Should skirt length matter in secondary schools?

[Holdonforsummer]

My daughter is 15 and in Year 10, she attends an all-girls comprehensive secondary school and they are obsessed with the girls’ skirt length. The skirt is like a tartan kilt and is supposed to be ‘on the knee’ but most of the girls roll their skirts to make them a bit shorter (think mid-thigh). I’m a bit on the fence about this but her school go on and on and on about it. They stop girls all the time, give detentions for short skirts, have assemblies about it, and have even been known to measure skirts and give girls long ones from the list property cupboard to wear instead. Yesterday, my daughter had just finished 5 hours of mock exams in 28 degrees and was walking home - outside school property - and was stopped by a teacher threatening detention even though she had left school. She came home furious and fed up of the whole thing. I can’t decide whether the girls just need to toe the line or whether behaviour from the school is bordering on a sexist, misogynistic obsession. YABU: the pupils need to obey the skirt rules, YANBU: The school should calm down and stop obsessing about skirt length.

One of my DDs had an ankle length skirt for uniform - all the girls loved them as you could wear what ever you wanted underneath - usually PJs.....

Personally I think school uniform should be trousers or a skort - that way there would be no knicker flashing...

It's her arse. She can do what she wants with it, as can you with yours. She is not saying fuck me, and anyone who thinks she is has the problem. You can equate it to my character, or her's, if you like. But we are the same today in shorts and skirts as we were yesterday in trousers

Again, by framing this as “policing other people’s bodies” you are doing stellar work for all the creeps and perverts out there.
And plenty have pointed out that many of these girls are NOT wearing tights, and their underwear can be seen. What is liberating about a girl doing that, please?
If it’s liberating for a girl or woman to wear what she wants, why not rock up to an interview in a wedding dress? Go to a funeral in a bikini? Wear a floaty dress as a firefighter? Liberation, ladies!!
Decency is a pretty decent word. Decency is thin on the ground in our individualistic, porn-soaked society and of course people like you don’t help, with your liberal fun feminism that does absolutely nothing for women and girls.

Oh come on - a college isn’t allowed to pull up children’s clothing! Imagine in we were walking around hiking up boys trousers at the skate park, please. Surely you’ve been in a high street and seen a group of boys boxers hanging out? It’s a popular fashion choice. No I don’t like it but I don’t judge their parents or their promiscuity or their class. No one judges them at all. No one says we need to keep them safe or that they are sexually vulnerable,

We can all be a bit shocked by kids choice of clothing, that’s also something kids have done for generations - worn clothing adults don’t approve of. When you are looking and judging school age girls in particular, ask yourself why ? - is your judgement of any benefit to them? Does it help keep them safer? Or is it a subconscious belief that they are ‘asking for it?’ Or that you are superior.

Reality tv, runways, celebrity premiers - all this trash we all see shapes what we wear and what kids like and find appealing, as a society we have to accept that if we peddle all this crap as adults, our children will aspire to look like it.

Why am I? So weird to blame me for creepy men. We are not in Iran. Let the girls wear what they want and make their own choices. That's freedom

Ah right, you’re someone who’s abdicated being a parent to their child. Explains a lot.

Her male classmates would feel and think differently

The time wasted on this issue in schools infuriates me. Paid time that could be doing so much more instead with learning. Get rid of them and either have skorts or shorts for summer (good luck rolling those up) or just have universal trousers from one supplier for all year round. End of problem and it looks better. How many women these days wear a knee length skirt at work, not practical at all.

Of course they will. I'm making the point that "don't look if you don't like" or "stop sexualising girls" is a thoroughly stupid thing to say.

It does everything for girls. No longer is it acceptable to ask a women in a rape case "but what were you wearing?" And it used to be.

Again - what is liberating for a girl to wear her school skirt so short her underwear is showing?

Nowhere have I said that female clothing is responsible for male behaviour. That doesn’t mean that anything goes, especially in a school - and, as I think you need this spelling out, that goes for boys as well as girls.

She's 14, not a baby. She doesn't need me sexualizing her skirt length and shaming her for having a female body. No one cares what her older brother wears
I'm sorry for you really, saying something like that. You don't know me at all. Don't crush your pearls

In the late ‘90s and early 2000s, I went to an American girls’ school that had this issue. I never got in trouble over my skirt because it was hemmed to the right length and I never rolled it up. It’s easier here to follow the rules than it is to break them.

The school is probably trying to maintain a professional-looking atmosphere.

Yup seems almost all the school kids are rolling their skirts to an indecent level. Have been invigilating so rows of kids sitting facing us, and I avoid sitting when in front of them all as their skirts are rolled so high when you look from front all
you can see is rows of underwear on show! They really do push it to the limit, barely cover their butts and often fail to do so fully but can’t mention it or would be in trouble / crucified!

Actually you’re not as trousers don’t show your bare arse. I’m not talking about a mini skirt with tights, I’m talking about bare legs with the bottom of their arse cheeks out at school. If you think it’s fine to let your daughter expose her arse at school then I assume you’re just as happy for her to go in naked aswell. Down with the patriarchy eh?

Telling your daughter to keep her knickers private is not sexualising her skirt length or shaming her for having a female body, it’s basic parenting.

We are. We are the same people wearing either skirts or trousers. How do we change?

You didn’t answer my question, Are you happy for your daughter to go to school naked?

I don't get this knickers stuff, or saying she is naked??!
You guys are so strange

Being happy for your teenaged daughter to show her knickers at school is extremely strange.

What don’t you get? Girls are going to school with their skirts so short their knickers are on show. You have no problem with this as it’s ’her arse’. I asked you would allow your 14 year old daughter to go to school naked aswell as it’s her body to do with as she wishes if she finds it liberating. It’s a simple yes or no answer.

I desperately tried to roll my skirt at school, I was a young teen in the 80’s but it was a convent and strict. I get it. What I don’t get is the walking along with a skirt so short that you can see an almost entire arse or the tops and gusset of tights. There’s no need. It’s not a look. I see it every day at my son’s school and it’s just awful. If my daughter had tried to go out like that I would have stopped her but so many parents don’t. They need to have a bit of self respect.

Not this again!🤔😂

Everyone and their cousin is keen to gossip about teen girls' skirts, it's like the most popular topic here. I guess it suits judgy-pudgy middle aged women and creepy men of all ages so a catch all.

OP, if the students constantly get pulled up on their skirt length, I'd discourage your dd but doubt you'll have success. The teacher stopping her out of school was over the top and high on his or her power and probably grumpy their date cancelled on them.

And here we have those posters who want to talk about naked girls.

People are so weird.