Short school skirts "sending the wrong message"

Oh yes, some of our sixth formers wear those dresses and they look lovely - really elegant. So much better than the ones who wear skirts that are slightly too short and slightly too tight which they then spend the day adjusting because they're worried they're revealing too much!

A visitor at work the other day told me I looked elegant- made my day!

One of the girls in the 6th form at my school wears a tailored dress to school sometimes, with a little cardigan. She looks beautiful, and also cool, but the dress is in no way revealing. She looks a hell of a lot better than the girls who wear tiny skirts.

Doodle, I want to look beautiful and classy not sexy.

My husband says the woman in his office dress like ......

And now summer is on the way they may as well be on the beach. I mean, it's so unprofessional.

Well, obviously everyone is different but I think at least a fair amount of men do. A lot of the men I know do anyways.

And of course, there is a difference between wanting to feel sexy when you're out and wanting to 'snare co-workers'.

I'm sure if I worked in an office environment I would want to feel at least a little sexy when I was there, just because I'd like to feel at least a little sexy pretty much anytime I'm not slouching on the sofa in a t-shirt. It's just one thing that makes me feel good about myself. It certainly doesn't mean I want to 'snare' all the people that I meet throughtout the day....quite the opposite as I already have a partner and I'm not the cheating type.

My husband has never felt sexy in a suit. I don't think men feel sexy in the same way women do. When at work, they tend to be focusses on impressing the boss, not snaring a well paid co-worker...

Aaaand, at Bunbaker - your comment suggests that clothes that make one 'feel sexy' are inappropriate for the office.

But, I'm pretty sure a lot of men feel sexy in a good suit. A lot of men LOOK sexy in a good suit. In my opinion they look better in suits than in a lot of other clothes...

So...we should stop men wearing suits to work just because they FEEL sexy?

I don't think that's really what you were thinking of when you commented but it's the same rules isn't it? Arguing that skirts are too revealing for school may be possible but I'm not sure whether you can argue that things should be banned based on whether someone feels sexy in it becuase a) different people feel sexy in different things and b) that ruling isn't fair on everyone (see: men and suits).

EvilTwins - nononono, the lines at the top of the tights, on the legs, not the gusset. Seeing someone's gusset is definitely not sexy....that is just strange and embarassing. : /

And maybe sexy was the wrong word to use but I think everyone dresses for other people, and not just themselves? Even if it's just buying a nice fitted and tailored suit for the office.

I do agree that 'sexy' clothes shouldn't be worn in most workplaces. I would not wear short skirts at work because, even if I like them, I know they are not professional and are not appropriate fo rmy line of work.

If schools uniforms are there 'to help kids learn about wearing appropriate clothing in different circumstances' then yes, I would say that means children definitely shouldn't wear short skirts and such. However, I think that is where this argument truly lies.

When I was in school, I did not see school as somewhere to dress up and practice for future employment. I saw it as somewhere I was forced to go each day, somewhere where I learnt about myself, about others and about growing up (and of course about my different school subjects too!). I didn't see uniform as anything more than something that made it easy for teachers to identify children on school trips, something that made us all look the same and so was supposed to cause less arguments over class and material goods (as opposed to American schools where children can be teased for not having designer clothes) and something that stifled creativity and ability to express oneself. And obviously, teachers would prefer if we looked kinda smart but no-one really cared about that.

I'm not saying that this view is a good or bad view point (and to be honest my views have changed a little since then and are still evolving) however, that is what my friends and I thought a few years back and I imagine that's what many children think now too. And to clarify, we were very much aware of how to dress in different situations - we all dressed properly for work experience and job/sixth form/university interviews. Not taking school uniforms seriously did not affect our ability to dress for other smart situations and establishments, we just didn't view school as one of these establishments.

Also, although I don't particularly want people looking at my crotch, you can't put a ban on people looking at other people or thinking certain things if they keep it to themselves. And I don't think I should have to dress a certain way just to avoid random strangers on the street thinking something in their own heads particularly as I think for the most part there will always be people who look at other people 'inappropriately', whether they're wearing something revealing or not. So I've come to the conclusion that you have to be okay with the above, as long as people don't actually act on those thoughts. If they do, that is obviously wrong.

If you ignore the crotch part and just focus on cleavage, you will get people looking whatever you're wearing, unless you wear a oversized knitted jumper. Should I have to wear a big jumper just so that someone else should never find me attractive?

"One, because it did make me feel a bit sexy "

Which IMO makes it inappropriate for school - and the office as well.

Doodle-interesting post. You say that wearing a skirt do short your gusset was on show made you feel "a little bit sexy". As a teacher at a secondary school, I would say that wearing clothes which make you feel sexy whilst at school is simply not an appropriate thing to do. I am pretty proud of my cleavage, and wearing a top with a deep V neck makes me feel a bit sexy. I would not do so for work though. One of the things school uniform is for, surely, is to help kids learn about wearing appropriate clothing in different circumstances. If one if the girls I teach refused to pull her ludicrously short skirt down because it made her feel sexy, I would still insist she did it. To me, showing the gusset on your tights says "I don't mind if you look at my crotch"

'But the short skirt on a school uniform does feature in a certain kind of Lolita porn. So the head might be worried that young girls are looking like pornstars rather than schoolchildren.' - nkf

Just saying, if you're going down that line of thought then you may as well ban teddy bears, pigtails, lollipops, icepops, ties and all the other parts of the 'slutty schoolgirl' costume. But no one will, because that's just going too far.

