To think telling a child to "cover up" because of male teachers is ewwww?

[FreeeeeeeeFreeFalling]

DD and her mates were wearing fairly standard vest tops at school for an own clothes day. All dressed exactly the same. DD singled out and told to cover up (I suspect because she is slightly larger chested than the others), which she found humiliating. She was told "there are male teachers around" as the reason!
They are 16.
I kind of think if male teachers can't keep their eyes to themselves, they shouldn't be teachers, right?!

AIBU to think this is a bit off?

Yeah I think you are being quite disingenuous when you say these things, thesixthqueen. You are placing the burden and the responsibility on everybody else to ‘avert their eyes’. That’s hardly fair or equitable is it?

Re this point,,maybe a bit of a digression but I can sympathise with what happened...however I don't think toplessness on beaches is quite the same as this.

In European countries where this is more normalised, are men walking around on beaches with erections? I think part of the issue was surely that your DH wasn't accustomed to a nudist environment: surely nudist groups likewise aren't full of men with erections, as nudity becomes normalised?

I also think exposing genitals is a bit different from breasts alone.

I agree strongly that male teachers who see breasts or God forbid knickers may get involuntarily aroused and it's unfair to blame them for that.

I don't think the lines between "sexual body part" and "non-sexual body part" (smiling is a potentially sexual act; breasts are primarily for feeding babies),

• I think this is somewhat disingenuous. Breasts certainly are for feeding babies but there's nothing wrong with the fact they are usually sexually sensitive too. Nipple orgasms are possible for many women. Men's nipples are of course often sexually sensitive too, it's not only a female thing.

Breasts absolutely do play a role in sexual attraction, without which there would be no, or at least far fewer, babies to feed! It’s interesting that in humans they are a permanent feature, while in other mammals they are only present during lactation.

@Jane379 bit of a further digression (sorry everyone else) but I was recently in holiday on a Greek island and I didn’t see a single topless woman. Plenty of bums on show though. But it was the general mix of bodies and who cares feel. Interesting the earlier discussion on staring - guilty as charged as I liked observing the different shapes and sizes, style of swimwear, etc. Obviously I didn’t make it obvious (sunglasses of course) but to me it was like people watching but on the beach. Absolutely nothing sexual involved, to be honest it made me feel a bit more comfortable about my own 60+ self.

Another ignorant reply.

It’s not just with men’s view in mind for picking clothes though, clothing sends messages, and she needs to know how to dress her body (not someone else’s body shape!) mindful of what her clothing choices says about her, both to men and women.

And while schools are for learning, they are for learning life skills as well as academic. Knowing how to dress appropriately for a work environment, not just formal but informal, is a life skill. At 16 many will be starting jobs, either part time to fit round study or on apprenticeship schemes. If she’s not in a role with a uniform, and at 16 most unlikely to be expected to dress formally, knowing how to do casual in a work place appropriate way is important.

Agreed. Unless you've worked in a school, you have no idea of what nonsense teaching staff now have to endure.

Some years back, a male depute had to remove a female pupil from my class. This one someone who previously had made allegations against staff, so - in order to protect my colleague - I watched as he escorted her along the corridor to the support base.

Guess what? She complained that I was ogling her backside. The allegation was withdrawn, but I still had the stress of contacting my union, etc.

Great point.

I think the teachers on here (me included - though now retired) have a different and, I think, better-informed perspective on teenagers/uniform/clothing issues than some pps.

It's a sort of 'perfect storm' that the following trends have happened together:

• the increased overt sexualisation of clothing promoted for young women
• the influence of porn culture on both young men and women - I can't help seeing some trends as women trying to fulfil male porno fantasies in the way they dress and change their physical (especially facial) features.
• the hyper awareness nowadays (and rightly so) of the need for safeguarding in schools
• and related to that, the exposure of the extent of child pornography and paedophile activity in society.

So you get scenarios as described by Weary, above, where teenagers are very aware of safeguarding and some unco-operative ones all too aware that they only have to say that an adult staff member has looked at them inappropriately and they will be taken seriously. (I emphasise that I'm not suggesting this shouldn't happen - of course it should, but at the same time it's an easy accusation to make).

I'm always struck on MN that the extreme view on here that women should be able to wear anything, absolutely anything, in public and expect other people to be OK with it and in fact (according to some!) not to actually look!! - while at the same time suggesting that men are lustful monsters for letting their eyes fall below someone's face. It's just not a tenable position.

I actually don't agree that women wearing highly sexualised provocative clothing and blubbering up their lips etc is a feminist statement. It think those women have fallen for a scam in which they have been pressured (consciously or unconsciously) to fulfill some objectifying male-gaze fantasy based on pornography.

