Gender neutral school uniform = Trousers

[ItIsOnlyAnOpinion]

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5906031/Girls-banned-wearing-skirts-40-schools-insist-gender-neutral-uniforms.html

No more skirts.

I am fucked off to the fucking nuts with male = default.

To the nuts I tell you.

Same here sardines

Blazers are worn at our school

Unisex...so cut for a boy

Having said that dds blazer had to be big to allow for her boobs so she wore the same one for 5 years...saved me shedloads

Skirts just are not ideal for either sex in many ways

A man's opinions on the ideality of trousers v skirts for women is irrelevant. Unless you've been a teenage girl coping with heavy periods in school you simply don't have a clue.

Hair can be a problem with girls dying it, wearing complex styles, it's often distracting for the boys and men with it's lovely swishy gorgeousness, the girls are always wearing expensive bows and stuff in it and then they lose them or are fiddling with them, takes ages to dry after school + it's harder to treat for lice.

Proposal. School hair rules >> styles should be short and natural colour. No shorter than grade 3, no longer than below the collar. 98% of our boys wear their hair this way and it does not invite the same kind of attention that girls hairstyles do. Also, some girls do choose to wear their hair short, and with boys and girls both, there are practical reasons. The suspicion is that girls have their hair long to compete for boys attention and that's another problem.

So. short hair all round. Makes perfect sense.

Sardines,

I will take your rather obviously cast fly.

It means not showing off one's body in a deliberately sexual or in any-other-way distracting way. Why do you think girls roll their skirts up? Clearly a lot of this is peer pressure (as it even happens at girls' schools). However, it started somewhere and that somewhere was girls wanting to show their upper legs off to (mainly) boys.

Same if a boy came in ridiculously tight trousers showing off his bulge, or a string vest. He is clearly giving out a signal. It is not appropriate for any working environment and the reason is pretty clear to anyone not viewing it through a very narrow angled lens.

Clothes are designed to send out messages. Clothing companies spend a lot of money selling the clothes, along with the messages. If you see any bunch of young people choosing clothes for a night out, it is clear they are not 'just clothes'.

"takes ages to dry after school"

swimming! not school.

"I will take your rather obviously cast fly. "

WTF does this mean? I was asking you because I hoped you didn't mean that girls shouldn't wear skirts because their sexy legs will distract the boys.

And oh look that's exactly what you meant.

My DD starts secondary school in September, she's 10. If she goes out in a skirt, it's appalling to me that men like you will "read" this as her being "deliberately sexy".

The solution to MEN adn BOYS sexualising SCHOOLCHILDREN is not to force girls to cover up for fuck's sake.

What a revolting post.

Actually we rolled our skirts to make it easier to run. No surprise males think they are the main character in every girls life story and the motivation for everything we do.

For schoolchildren read schoolgirls.

I have seen MANY schoolboys in my life in too tight trousers that they have grown out of, and NO-ONE stares at their "bulges" (WTAF) do they. Some notice their trousers stretched round their bums (or up around their ankles) and think, oh look his trousers are a bit tight, he's grown out of them. How many think OOHHHHHHHHH look at that little MINX. he's just asking for it, putting it out there like that, what a TART.

Nope, come on, nope. Society does not view schoolboys as sexual objects, is why.

This is all pretty basic level. I mean, seriously.

Why do you think girls roll their skirts up?

One reason is simply the same reason kids leave their top button undone or do weird things with their ties, or don't strictly conform to footwear or hair style rules - small acts of rebellion against authority.

The trick pulled by good schools is to have a few rules which are made to be broken - e.g. they set the skirt length a few inches below what is actually perfectly decent.

Sardines,

No, you were hoping I would say exactly what I did say :). Stop being tiresomely disingenuous.

And, of course, you would choose a 10 year old. Pupils are at school until 18, not 10 (or 16 excluding the 6th form). And you will not, by fiat, stop boys and girls looking at one another (and it is mutual) sexually any more than King Canute managed to stop the tide by his command.

The Bewilderness,

I think running is important so trousers will be ideal.

"Same if a boy came in ridiculously tight trousers showing off his bulge"

????

When has this EVER happened?

String vests? All that signals is "I'm 80 and model myself on old steptoe"??????????

I have no idea where you're even getting this stuff from. It's just ???????????????????????????????????????????????

Do women go around checking out the "bulges" in secondary school age trousers?
No.
Do men?
More often probably.
Overall >> useless fucking comparison. There is NO equivalence between the levels of sexualisation in our society between schoolboys and schoolgirls.

I agree with everything Lass has written here.

"No, you were hoping I would say exactly what I did say smile. Stop being tiresomely disingenuous."

You know what I think?

"And, of course, you would choose a 10 year old."

Yes because my oldest child is 10, and about to start secondary school. She has already started her periods, is 5'2, and has visible breasts. Yes I DO pick her, and I know that plenty of men and boys will decide that she "looks older" and proceed on that basis.

I haven't missed seeing you on the feminism boards TBH.

She didn't 'choose' a 10 yo - she has one.
Frankly 'If she goes out in a skirt, it's appalling to me that men like you will "read" this as her being "deliberately sexy".' is applicable to any age.

Children should be able to choose either a skirt or trousers.

The trans lobby are not going to be happy about the removal of skirts. Human rights and all that

If they really wanted to be gender neutral they would have made it so skirts, trousers and shorts could be worn by boys and girls.

There are two secondary schools near me where the girls only wear kilts and, believe me, they can clearly be worn as bottom-skimmers.

And so what, really.

What is so problematic about girls legs?

They're just legs. We all have them. And yet somehow perfectly normal legs turn into obscene sexual enticements, but only when they are attached to a female person aged between puberty and somewhere in the mid 30s.

thebewilderness

Schoolgirls grow quick. Many have that sort of giraffe thing going on.

They are not growing in this way deliberately to make men feel sexually overcome by their legs. It's just how they are built.

Time and time again the problem when you look at it is not the clothes, it's the body underneath. Humans seem to have a terrible problem with female bodies in reproductive years. We're not animals, we need to get over it.

Whilst my preference is for a skirt/short/trouser option for anyone there are aspects to this discussion that bother me (although personally prefer trousers when on because I used to worry that the weight would make my knickers fall down!)

Having seen my dd and friends perfectly able to roll a pleated skirt to ridiculous levels I can quite see why trousers might be preferred. It might be nice if we could wear whatever we like without anyone making judgements, but that is more than a tad idealistic. I suspect it is at odds with biology. Especially teenage biology. I mean, why do girls think ultra short skirts look good? Do you really think it's an abstract artistic perception?

girls wanting to wear things that "suit" , " fit well" or otherwise look pretty are playing into the notion that how pretty you look really matters.

Why is it ok for girls to want to look pretty and attractive but not ok for the boys to.notice that the girls look pretty and attractive? I mean honestly, Do you really believe that girls want to look the way they do is nothing to do with biology?

Why is it important for girls to look pretty but not important for boys?

What is that saying about a girls priorities in life compared to the boys?

is this whole "wear what we want" a way of dressing up " wear what fits in with sexist society sterotypes".

I've just realised the wisdom of my 70s era uniform. An A line tunic worn over a blouse, completely impossible to roll or otherwise hitch up, absolutely no 'gym slip' vibe about it. Fairly comfortable. Those with rebellious streaks pushed the limits on the bounds of platform shoe clumpiness.

Hey, I'm as feminist as they come, but why do they roll up their skirts at the waist band then? So they can run? Oh, c,mon.

I know why I used to back in the day - I thought it made me look more attractive. Nothing wrong with that either at that age; it was a distraction from the spots.