Girls told to wear longer skirts at school because the boys are distracted and male teachers feel uncomfortable.

[Exercisejunkieforlife]

My DD is 15, yesterday all the girls were kept behind in assembly and told they must wear skirts from the official uniform shop.
I have no problem with this as this is where we get DDs skirts, my problem is with the reasons given.

They were told that it distracts the boys when the girls walk up the stairs and makes the male teachers feel uncomfortable.

AIBU to think that the girls should not have to modify their behaviour / what they wear so the 'boys' don't look up their skirts and that the male teachers are responsible for their own feelings. ?

Agree with araiwa

why do they want to wear really short skirts anyway? Is the main reason so that boys will admire their legs? It cant be for comfort, surely. If they are wearing them very short to get males to look at them then it seems fair enough to say that they shouldn't as it makes them uncomfortable (the teenagers more than the teachers)

How odd! I'm well over 60, but wore a really short school uniform skirt, much against the rules. I did not for one minute do it for boys to look at my legs, especially as I was convinced I had horrible legs. I did it because it was the fashion and fashion when you are thirteen-fifteen is not ephimeral, it is essential to look like a human being. I did not want to look like a granny is a long dawdy skirt. (I still don't)

I am surprised so many people have totally forgotten their own teenage years

What is the PE uniform? Lots of schools have skorts that look like tiny skirts.

I'd ask the head what measures he (bet it's a he) is putting in place to ensure the safety of girls if the boys and staff are so out of control that they cannot avert their gaze.

The reasons given are absolutely appalling.

DD1 goes to an all girls school. They wear specific uniform from one shop. They all roll their skirts up. It isn't done to attract boys.

More important lesson is for boys to learn is, no matter what someone is wearing, you should never letch at them to make them feel uncomfortable nor touch them without their express permission.

I'd ask the head what measures he (bet it's a he) is putting in place to ensure the safety of girls if the boys and staff are so out of control that they cannot avert their gaze.

There was a case like this recently where the head was a woman.

Given how common it is for girls to be sexually assaulted by boys in mixed schools I'd ask the head what he/she is doing to keep my daughter safe. A clue: asking them to wear longer skirts isn't it. When a lad grabbed a handful of my arse on the stairs I was wearing trousers. When another lad grabbed my breasts in the corridor I was wearing the regulation school shirt and tie.

Th elk

The comments on this thread are disturbing. They are doing it to be provocative, they want to look sexy They all look like lap dancers I don't want my kid to go to school with them. Look at all those poor boys having to deal with the skirts they are all out to deliberately distract them they are all hormonal boys and it's to be expected they struggle with this. Poor boys and their hormones they need protecting from these lap dancer girls. Everything the girls are doing is because of boys.oh and they are also out to make false accusations or honey trap the teachers to. Evil girls and their short skirts.

Barely a step down from "what did she expect/she was asking for it"

I think we all have memories of trying to wear short skirts at school. I suspect short in 1970/1980 was nothing like today's "short" however. The 60s mini was short but it didn't reveal your pants when you were standing upright, as many of today's belt-skirts do. The girls wearing them are not remotely trying to be lap dancers - but what made such revealing skirts the fashion? They dont make choices in a vacuum. If you believe we live in an increasingly pornified culture it's not hard to see that fashions for females are influenced by this too.

Official uniform, fair enough.

Distracting male teachers? I'd be taking this so high up, it would hit the sky. I'd be pointing out that if a male teacher is distracted by the sight of a 15 year old girl's legs, then he is nothing short of a peadophile and not fit to practice.

I'd also be making it clear to my daughters that whilst correct uniform is ideal for comfort, they are in no way responsible for the actions and reactions to their body by grown men.

To grown men, a 15 year old girl should be viewed as just that. A girl. A child. It's fucking disgusting, the creepy insinuation that those teachers find a child girl's legs sexual. Uncomfortable my arse.

It's the normalisation of these attitudes that leads to far more dangerous places. Jimmy Saville didn't happen in a vacuum. It was precisely the attitude that underage teenage girls are fair game, to be viewed as sexual objects by perverted adult men, that in part allowed it to happen.

Stand up and speak out. There would be no stopping me I'm afraid.

The headteacher has given entirely the wrong message to the students. Girls cannot and should not be held responsible for boys behaviour. I think she was also very unwise to cast doubt on male teachers by her remarks.School uniform needs to be enforced properly and teenagers need boundaries. I prefer trousers for girls rather than skirts - easier to enforce. Skirt lengths are so easily adjusted by rolling the skirt over at the top! I used to teach in a school where all the girls wore trousers. Technically skirts were allowed but nobody wanted to wear them. It was a mixed school too!

'Barely a step down from "what did she expect/she was asking for it"'

That's rubbish. Why do you think it's ok for children to go to school inappropriately dressed? Would you go to a job interview wearing a skirt that barely covers your bottom? School is a place of learning. The children should not be dressing like adults. It looks scruffy and gives the school an impression of poor discipline.

It shouldn't be about the boys or the male teachers. The point is that it's not appropriate for anyone to be revealing their underwear in public places but especially when it's a child.

