AIBU to challenge the school’s wording about pupils rolling skirts up?

Then complain about that. Ideally in a handwritten letter 😬

Girls have been rolling their school skirts up since biblical times!! just forget it

presumably they can’t stop boys wearing skirts

My son got a negative point for dropping a piece of stationary on the floor. We laughed about it. No one contacted the school. I think it’s the access to email that’s the problem. If every complaint required a phone call or a handwritten letter, the complaints would drop by 90%

I wonder how these youngsters will fare when (and if) they reach the work place and realise that there are rules they need to abide by

Indeed. Even though, on the clothes front, women have a lot more freedom in 'traditional' workplaces, how is this mindset going to help to set girls up for their adult futures when they've gone all through school firmly believing and insisting that clear rules don't apply to them and they can go around at will with their private parts on show?

Are they going to turn up to job interviews barely dressed, whilst their male counterparts wear smart shirts and tailored trousers, and then wonder why he got the job and she didn't?

They're right to address this - or more appropriately, to ask their parents to address this.

Teen girls can be idiots with no more sense of survival than a baby bunny. I see this so often, acres of under age bare thigh and sometimes arse cheek ambling obliviously along the pavement.

Then as soon as they go into sixth form it's baggy jeans and tracksuit trousers.

There's a window of vulnerability plus lack of real awareness that mid teen girls seem to pass through with no sense.

So yes, asking parents to help them raise awareness of the fact that some men DO see girls this way and not giving them anything to look at is wise.

It's not sexist. It's safeguarding a particularly vulnerable and immature age group. And it's parents' duty to do that.

This isn’t new. I have friends a bit older than me, who in the 60’s had to kneel down at school, and a teacher would measure the distance between the skirt hem and the knee. More than a certain measurement and you were in detention!

We didn't go around with our bums hanging out in the 60s!

And the motivation (I think) was different. Miniskirts had just come in and were mainstream fashion. Even Princess Anne wore skirts well above her knees. But school skirts were not designed by Mary Quant and most of us had had our school skirts since before miniskirts came in and they were knee length or even a bit longer if you were short. We rolled them up to be a bit more in line with what everyone else was wearing. Not in order to show our bums and knickers.

If you had half an inch of underslip showing, someone would tell you, never mind showing anything else!

Maybe it’s sexist — because if it was the boys who had their balls almost showing it would be called bordering on indecent exposure.

@Gloriia do you actually think that it’s fine for girls - children going though puberty - to wear skirts that reveal their underwear/bum then? And neither school or parents should correct them?

You can't describe the attire of the people on front of you because they are attired.
If they were not, you would notice.

Would you rather the school was perfectly
ok with pupils walking around with their bums or underwear showing?

Is that appropriate for a school?

@GreenSalon I mean this genuinely and non-combatively: if you agree that school is different from other contexts where very short skirts are worn, what would you prefer the school’s wording in the email to have been?

Then you’re not looking where you’re going. If you want to look elsewhere then do so. Stairs are dangerous and I’ll look in front like I always have thanks.

It’s not men’s uncomfortable feelings it’s women and other girls too.Also you do realise girls get pressurised and teased if they don’t fall inline and display themselves in the same way.

Bums and arse are the same thing, there is only one word for sweaty. Nobody wants to sit in a chair somebody else’s sweaty naked arse has previously sat on.

You can see on this thread what happened.

'Yawn. For the hundredth time, it's not about people staring. It's about being forced to see things you really do not want to see. I know it may be hard for you to understand (because you keep coming back with the same insinuation that teachers and men in general are drooling as they follow pubescent girls up the stairs'

I walk up stairs all the time. I could not describe the attire of the people ahead of me. Folk need to look elsewhere, not at young girl's backsides. It shouldn't need saying but here we are.

”Parents” won’t. Some parents will. Are there some rules I think are stupid or pointless ? Yes. Are they even more frustrating when certain behaviours go unchecked , but you can get a detention for not having your maths kit on a non maths day? Definitely.

I still tell DD to toe the line with some rules being absolutely non negotiable. Skirt length is one of them for the few months a year she actually wears one.

No what is derogatory is encouraging and saying it’s ok and normal for young girls to dress like this.

I'm pretty sure the reason I only have two friends at the school gates is because most of the others mums conversations are just constant outrage at the school for the most trivial things and they think I am completely unreasonable for not agreeing. It's almost like they try to outdo each other over who can be more outraged.

One of them shouted at the headteacher because her child didn't have a good enough part in the nativity. And 100% thought she was justified on doing so.

Bums or backsides would suffice? No need for the 'sweaty arse cheeks'.

'How about 'the plump, peachy protuberant posterior portions of our young lasses peeping from a pretty peplum' Why would anyone post that creepy description .

The language used has been derogatory and sneery.

Fine, discuss welfare concerns but try to use appropriate language or else it all looks like total mockery. Taking the piss out of young girls 'sweaty arse cheeks' in the guise of concerns for men's 'uncomfortable feelings' is not a good look.

What on earth happened to the concept of giving guidance to young people? Surely this is especially important at puberty when youngsters are growing and developing in ways that they may not be psychologically ready for, or experienced enough to deal with?

It used to be called parenting. Are there really pps on here who think parenting stops when they go to secondary school? That's surely the really hard bit - but the bit that is crucial in helping teenagers to navigate the world successfully, even if it means you can't always be their friend.

I worry about kids whose parents want to be their mates...

Parents will fight the school over absolutely anything and everything. It’s not just the skirt it’s every single rule, the skirt is just one tiny aspect. I don’t know how today’s parents were raised but they cannot cope with authoritarianism at all.

I was in secondary school in the nineties and our skirts had to cover our arses or we were sent home. Some girls did hitch their skirts up a little bit but absolutely nothing like what I see at my child’s secondary school. It’s positively St Trinian.