Help! Radio5Live want our thoughts on Tesco's "mini" school-uniform skirt

Have you got toned thighs Helen? It's a must!

tall

The hardest thing is when you have tal, v skinny girls - like both my dds were/are. Finding appropriate school skirts then becomes even more of a nightmare, as the ones small enough to fit their waists are invariably stupidly short - am talking M&S here.

Me too Lenin. I lived through Derbyshire winters at boarding school in a compulsory gym slip which I had to wear with long socks because the tights I had were the wrong colour and I wasn't allowed to ask my Mum to send me the right ones. We had to wear coats, scarves etc to go outside and I often wondered why they weren't so concerned about my legs. We also had a row with the gym teacher about learning to play football in Games. Not for young ladies, apparently.

Back to the topic - I have no real issue with the length or the style of the skirt - I just think that skirts for school should be less flouncy. I probably insist on longer skirts for dd1 as I'll get more than a term's wear from them, she's growing at quite a rate.

I'm quite shocked at the skirts on offer as part of retailers' school ranges - these clothes are not meant to be fashionable, but functional, practical and to encourage a sense of 'uniformity' amongst the pupils.

By giving these fashion choices (and seriously - the name 'hitch and stitch'?) the retailers are suggesting that girls need to dress up and look a certain way - even at school.

If they want to wear this skirt at the weekend (I think it would be ok in denim) with leggings and boots, so be it - but I don't think it's school uniform.

DD is too small for school, so I've only had to look at the boy's stuff for DS, but I've looked at the Tesco, Asda and BHS sites today after reading these threads and I'm really surprised at the styles (and lengths!) of skirts on offer.

Not at all sure about the toned thigh thing - most of the women in short skirts on Birmingham high street certainly don't wear their minis to show off toned thighs!!

And agree that little girls have little stick legs - nobody would suggest that little girls shouldn't wear shorts, so wearing an over the knee skirt with woolly tights seems equally 'non-sexualised' to me - just not at school.

In the words of my mother, "That's not a skirt, it's a belt!"

The problem is not just the age, from 9 years at that age most parents still buy their kids clothes, (although I think it's wrong to market it to young girls), it's teens wearing it that's the problem. The parents have little control over what their child wears and they try to look as old as possible. We (royal we)should not be encouraging it.

ishoos aside. It is a vile skirt.

I think it's quite nice. Girls have worn short skirts since the 1920s. In the 60s and 70s all little girls dresses and skirts were much shorter than that and so were boy's shorts!

I saw this in the catalogue yesterday and thought it was completely inappropriate for a school skirt.

Ha ha ha. Call that a skirt?!

Just another example of how retailers are signing up to the "let girls be girls" campaign but taking not a blind bit of notice of what that actually involves.

actually I put my ds in short shorts too - I think they look cute and traditional.

My dds look cute in short skirts and thick tights and boots, it's nothing to do with showing off toned thighs - they don't have toned thighs, they have stick legs. They look nothing like teenagers or women. my 5 and 7yo dds wear dresses that are longer than the ones I wore in the 70s (which barely covered my backside).

my dds do not wear bras, playboy bunny stuff or high heels (for example). or thongs. little denim skirts are different imo.

My 2 younger dds can choose to wear trousers and they often do. My eldest dd has to wear a horrible kilt skirt - it is not a mini skirt it is a very traditional uniform skirt.

Lenin, at dd's school and most other (state) schools I know of, girls can choose to wear trousers. I think private schools are possibly stricter as they often have very specific uniform codes.

My dd prefers skirts, no idea why, I think they're draughty myself and live in trousers.

Miniskirts are a way of showing off toned thighs. Why would anyone want to put their 9 year old in a skirt to show off her thighs? Why does anyone want people to look at their nine year old's thighs? Why do fashion designers think that drawing attention to a nine year old's thighs is desirable?

Do we shorten boy's shorts to show off their thighs? No. Why not? because we don't want people to look at 9 year old boys' thighs. We don't want people to be thinking about nine year old boys' thighs.

Why is ok if the child in question is female?

Girls are not dolls or decorations. Nine year old girls have a purpose in life, their own purpose in life, and this purpose does not in any way involve drawing attention to their thighs.

I don't think that that skirt would particularly sexualise my daughters who are aged 9 and under. I like them in shorter skirts and thick tights. My 9 yo deliberately wears her very small old skirt to school which is shorter and she doesnt' look like a teenager/young woman even though that is what she is trying to look like.

I would have more reservations about an 11-13 wearing it tbh as they are more likely to be mistaken for older girls.

(and in any case don't like the flouncy bits).

There are worst examples of inappropriate clothing out there imo.

sidetracking slightly, but I use these people for school skirts as they come in different lengths. I've always had next day delivery, and pretty good quality for the money as well.

I might buy this Tescos skirt as a non-school skirt, as some others have said with thick tights and flat boots it would look OK, but under no circumstances would it be allowed at school.

'Mini' aspect aside, the style is completely wrong for a school skirt. Its a fashion skirt not a school skirt.

There seems to be this trend for pushing the boundaries on school uniforms at the moment eg. glittery stitching and motifs on girls skirts and trousers, trendy tags hanging off belt loops etc

I don't think school uniform should be all dowdy but at the same time there's a time and place for high fashion and IMO in the primary school classroom is not the place.

Re: mini length - last year I couldn't find any decent length girls skirts anywhere for DD who was 9 at the time. The longest we found were at M&S and they were well above the knee.