth (I say probably because that is not the sort of thing we talked about). By the way, when I say I knew a lot of guys who were amazingly heroic, I only knew this indirectly, I only knew one guy, in 8 years active duty and 12 years in the reserve, who directly bragged about his heroism, and he is, ironically enough, now a principal (and an award winning one, too) at a Maryland high school. (also he was not all that heroic, what he bragged about was a couple engines going out on his airplane on a peacetime practice war maneuver - the plane had eight engines, by the way)....
I would get no pleasure at all from visiting, in their old folks home, my loser phys ed teachers and high school track coaches from back in the day who used to rag on me because I was physically challenged (I had an undiagnosed heart condition that they mistook for softness and laziness). In fact, if I happened to see one of them by chance, I would not mention that I am now a VFW member (not a front line combat infantry veteran, to be clear, but I was at a forward base that was vulnerable to nightly mortar attacks, that sort of thing, and lots of people who did what I did were killed) and I certainly would not bother telling them that one thing I remember about them (the phys ed teachers, and the track coaches) is this ... I remember the times when they - none of whom ever served a day in uniform, even if they thought they were tough guys - indulged themselves in sad little airs of phony tough superiority.
I hope Buwaya comes in to discuss quinceneara and European grasp of things sexual and sensual that eludes proto-feminist micro-aggression like the Professora on the poor boys.
When I was in the military, I knew a lot of guys who were amazingly heroic and who, when they were younger, were probably treated as soft by their gym teachers, their "greatest generation" parents (former GIs or not), and so forth (I say probably because that is not the sort of thing we talked about).
@Stephen Cooper, back in the day I dated a girl who had previously dated a young man named Allen Lynch. Lynch claimed to have been bullied in high school, which contributed to his decision to enlist in the army, and probably your phys ed teachers would have thought of him as “soft.” Go to Wikipedia and read his Medal of Honor citation. Frankly, this country doesn’t deserve people that brave.
To all of those saying that uniforms are the answer because they are modest, just Google Image "Japanese school girls". Better yet, search for it on PornHub.
There's a fair amount of research showing that women "pushing sex" (low cut blouses, miniskirts, etc) leads to the men seeing that being stupider while it's going on.
So, yes, you actually were being unfair to the guys, and hurting their academic progress
Big Mike ... that Medal of Honor citation is amazing. Thanks for the reference.
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