schools introduce hair straighteners to encourage girls to do PE

[meemarsgotabrandnewbump]

Not sure how I feel about this

Just seems to be feeding our image obsessed society even further. The last sentence about helping girls to 'support positive self image' is a bit .

Discuss

ridiculous! are they also giving them extra time to re-do their makeup after they ahve showered

mad mad mad

The straighteners are a mad idea .

But I did refuse to do P.E at school as it was a communal changing area and bullying was rife. Some individual changing & showering facilities might boost the numbers of girls doing P.E.

I used to hide behind the lockers.

There are a lot of woman that use straighners in the gym I belong to so what is the difference?

I don't see that a girl of 14 or a woman of 19 are any different in there concern to look nice and feel good, they both want to look and feel good and if by having straightners at school it encourages girls to compete in sports then that is surely a good thing?

Ivykate - I think the difference is that women who go to the gym choose to be there. The straightners are a facility provided which is a useful perk.

In schools girls are refusing to do sports because they are worried about 'bad hair'. It's a very skewed attitude. Instead of tackling the issues of the importance of fitness and self image in teenagers, the schools are pandering to it by bribing them to do PE.

I do see the point that getting girls to do sport is good, but I feel uneasy at the message being given.

What about the girls who (quite rightly) know that it doesn't matter if your hair is not perfect after sport. I worry that this is now introducing unnecessary peer pressure on them to care more about their image.

IvyKate - there's a huge difference between a grown woman paying for to use the services of a gym, to taxes being used to pay hundreds of pounds for a perk for school children to use, to bride them into taking the exercise that they should be taking anyway.

meemars- I was thinking that too - there enough pressure on girls to look good without them being pressured into doing their hair after a school swimming class. I wouldn't send my child to a school that was sending out that message.

I agree with anything which might make PE more attractive. And Meglet I totally agree with individual showers/changing cubicles. I hated PE because of the horrid communal shower and PE teacher who scrutinised us like a hawk as were in. It also amazes me that many hotels with leisure facilities have a communal changing area -yuk yuk yuk!

I absolutely agree with individual changing areas, clean comfortable facilities, hairdriers and letting girls wear sportswear that makes them feel unselfconcious.

I think though that hair straighteners are a beauty product, which is akin to providing them with toiletries or make-up to encourage them to 'feel nice' after sport.

It's not the job of the education authority and it gives the girls the wrong message about why they are doing sport.

The message is alread given about looking good from the media - we can't take that away but we can do something about it and get girls into sport by battling with them rather than being against them looking good afterwards.

I would send my dd to a school that encouraged pride in appearance and encouraged sport participation and was looking at ways of encouragment and changing with the times.

I'm not sure it really is 'changing with the times'. The media give out some terrible messages - should we incorporate them all into school policy for an easy life.

And on the practical side of it, I'm not sure it will even work. Once the novelty of the straighteners has worn off girls will still refuse to do PE.

Then what will they be offered? Topshop vouchers maybe?

Girls were asked though why they didn't do sport/pe and the main reason was the facilities for getting changed after and not having hair stuff etc. it wasn't a novelty it was there main requirment for continuing.

So why not move with the this instead of battling against it and lossing the girls from sports?

It is tax payers money and in the long run through time of more girls participate in sport it will be cost effective if they stay healthy due to this.

id be fine with it if they were self funding - ie the girls pay 20p a go

actually the more I think about it the more I am amazed, purely on a health and safety/risk assessment basis, is it wise to have very hot straighteners in a school changing room - who is going to police them?

and who decides how long a girl gets with them, and what if there are more girls wanting to use than there is time for

How utterly depressing. What a terrible state our society is in.

Oh and re an earlier comment I have read somewhere that girls don't like donning lab coats and goggles due to concerns over what they look like. In the thing I read they had bought a load of snazzy CSI style goggles to try and improve matters.

fucking PE [shudder]

they'd have to stump up a bit more than that to get me into a tracksuit

I asked DD (Year 8) about this - she says all their PE sessions are double lessons and thus scheduled to end just before break/lunch/hometime.
In every other way she thought it was a bad idea. She wanted to know if the school would provide hair protection spray and how long it would be before someone burnt the school down.
She also pointed out the potential for using them to bully others.

Yes I have to say the fact they get extremely hot is an issue - I have burned myself on mine enough times!

ridiculous

The girls in my school have been allowed to bring in their own straighteners for after swimming for quite a while - the lesson finishes at break/lunch/end of day, they can stay on and sort themselves out if they choose (and most do). Also, those pay-per-min straighteners like you see in bars are installed, all the money goes to charity. A member of staff is on duty to supervise.

When you are 15, image is everything. I don't think it necessarily encourages you to be like that forever though. As a 15 year old, I would make sure I looked nice for school to fit in with the other girls, once I left school and got into my 20s, I stopped bothering as much, as the peer pressure had lifted. Might not be right, but it's the case for many many girls in the UK.