AIBU to challenge the school’s wording about pupils rolling skirts up?

[GreenSalon]

Weekly newsletter today from DC’s secondary school contained a paragraph on uniform including the fact that there have been complaints from the public about “pupils who choose to wear skirts” rolling them up to wear them extremely short. It finishes with asking parents to speak to their children about why this is “not a good idea”.

Now, apart from the fact I assume that they must mean girls, is this not clearly implying that short skirts = making themselves vulnerable and if is, then if anything bad happens as a result it is their own fault? I thought we had moved beyond this kind of nonsense.

I only have boys at the school not girls but want to write to the head to point out how utterly sexist this is. DH agrees with me pov but thinks I shouldn’t write. AIBU?

Totally agree. Going by this thread, some parents are encouraging it! Just awful. It beggars belief that this is what school girl attire has morphed into. Feel so so sorry for the girls that feel uncomfortable dressing like this but feel they have to because it’s expected. Social media and phones, vapes, school uniform.. we continue to let children down.

It might be “ er…what’s a pudenda?”

Oh yes they can.

A teen boy will look, it's just in their nature and how they are wired. Especially with hormones flying through. They will look, it's only natural

I’m good. Thanks.

There's one very good reason why these girls should dress more modestly, namely that they are influencing men to see young girls as sexually desirable. If the girls look like children and are dressed like children men will generally ignore them, but most men would be sexually attracted to a physically developed young woman in revealing clothing, even if they'd never admit it.

Once that thought has been planted it stays there. And even though the vast majority of men would never take any action it really can't be good for society that ordinary men, who wouldn't remotely consider themselves perverts, start seeing teenage girls as objects of desire.

I spoke to my son about this who told me in his mixed grammar school 6th form that the girls all he weng to 6th form with wore their skirts normally as per school rules..he remembers an assembly once saying that girls can be sent home if skirts too short

School uniform is stupid, honestly. Other countries don't have this problem because uniforms aren't a thing everywhere. DD doesn't ever wear short skirts outside of school.

My kids secondary have a very strict uniform policy all year and then in the summer on the hottest days they are told to wear their PE kit, which for the girls is a skort which shows off all their arse cheeks in the breeze. They're expected to walk to school in that and give the whole town an eye full.

My DD rolls her skirt up, I've caught her. The school have only one specific skirt they are allowed to wear which was brought in to prevent it being rolled up. It costs about 4x the price of an Asda one and it can be rolled up fairly easily. I only buy her thick tights to wear with it so she's not showing anything whatever she does. On non-uniform days they all wear jeans. I wonder why we're bothering.

You should never be attacked for a lack of clothing. But that does not make a lack of clothing appropriate

School uniform is a good thing when worn according to the rules. It is a leveller and prevents jealousy and competition between those who can’t afford the latest clothes and shoes and those who wear designer gear. The schools need to be more rigorous when enforcing the rules, and parents should support the teachers.

School uniform is fine. Never had an issue. You wear it to school..simple as

You are over thinking this. If the school has a policy about skirt length and not rolling up skirts to an unacceptable length then that is the policy and needs to be followed.

"....is this not clearly implying that short skirts = making themselves vulnerable and if is, then if anything bad happens as a result it is their own fault?".

No, that's not what it's implying. That is what YOU are inferring. Two completely different things. It says they're "making themselves vulnerable", NOT "making themselves provocative"! And they are making themselves vulnerable. That doesn't mean what you seem to think it does. Apart from that, the rolled skirt look is horrible, and some girls do take it too far!

Totally agree

I am sick of walking down the road to the shops and seeing school girls with both cheeks of their arse hanging out. Creating unnecessary stares from passers by who don't know where to look.

OMG the world is going mad. I recently sat at a brass band concert in a secondary school with a 4th year girl student showing her pants. Most people noticed and it was both embarrassing and distracting.
why do people not realise this. I don’t want my daughter wearing a skirt so short it’s showing her pants. A bit of self rest would be the most important thing here. Let’s stop blaming school for everything.

some decent points, but:

" what feminists don't seem to get: Clothing is power, lack of clothing is subservience."

Hijab? Burka? Head-to-toe sackcloth outfit? ✊🏾👍🏾🤯

Only read the first page. Laughing. We were rolling skirts up in the 60s and 70s . I am always amused when I drive through town and see the school kids looking just as they did when I was at school…except we were in class. Why, at any time of day. 10 am. 11 am or any hour , are the streets full of school kids? Don’t they have lessons any more? They dress in uniform to parade the streets till it’s time to go home?

Lots of girls at my school did this in the 90s. Nothing new. We used to have to get our skirts measured to see they were the correct length below the knee. Extremely unhealthy misogynistic stuff, obviously.

Always amazed by how many people live in areas where girls’ skirts are so short they are routinely exposing their naked backsides. At nearly 50, I’ve never seen another females ‘bum cheeks’. Plenty of tradesmen bum cheeks, but zero women.

It is not a leveller. You can always tell which kids have rich parents and which haven’t by their uniform. To tell yourself otherwise is delusional

Morphed into..it’s been going on since the 1960s ,..
it’s the norm

Just because something has been going on for decades doesn't mean it's right

I agree that boys should be allowed to wear shorts. Knee-length 'bottoms' of whatever variety are smart and practical. Obviously, nobody is going to object to bare legs below the knee for either boys or girls; it's bum cheeks and pants on show that the whole issue is clearly about.

Unfortunately, at my DS's school, boys are not allowed shorts - and so none of them wear them; it's only (a large proportion of) the girls who seem not to be able to comply with the clearly-stated uniform requirements - even though the rules already allow them considerably more choice, freedom and comfort in the summer than the boys have.

I agree with all of this; but what does it have to do with refusing to follow clear rules about acceptable school uniform, and instead insisting on displaying your bum cheeks, knickers or worse to everybody?

This is not about the response of men or boys; it's about self-respect, respecting others by not showing your private areas and not blatantly ignoring rules just because you think you're too special or important for them to apply to you.

I don't live in the UK and I have never seen any girl wearing a skirt as short as talked about on MN, or even those I've seen on TV programmes. We rolled our skirts up when I was at high school in the 70s, but only to mid thigh. Kilts are worn here a lot in winter, and some of them are ankle length. I imagine any girl here wearing such a short skirt would be immediately told not to, it just doesn't seem to be tolerated. I really don't understand why it seems to be so common in the UK.