That was the point of the Op's thread though lottie that the school gave the reason as it been a distraction to boys and uncomfortable for male teachers. She said in her op that her daughter already wears the regulation skirts and she's no problem with that!! Her issue is with the reasons given.
And it's a very serious issue, which unfortunately is very prevelant in a society, where women and girls are routinely blamed for the actions of men and boys!

I agree - the school should simply have said that the girls are to wear the correct length skirt and if not they will be sent home This is what happens at my daughter's school. I would complain about the teenage boys and their hormones thing but I do not think short skirts should be allowed at school. A couple of inches above the knee is ok but we have all seen the kind of short that goes way beyond.

I really dislike men walking around topless/shirtless in hot weather. It feels aggressive / intimidating. In schools and workplaces there have to be sensible rules about dress.

Bring back those thick baggy school knickers! We had to wear them in a fetching shade of dark brown.

yesterday all the girls were kept behind in assembly and told they must wear skirts from the official uniform shop.

The first post needs altering: if we lived in anywhere near a society which didn't systematically teach the hatred of women (ie misogyny), your OP would have read:

yesterday all the boys were kept behind in assembly and told they must learn to respect all their peers as human beings and not treat women as sexual objects

I'd be going into the school to get an explanation - but as others have said, maybe be a bit passive-aggressive about it: "I'm interested in why you think the girls are responsible for the boys' and men's lack of boundaries?"

A school over here solved the problem

They banned skirts. Now all pupils wear trousers.

No one is mentioning the paedophilic nature of grown men looking at a girl's legs in this way?

I'd be asking for an explanation as to why 'you are allowing men who feel sexualised by underage girls to work in your school?'

My dh doesn't feel uncomfortable by my 8 year old daughter being naked. Why should it be any different with young teenage girls?

Toomanypetals - a 15 year old is a child but has a woman's body. It's not comparable to an 8 year old. That doesn't mean it's ok for adult teachers to view school girls in a sexualised way.

Like everyone else has said, point out that it's pretty worrying that teachers are so easily distracted by children's legs, because they are children, there's no question of that. Then ask if the boys were held back to be told that they shouldn't be looking at girls as sex objects, and that how a woman is dressed doesn't have any bearing on her sexual availability.

toomanypetals nobody said that. They said that male teachers may feel 'uncomfortable'. It's 2 different things.
Male teachers have to be very careful how they look at and interact with female pupils in case accusations are made (and your post kind of demonstrates that). I think I would feel uncomfortable in that situation.

Fgs just because the school worded the message unforgivably badly, that simply does not mean that male teachers are actually being distracted by girls' legs. They see the girls wearing ludicrously short skirts and think "That is inappropriate", not "Phwoarh get a load of that". As I would if I saw a boy with his pants hanging out of his trousers or his shirt not done up.

Whatever people may say about it being fashion that makes the girls coat themselves in make-up and fake tan and wear their skirts so short, it is totally naïve to think that none of them are seeking to look sexually attractive to the boys. Of course they are. They are teenage girls fgs. The teachers (male or otherwise) often have kids themselves and will be looking with slight disapproval and concern at the way the girls dress, not with inappropriate thoughts.

and that how a woman is dressed doesn't have any bearing on her sexual availability . That's not entirely true though, at least not in our society. Clothes are symbolic, to some extent. We do dress differently according to our situation. Most of us would dress differently, say, in a professional situation where we just want to get on with our work, to a nightclub setting, where we may just possibly want to attract someone sexually.
It's quite simple to me, very short skirts, especially underwear revealing ones, belong in the second setting, not in schools or a work enviroment.
Yes it's unfair, and it doesn't entitle boys or men to sexually assault or harass in any way, but it still doesn't take away the symbolism of clothing (especially girls/women's clothing).

toomanypetals is an example of just exactly why male teachers feel uncomfortable about girls in short skirts.

Against school rules, but can't tell them to do anything about it for fear of accusations of looking at girls legs. Getting a full frontal flash from Sharon in 10b is, as many female posters here have said, not nice, a female teacher can tell a girl, but a male might get an accusation ( like you have done toomanypetals) so doesn't do anything. More and more teachers not enforcing the dress code/uniform then leads to it being abused more, and the cycle goes round again.

The current fashion is for the tight lycra things that are so short that unless you sit with your legs cross and clamped together you're going to be flashing, frankly its uncomfortable for the girls to sit like that!

One male colleague who did used to tell girls about their uniform just used to say to unroll it at the top, as that made it more about the bulging waste band rather then the length, but with the current things being worn that doesn't even work.

The school phrased this wrongly though, should have been dealt with in a better way.

This isn't a new problem though. I can remember in the late 60s my husband saying teachers had to be careful where to look when going upstairs behind some of the older girls.
And to those saying, "But they're children," some of these children will be 18 and some of the teachers will only be early 20s.

Urgh, parts of this thread are REALLY depressing to read.

It's 2017 and we're STILL focussing on what is "appropriate" for women to wear. And then we think the problem's solved by "unisex" clothes, which nowadays means requiring girls to wear male-coded clothing ie. STILL requires females to change behaviour to accommodate male behaviour.

Women and girls are sexually harassed and attacked whatever they wear. IT MAKES NO DIFFERENCE. It's the MALE behaviour which is the problem, not FEMALE dress.

Sheesh.