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?

It’s not men’s uncomfortable feelings it’s women and other girls too.Also you do realise girls get pressurised and teased if they don’t fall inline and display themselves in the same way.

Bums and arse are the same thing, there is only one word for sweaty. Nobody wants to sit in a chair somebody else’s sweaty naked arse has previously sat on.

Then you’re not looking where you’re going. If you want to look elsewhere then do so. Stairs are dangerous and I’ll look in front like I always have thanks.

@GreenSalon I mean this genuinely and non-combatively: if you agree that school is different from other contexts where very short skirts are worn, what would you prefer the school’s wording in the email to have been?

Would you rather the school was perfectly
ok with pupils walking around with their bums or underwear showing?

Is that appropriate for a school?

You can't describe the attire of the people on front of you because they are attired.
If they were not, you would notice.

@Gloriia do you actually think that it’s fine for girls - children going though puberty - to wear skirts that reveal their underwear/bum then? And neither school or parents should correct them?

Maybe it’s sexist — because if it was the boys who had their balls almost showing it would be called bordering on indecent exposure.

This isn’t new. I have friends a bit older than me, who in the 60’s had to kneel down at school, and a teacher would measure the distance between the skirt hem and the knee. More than a certain measurement and you were in detention!

We didn't go around with our bums hanging out in the 60s!

And the motivation (I think) was different. Miniskirts had just come in and were mainstream fashion. Even Princess Anne wore skirts well above her knees. But school skirts were not designed by Mary Quant and most of us had had our school skirts since before miniskirts came in and they were knee length or even a bit longer if you were short. We rolled them up to be a bit more in line with what everyone else was wearing. Not in order to show our bums and knickers.

If you had half an inch of underslip showing, someone would tell you, never mind showing anything else!

They're right to address this - or more appropriately, to ask their parents to address this.

Teen girls can be idiots with no more sense of survival than a baby bunny. I see this so often, acres of under age bare thigh and sometimes arse cheek ambling obliviously along the pavement.

Then as soon as they go into sixth form it's baggy jeans and tracksuit trousers.

There's a window of vulnerability plus lack of real awareness that mid teen girls seem to pass through with no sense.

So yes, asking parents to help them raise awareness of the fact that some men DO see girls this way and not giving them anything to look at is wise.

It's not sexist. It's safeguarding a particularly vulnerable and immature age group. And it's parents' duty to do that.

I’m not actually sure tbh. Maybe to explain that outside of school, all pupils can dress how they want but that in some settings such as schools or workplaces, different standards of dress apply for a variety of reasons specific to the location? For example … and list some examples?

@Drivingselfmad you’ve made me think more about why I initially reacted the way I did. The thing is the school does have a problem with bullying via social media (all genders as victims and perpetrators) and we never get letters home about that. I think that’s what irked me. There are much bigger issues impacting on pupil wellbeing that parents could talk to all their children about. School did a survey recently which showed the figures around this. But I guess as it’s happening outside school they won’t/can’t. It is talked about in lessons but could do with parental reinforcement. However it always seems to be letters about skirts and earrings which tend to almost exclusively seem to single out girls. And as I’ve said repeatedly the school doesn’t have a big issue with rolled up skirts so put teachers’ limited energy into the bigger issues.

I wonder how these youngsters will fare when (and if) they reach the work place and realise that there are rules they need to abide by

Indeed. Even though, on the clothes front, women have a lot more freedom in 'traditional' workplaces, how is this mindset going to help to set girls up for their adult futures when they've gone all through school firmly believing and insisting that clear rules don't apply to them and they can go around at will with their private parts on show?

Are they going to turn up to job interviews barely dressed, whilst their male counterparts wear smart shirts and tailored trousers, and then wonder why he got the job and she didn't?

My son got a negative point for dropping a piece of stationary on the floor. We laughed about it. No one contacted the school. I think it’s the access to email that’s the problem. If every complaint required a phone call or a handwritten letter, the complaints would drop by 90%

Girls have been rolling their school skirts up since biblical times!! just forget it

presumably they can’t stop boys wearing skirts

Stop looking up girls skirts as they walk upstairs and any men that 'feel uncomfortable' are the problem. Not the young girls.

Unless you're a hypocrite, I can only assume you view the creepy, pervy men in the park who deliberately show you their privates in the exact same way? Because what a lot of them are doing IS very much flashing. Whatever their motives, they know what they're doing and they think that their right to do so overrides everybody else's right not to have to see it.

Stop looking at the flashers - and any women who get flashed at who 'feel uncomfortable' are the problem. Not the flashers.

Then complain about that. Ideally in a handwritten letter 😬

Because what a lot of them are doing IS very much flashing. Whatever their motives, they know what they're doing and they think that their right to do so overrides everybody else's right not to have to see it.

id never viewed it like that. You’re right! We have the right to not have people exposing themselves to us. I feel the same if people have their full cleavage on display whilst simultaneously being outraged that people have looked at their chest. Put it away then!

Ah, but boys and men tend not to want to expose their testicles as a fashion statement, do they?

It's only females who somehow want to display their erogenous zones - which I think is the result of (unconscious or unacknowledged) pressure from pornography which increasingly affects the male gaze.

Once the male gaze just demanded women looked 'pretty' but now it expects raunchiness. Don't fall for it, young women!

That can be solved via a simple block

Fine, discuss welfare concerns but try to use appropriate language or else it all looks like total mockery. Taking the piss out of young girls 'sweaty arse cheeks' in the guise of concerns for men's 'uncomfortable feelings' is not a good look.

Oh, for God's sake, Gloriia, stop with the 'men's feelings'.

It's not about men's feelings! No-one wants to look at a random person's arse. At least, no-one you'd be comfortable knowing.

Why is that so hard to understand? When I see a bare bottom I tend to associate it with visits to the lavvy. It does not make me sexually aroused. I particularly dislike big fat bottoms (I have one - no judgement). No, I don't want to sit in the chair after a bare backside, thanks.

It's such a glib and silly response to claim it's about men. It's not! It's about anyone who has taste, discretion and consideration for others.

EvangelicalAboutButteredToast · Today 12:26
Because what a lot of them are doing IS very much flashing. Whatever their motives, they know what they're doing and they think that their right to do so overrides everybody else's right not to have to see it.
id never viewed it like that. You’re right! We have the right to not have people exposing themselves to us. I feel the same if people have their full cleavage on display whilst simultaneously being outraged that people have looked at their chest. Put it away then!

Excellently put. Yes, I get the same sensation when exposed to areas normally covered up as if I were being flashed at. It's highly intrusive - and forces you into a situation find very uncomfortable.

It’s not sexist it’s completely appropriate to call this out. Anyone who thinks otherwise obviously hasn’t seen naked arse cheeks walking down the road like I have outside the local comp. And as others have said - boys (or those who wear shorts) are called out for having them ride too low at school too,

when I was at school in Oz decades ago boys were told to wear proper fitting underwear not boxers under their baggy school shorts as the teachers (and us girls) did not want to see their genitalia escaping. Same principle.

Belgium here. Most schools don't have uniform and despite what a lot of people think, it doesn't turn going to school into a fashion parade. They all seem happy to wear sensible clothes to school.

But they haven’t been flashing their arses.

That’s a completely different issue and definitely worthy of an email/complaint. Pull them up on their lack of action .