VS: Why We Need a Dress Code
The Dress Code is a Freedom
Freshmen Grant Dunker, Dorin Young, Alec Glass, and Jeffrey Cranford more than meet the dress code on Fancy Wednesday.
November 6, 2014
I’ll put it out there, I don’t agree with all aspects of the dress code. Girls not being able to show their shoulders is ridiculous. I’ll also agree to the fact that there are far more restrictions against girls than there are against boys in the dress code. That being said, I believe that we need a dress code in high school.
Why do you think girls have more restrictions against them than boys do? Let’s face it, girls’ clothing is designed to be more revealing than boys’ clothing. The dress code does not sexualize the female body or the male body alike. What sexualizes our adolescent bodies is society. We see all of the beautiful women on TV and the shirtless male models at various clothing stores. Society sexualizes bodies. In fact, Cosmopolitan Magazine will be sending a party bus full of shirtless male models to North Carolina State University to get female students to vote for the democratic party. If that’s not sexualizing the male body, then I don’t know what is.
We’re teenagers. What’s something we love? Freedom. If we didn’t have a dress code in high school, then what would we be wearing to school? I can tell you one thing for sure, there would be a lot of girls showing mass amounts of skin and a lot of boys with their pants around their ankles. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather not walk down the halls of my school, a place designed for learning, worried about whether my eye balls are going to burn out or not.
Have you ever been to a professional work site? An office, the police station, McDonalds, Walmart, any place that’s meant to serve the public. What’s something they all have in common? A dress code. What makes you think that we shouldn’t have to follow a dress code either? By having a dress code, we are being taught what’s going to be acceptable to wear in the work place and what won’t be. You know what happens to the workers who go to work and break dress code on multiple occasions? They get fired.
Girls walking around wearing revealing clothing and guys wearing their pants too low is a huge distraction. If you’re a guy and a girl is wearing revealing clothing, it’s obvious that you’re going to be distracted in class. Boys are hormonal at the high school age and that is not something they can always help. Revealing clothing not only easily distracts boys, but girls too. The other way also applies . If a guy is sagging his pants too low, then both genders are distracted yet again. Many things can distract a student during school, clothing is a major distraction in not only Northmont but in schools across the nation as well. Regardless of what gender you are and regardless of what gender the other person is, a body is going to be distracting if they’re breaking dress code.
A dress code also keeps our school looking acceptable. How often do we have visitors inside the school? They’re expecting to be walking down the halls of a high school, not through the doors of a downtown club. Instilling a dress code amongst the students and teachers keeps the school looking formal which gives any visitor to our school a good impression of what we can be as a student body.
I ask you: would you rather have a dress code we have now or do you want to start wearing a uniform? Having a dress code, although it’s a restriction, is sort of a freedom when you look at it like that.
Also Anonymous • Nov 14, 2014 at 8:57 pm
This whole problem would be solved if people (particularly males) would learn to respect girls and their bodies and realize that their opinion does not matter at all when it comes to how women should dress.
Cassie Williams • Nov 14, 2014 at 4:42 pm
“Boys are hormonal at the high school age and that is not something they can always help.” Ridiculous. Even if girls dressed “appropriately,” they would still be slut shamed and harassed. Clothing has nothing to do with a girl’s behavior or morals. Boys AND girls should be taught to respect one another despite how they look or how they are dressed. Boys can’t control their hormones? Seriously?
Anonymous • Nov 14, 2014 at 3:18 pm
This isn’t college, so there’s no need to bring it up here. And hormones do matter, that’s what gives guys the urges. It’s not all hormones, but mostly is. And, girls harass guys too, it’s not just the guys harassing girls. And its not “all men’s fault”. It’s school, you’re supposed to dress appropriately, if we’re going to bring college into the debate, then if girls are going to dress like this now, they’re going to dress like this in college and try to dress like that at a place they work at. And the problem of dress code is not people being harassed, it’s about people dressing inappropriately. The whole problem would be solved if everyone would keep there bodies covered while at school
Hannah Hapner • Nov 14, 2014 at 8:18 am
Boys are hormonal and they can’t always help it? Who cares? That doesn’t mean they can sexually harass girls in the hallways. This happens when girls aren’t breaking the dress code. They could be in sweatpants and this would still happen and it would still be seen as the girls fault because the boys hormones are “making” him do it. That’s ridiculous and infuriating. If you can’t control yourself in a public school setting, then how will you when you get out into the work place? Or into college? Oh, wait, it STILL happens in college. Men are the problem here, not women. We’re focusing on the wrong thing. It should be less about what someone wears and more about how they conduct their behavior when they think someone else has a hot bod. That’s the real problem.