Girls at DD’s school cannot wear socks because men and boys feel uncomfortable

[Eastie77Returns]

DD’s school has placed a ban on girls wearing socks due to persistent issues with girls wearing skirts that are too short and not the school’s regulation kilts. According to the e-mail sent to parents, girls wearing socks with said short skirts has resulted in some “members of the school community” feeling uncomfortable. When the issue was raised further by some parents, the (male) Deputy made it clear that it was essentially unfair to male pupils, and presumably teachers, to be made to feel awkward when girls undergarments were visible to them. There have also been issues with boys making suggestive comments to girls in short skirts.

I support the school enforcing school uniform policy but hate the fact that 12 year old DD and her friends are already being policed as to what they can or cannot wear because…men. DD hates the thick black tights she now has to wear. She always wore the correct length skirt and knee high socks.

The situation will apparently be reviewed ahead of the warmer months. I just feel this reinforces the view that girls & women need to ensure they dress in a way that doesn’t attract male attention but boys are not learning that inappropriate comments and behaviour towards a girl because of the way she dresses is completely unacceptable.

I agree! At our DCs Catholic School, students who showed up in clothing that infringed the dress code were forced to wear a very ugly school outfit for the day. It was an exceptionally effective deterrent.

If this has been a long going issue I can imagine a lot of SLT time is being spent on this and therefore they don’t have capacity. The school where I work has gone to trousers for this very reason and it was a high number of girls rolling up their skirts so you could see their pants. This is both a male and female issue. Not just ‘boys need to learn how to control themselves’ but was also putting male teachers in very uncomfortable positions - if a girl was reported for seeing their underwear they were talking back with ‘why was he looking’ and reporting teachers for being inappropriate. Male teachers were having to go to female teacher to report and it was a whole mess…. - but of course parents were upset as they had to buy new uniform.

My DDs’ school adopt a similar rule a few years ago, claiming that because socks were being worn in different colours & lengths it didn’t look “professional”. The solution to that would be to mandate black ankle socks (or whatever) not thick black tights! I wish they’d been honest like your school, even if I disagree with policing women’s bodies.

At some point in the summer term school decree it warm enough for the girls to wear socks, then if the sun goes in again (we’re near Manchester!) out come the tights.

It doesn’t affect my two as they wear trousers, but what I’ve come to believe is that school
uniform should be abolished.

My DDs’ school adopt a similar rule a few years ago, claiming that because socks were being worn in different colours & lengths it didn’t look “professional”. The solution to that would be to mandate black ankle socks (or whatever) not thick black tights! I wish they’d been honest like your school, even if I disagree with policing women’s bodies.

At some point in the summer term school decree it warm enough for the girls to wear socks, then if the sun goes in again (we’re near Manchester!) out come the tights.

It doesn’t affect my two as they wear trousers, but what I’ve come to believe is that school
uniform should be abolished.

I think the situation must be the same at our local school. We've gone from skirts so short you can see their arse to skirts so short you can see the crotch of their tights like some kind of webbed leg effect..

The tights won't solve the short skirt situation. Only a trousers/strict skirt length rule will work.

Why can’t the girls just wear trousers?

So they are trying to stop girls from flashing their knickers? Seems reasonable to me but I suppose one way to fight the rule is for them not to wear them at all and then they can’t actually be seen.

You wouldn’t go to the office with your arse hanging out so I see no reason why it should be allowed in school. I walked behind a teen schoolgirl once as was shocked that I could see part of her butt cheeks her skirt was so short. I just could not imagine that being allowed in my day or even wanting butt cheeks on show, that would have been mortifying for us. My old mum would have called it brazen behaviour 🫣

Its worse than that. The male headteacher is actually reinforcing society's (still) antedulluvian view that women are responsible for men's bad behaviour, not men themselves. What a message to his young male pupils as well as the female ones! He needs to re-inform himself and look in the mirror.😦

What the deputy head was probably trying to say, although somewhat clumsily, if that male teachers are concerned that girls with everything on show is going to lead to allegations that can destroy their lives. If a male teacher challenges a girl and tells them to unroll their skirt, all of a sudden you've got "Mr Jones was looking at me". All it takes is one parent to blow that into something massive.

Whilst I agree no one has the right to assault a girl/woman because of how she is dressed, girls also need to learn how to dress appropriately and respect themselves. There are always consequences of actions. If I turned up to work with skirts as short as some of the teenage girls I see, I'd be given a formal warning, not only for being indecent but also on health and safety grounds.

Please may someone explain to me why girls want to roll up their uniform skirts? I really do not get it at all. I went to school in a different country - we never did this. I genuinely dont get the reason for it.

Duplicated.