@CoffeeCantata I don’t think OP will agree with you but I do. It seems she wants to support DD in wearing the vest top whatever anyone says & it’s up to everyone else to avert their eyes (otherwise they will get blamed for looking).

No pupil should enter High school without being issued with a list of what is not allowed to be worn on non uniform days along with the appropriate way to wear the uniform. This should include no skirts above mid thigh & no shirt buttons open to expose cleavage. This should be mandatory in every school throughout the UK. There should be consequences of choice for not adhering to the rules.

So are you quite happy to accept that as the status quo, then?

You don't think there's any point in us trying to teach our DDs that they're worth so much more than that - and that anybody (male or female) who tells them the lie that their value is solely in their appearance is the one with the problem?

Because if nobody ever challenges it, nothing will ever change.

Telling girls to cover up is not doing that. It's just reinforcing that same system.Telling boys and men is what needs to happen.

Thanks, @CoffeeCantata . [Apologies for the typing error in my post, by the way.]

I am also retired now.

At one point, we had girls coming to school wearing low-cut black (supposedly school uniform) trousers worn with bright red thongs which appeared when they moved in certain ways.

The one time a female member of staff warned one girl that her underwear was on show, the retort was "Ye shouldnae be lookin!"

The fad finally came to an end the day the school Head Boy intervened...

He was passing by as a girl bent over, revealing the back of her thong to the world. In an extremely theatrical manner, he screamed "My eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeyes!"

I'll add that dressing appropriately - as I suggested in a pp - also applies to boys in a school. It doesn't happen quite as much with boys, but I recall boys also having to be made aware of problems with their wardrobe - for example, when there was a craze for boys wearing low slung jeans/trousers which allowed their underwear to be on display.

@WearyAuldWumman

Yes - totally agree that the same concerns would and should apply to boys' clothing, but in general, it seems that boys tend not to choose such revealing or sexualised outfits. Hmmm - I think there's a lesson there that, as throughout history, women are the ones who are pressured/conditioned/even bullied into wearing things which - guess what - appeal to men/boys.

@thestudio it's not about 'telling girls to cover up', though. It's much more nuanced, complex, subtle than that. It's about appropriateness, and as people have already said, there's a time and a place for sexy, and it isn't at school, for everyone's sake. As I said above - oddly it doesn't seem to be an issue for boys. They tend not to feel they have to reveal their erogenous zones at school. Why might that be, I wonder? Could it be that they feel they are the powerful ones, the ones who don't need to try? Yet for some reason girls seem happy or pressured by society nto pandering to their tastes.

(OP - I'm NOT directing this at your daughter whose vest top may be perfectly appropriate for school - I'm just making a general point about the misplaced defence of women being led to think that sexualised clothing is OK in all contexts, and that it's no-one else's concern. I think it is.)

@CoffeeCantata

Yes, girls seem to feel pressurised into presenting themselves in a certain way.

I can't speak for other areas, of course, but round my part of central Scotland I'm seeing girls going to school wearing the kind of make-up that at one time would only have been worn on a night out - base, foundation, shader, blush, highlighter, full eye make-up including fake lashes. Then there are the gel nails so long that they cannot hold a pencil or type.

It wasn't like this when I started teaching in the '80s - you'd get girls experimenting with a bit of mascara and lip gloss but not a full face of make-up.

Latterly we had girls informing the P.E. Dept that they couldn't do P.E., because of their nails and hair extensions. (I gather that some of them had the braided type of extensions which were held in by some sort of combs.)

Brilliant

That's interesting- definitely that kind of beach setting seems to foster more positive self-image than seeing the unrealistic images that are more prevalent in media-
Which links to my other thought.
I read somewhere- can't remember where - that increased Internet porn prevalence had been one factor behind fewer continental countries having a lot of topless female sunbathers compared to the past. Would need to check though.

Seconded!

I agree with all this post, definitely at my girls' school I cared mainly about what my friend group thought of my clothes.

Male attention is definitely a factor among others though. At my school (older Gen Z) we did have a popular group of about 14 groups who'd often dress more skimpily (our school didn't have a uniform). It probably was at least somewhat linked that these were the group most likely to be dating earlier than the average too.

And as TheignT noted, girls in girls' schools may still be hoping to attract male attention from boys they see en route.

Good point.

Yes people need to realise what kind of skirt is being discussed. Some pps may have thought they were longer...

Yes why was considered a mini back in the 60 s is nothing like these skirts. Maybe it varies by area but they've been getting more and more common here for the last 12 to 18 months. They aren't just short they are also very tight

Yes there short and then there is what we at a local high school which is a pencil skirt so short that arse cheeks are on show. There becomes a point where it’s not appropriate anywhere!