There are also some types of people who get turned on by the thought of people in babygrows with dummys. Can't understand it myself but shall we also ban babygrows and dummys then?

Interesting post, doodle.

I don't like the idea that short skirts means 'girls don't respect themselves'. I think that's code for 'look a bit slutty/tarty' which rests on a terribly reductive, sexist view of womanhood. That it's up to women to police male sexual urges and up to young women to keep themselves pure and unsullied. It's a very dangerous philosophy. I'm sure most people who think/say these things wouldn't dream of blaming rape victims for being raped, but maybe haven't thought that deeply about where such a strong reaction to teenage girls wearing short skirts comes from.

There are a shocking number of comments stating that wearing a short skirt means that the girls 'don't respect themselves'.

I'm not here to say whether short skirts are good or bad but I just want to say how I felt when I was at school and was one of the girls who wore skirts so short you could see the lines on the tops of my tights.

For starters, I definitely wasn't 'lacking self-respect'. If anything I had way too much self-respect. I was confident and proud, I knew what I wanted and I knew what I didn't want.

I wore a short skirt for three reasons. One, because it did make me feel a bit sexy and that made me feel good about myself, especially important when you're body is developing and you're trying to cope with the changes. Note that this does NOT automatically make me slutty. Two, because I was still developing my body confidence and felt I looked bad unless there was a certain skirt/shirt ratio and my school insisted on tucking your shirt in meaning I had to role my skirt up further to compensate. And three, for me, having a shorter skirt was a way of guaging and showing my confidence. When I first entered secondary school I hated skirts, and would've been mortified at wearing one. As I grew more confident, I grew more comfortable wearing shorter and shorter skirts.

Of course my school had a rule - ours was that skirts should be no more than two inches above the knee when kneeling. But obviously that didn't make any difference.

And to the person who said their school was introducing kilts to make it harder to roll skirts up? What the hell? Kilts are BY FAR the easiest type of skirt to roll up as they fall perfectly however short you roll them.

I'm with hopefullyrecovering in this. I don't see anything wrong with short skirts per se, provided that they are not inappropriately short.

I have 3 daughters at high school and have always been of the opinion that a properly turned up or tailored short skirt looks better than a hideously rolled up effort. They are about 3 inches above the knee which provides suitable modesty, they are worn with opaque tights, and although they have a rear split, they do not show everything to anybody walking behind.

I many ways I think that short pleated or floaty skirts are a bigger problem than tighter or fitted ones.

AThing I often wear tailored trousers with a shirt or jumper to work. Do you think I must look hideous then? It seems a reasonable sort of combination to me

Bunbaker - an inch from the hare

My son helped out at a school event yesterday. He is 13 and was sharing a role with another girl in his year. When I asked how it went he said very well but, unfortunately, the girl "was wearing a completely inappropriate outfit". Turns out this was a very short and tight skirt which was restricting her moving without losing some dignity which she hadn't realised when she dressed for the evening, so she agreed with him he should take over and she took a slightly less active role!

I would love to have been a fly on the wall to that conversation!

What on earth is a greyhound skirt?

Raven- when I grow up can I join your gang?

I think a tailored pencil skirt an inch above the knee with a short back vent which I wore as a schoolgirl is far more flattering than the greyhound skirts girls wear these days.

Entirely fair points, Raven. I always think the chief use of uniform is to give teenagers something safe to rebel against - gives them a relatively safe outlet for anti-authoritarianism as opposed to dangerous stuff like drugs.

If schools really wanted to stop girls hitching up their skirts, they'd insist on hideous tartan kilts like I had to wear. Proper kilts that you have to wear with a kilt pin. Problem was a. they were hideous b. I went to school in Yorkshire, where the wind doesn't muck around with blowing round you, it goes straight through you, meaning the kilt pin eventually tore a hole in your kilt.

Raven, I think I love you .

The thing is, with uniforms, I agree they default to hideous, but if you made them all gorgeous & trendy they'd date & look ridiculous 3 years on.

School uniform should be sensible, affordable, readily identifiable, comfortable & so unremarkable as not to attract adverse attention or rebellion. What's wrong with just black trousers/skirt/leggings & a sweatshirt in the school colours?

Unfortunately, various surveys relating 'formal' uniform to 'high expectations' seem to have led Heads & Governors - including my own - to make the sort of predictable causation/correlation category errors that mean arguments about teenagers' skirt lengths run & run.

More worryingly, it's open to equally predictable exploitation once schools go Cackademy & start using uniform 'requirements' as an intake filter. Can of worms!