I’m with the school on this one. Every morning we get kids in our store on the way to school and I swear the skirts are getting shorter every year. I do a double take at some of them but because I’m a woman it goes unnoticed, if one of my male colleagues did the same we’d probably have complaints from parents but they are so short and it looks like they are not wearing anything on their bottom half.

Yes it’s crap for the girls that don’t do this but from what I see every morning they are in the minority because I’d go as far to say that at least 95% of them that come in our store are wearing skirts that are way too short.

The feeder high school from DC's primary is on our school run. I have lost count of the number of times I could literally see bum cheeks on school uniformed girls. I don't know if the skirts are short or if they're hoicked up. But either way, that much arse is never suitable for display anywhere than a beach or a pool.

I honestly think school uniform should be one unisex uniform. Trousers for both. Whatever schools do to try to police uniform they are criticised for.

Yes, there are male perverts around. No, girls aren't responsible for perverts.

But I'm not a male (or a female) pervert and I don't want to be exposed to teenage arse (or more) so I imagine the teachers don't want that either.

Some girls might prefer to wear skirts, why should they be punished? The large local school here has a gender neutral uniform and I have only ever seen a couple of girls wearing trousers.

Edited to say neither have I ever seen any girls wearing skirts as short as those I read about on MN.

Wouldn’t they just wear teeny tiny skirts from New Look or wherever if uniforms were abolished. Or those teeny shorts?

I’d say he’s looking out for his staff, safeguarding works both ways and it only takes one false accusation to ruin a career.

Just to say, on a non-uniform day at the high school, I saw a boy walking into school in a muscle top. I can't imagine any teaching staff wanted to see his nipples either.

How hard is it to just cover your body?

I was behind a young girl of probably 13 last summer walking through a car park. I wasn’t looking at her specifically, I was looking in front of me as I walked and she was also in front of me. Then a gust of wind blew her ridiculously tiny skirt and her whole arse (in thong) was on show. She did not give a shit, didn’t even try to cover it. I (a female) felt very uncomfortable and was then trying to look anywhere but in front of me. A group of boys behind me- upper primary age- also clearly felt uncomfortable as I could hear them hissing don’t look, quick turn around. They shouldn’t have to not look forward when walking through a busy car park. The girl should understand that her arse shouldn’t be on view and people have the right to walk around without seeing arses or underwear.

so while it’s shit for your daughter who does follow the rules, I do think it’s not always a case of worrying about the poor boys feeling uncomfortable. Most people feel uncomfortable when faced with an arse or underwear they did not want to see and they shouldn’t have to see it. Male or female. I don’t want to see anyone’s arse or underwear. The school should probably just enforce trousers for all- that would be the fairest option.

Goodness that’s riotous, they just need to sort the skirt issues out!
at my school, as every other school, there was a huge clampdown, we could only buy a particular skirt from a local uniform supplier, and parents warned that girls would be sent home until they could come in with an appropriate length skirt, so the girls went the other way and wore as long a skirt as they could find in the uniform shop …. Problem solved lol 😂

Because otherwise the rules are pushed beyond the limit. And complaints about it end up going down the 'You're body shaming me!' or 'Why are you even looking anyway, pervert!' line.

The school don't want a situation where a male member of staff is accused of 'looking up a girls skirt' because they've been told to pull their skirt down/looked in their general direction. Children, regardless of their age, exaggerate and/or lie (not all children lie, but some do). However, the girls who are flouting the rules should be taken aside, parents called and told in no uncertain terms that their skirt stays at regulation length or they are sanctioned.

As for the boys who are making comments, they should also be sanctioned and have a few lessons on appropriate behaviour, and attitudes towards women.

Banning socks, is just ridiculous. The school are punishing all girls, because some flout the rules. I'm all for women being able to wear what they want, but wearing a skirt so short, your underwear is showing, isn't appropriate for school. No more, than a woman wearing the same length skirt to the office, so her colleagues could see her undies, is appropriate.

They shouldn't have framed it as making people uncomfortable. They should have framed it as completely inappropriate for underwear to be on display, which it is.
Permitting an environment where they experience pressure to conform to a sexualised stereotype is not supportive of girls, or boys for that matter.

My dd's school has had a lot of issues with skirt length - girls like to wear them very short, to the point where it does get quite inappropriate.

I'm not sure the girls always realise - dd told me about a friend of hers whose skirt was so short that her sanitary towel was very visible walking up the stairs/seated at certain angles - and was mortified when my dd gently told her.

The school have clamped down - skirts need to be finger-tip length or longer - and they'll even hand out longer skirts to those who are breaking the rules!

HOWEVER, saying 'you have to wear tights at all times' isn't okay imo - tights are annoying and restrictive, particularly after swimming etc. This is too much.

And yet other countries seem to manage without all this performance.