Worcester school mirrors replaced with 'provocative' posters

[DerekFaker]

I understand the intention here, but I think it's failed badly it its execution and comes across more like shaming girls for wearing makeup etc.

Just have an assembly and tell people not to hang around in the toilets! Or put up some posters saying that instead.

"According to images posted on social media some of the quotes included "beauty is nothing without brains" and "make-up is a harmful drug".

The temporary measure was introduced after some "misuse" said the school.

The school's head teacher, Neil Morris, said the bathroom had become a "congregational social area" with some older students blocking the path to toilets, while they socialised."

www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-hereford-worcester-64836291.amp

Fucks sake those messages.

They all start from an assumption that girls are wearing make up because they're not confident in their skin or they're doing it for boys. The MISOGYNY of the underlying assumptions that would give rise to those statements is breathtaking!

My DD and her friendship group are experimenting with makeup because it's fun, it's a thing to do, a lot of them are involved with drama and they like seeing how to change appearance. They don't wear makeup to school as it's banned but often DD does on the weekend. She's not at all unconfident in her own looks, but she likes changing them sometimes like she likes changing her clothes. She can make herself look older with makeup (I'm not that keen on that, for obvious reasons and have told her so, but she does add a good couple of years with makeup).

I experimented with makeup at this age too - it's just a fun thing. These days (and in fact when I was young also) boys do it too - look at David Bowie, Boy George.

The teachers in that school need some serious intervention as this level of underlying misogyny is dreadful.

I would be appalled if my DD saw those messages as it has not crossed her mind that she's applying make up because she lacks in confidence or to appeal to boys (or girls, which I note were absent as a reason for applying makeup - sexist and homophobic). (as yet she's shown no romantic interest in either sex)

I would be very cross if the teachers at her school put those ideas in her head.

Hopefully the fact she has me as a Mum and the conversations we have about these things would inoculate her against such dangerous, sexist ideas.

So she hasn't analysed it... what reasons does she have for why she applies make-up and almost all the girls around her apply make-up and almost all adult women, but almost no boys and no men? It's an expectation pushed on both girls and women as part of sexist beauty standards. It's usually not so overt and explicitly thought-through as "I want boys to think I'm pretty", but it is going along with ideas that girls and women should be 'beautifying' themselves and that bare female faces aren't good enough and that girls and women 'should' wear make-up.

I do agree that replacing mirrors is at best an annoyance.

So are you basically saying gender is real ?

That girls want to experiment and play with make up because they are girls and boys don't because they are boys and it's nothing to do with sexualised sec based society expectations and raging hormones ?

The boys her in drama group apply make up too. Many of her friends don't. I don't.

I would say there are lots of things that girls just generally do more (like ballet) and only a few boys do, and she's aware of why that is (social norms, socialisation, parent choices), but she still likes applying make up. It started with face painting (and she still does that kind of 'makeup' but also more subtle). But there are plenty of boys doing it too at her school. Not just girls.

I NEVER wear makeup and never have so she knows that it's not necessary. I was quite surprised when she started experimenting, but it came out of her drama activities. They have to wear make up on stage to make their features easier to see and in that context it's entirely equal (they both apply makeup) and there are about 50/50 girls and boys in her group.

She's not going to stop doing things she likes doing just because more girls do it than boys in general. She does some sports and activities where more girls do them than boys and some where more boys do them than girls.

@NeverDropYourMooncup

I think your pupils were really Lucky to have you as one of their teachers at their school .

It's good to hear that teachers like you about,

We all know as Adults how important self cofindence in life really is and also how detrimental having low or non existent self esteem can have from shitty life experiences in life and childhood can affect you in later life,

You might have been the only person in that pupils life who boosted their vunerable fragile sense of self, at confusing emotionally time the transitional stage of their lives between childhood and Adulthood.

At her school no girls wear makeup to school, it's banned (it's a strict school) so in her world this statement is not true almost all the girls around her apply make-up and almost all adult women, but almost no boys and no men

None of the adult women in her life wear any makeup at all. Not one. Neither do the men. Some of her teachers might, I suppose, but none of them look like they're wearing make up when I've met them.

I don't even OWN any make up. None of my friends do either.

So your assumptions for my DD are false.

Nothing 'gender' related about it. Human beings across all cultures use make up / jewellery and other adornments and body modifications. The specifics are cultural. Some men wear eye liner, jewellery etc., my son has occasionally experimented with nail varnish and other make up from a young age as has my daughter - because it's dressing up, fun, imitating older children and adults, signifies being part of a social group.

But what we have in schools is that the girls and boys are behaving differently .

So are you saying that because society expects girls to wear make up and care about appearances we should make sure that during the school day they have sufficient opportunity?

It's the concept that covering mirrors and reminding the girls that there is more to them than external beauty is somehow shaming that I am struggling with

Good LOrd! Talk about surveillance and disciplining of girls! It is distasteful and arrogant.

I do think that a lot of teenage girls get distracted and sometimes even distressed with 'beauty culture' at the moment, but it is not teen girls who are advertising & pushing these kinds of myths.

It's a bit like slut shaming, basically.

It's the concept that covering mirrors and reminding the girls that there is more to them than external beauty is somehow shaming that I am struggling with

I see what you mean - of course we want young women to know that there's more to life than external beauty! But to do it in this hectoring way, and in such a pointed way, is shaming.

Basically, it's blaming girls for social conventions.

I don’t love the covering of mirrors (like girls can’t use their phones as mirrors anyway) as a tactic, but I think some posters here don’t understand the full extent of makeup/aesthetic culture right now. Girls aren’t just wearing makeup because it’s “fun and creative,” there’s huge pressure at younger and younger ages and it’s not just a bit of lipstick and mascara, it’s multiple layers of primer, foundation, highlighter, lashes, eyebrows groomed, and on and on and on. I watched a TikTok supposedly on “beginner” makeup with “basic products” meant to be for people just learning makeup and what l was taught as “simple, everyday” makeup involved dozens of products - there were a about 3 different foundations for what was billed as easy, low efforts makeup. There absolutely is a very compulsory, time consuming, heavy makeup culture that is extremely expensive in products, high pressure to be applied correctly, and prompted by needing to be photo ready at all times for social media. Girls and women are wearing full faces to the gym, out to the grocery store, I have a friend who won’t go out without false lashes. I think it’s naive to think that somehow the particular girls you know are immune to this pressure and just playing and it’s definitely worth talking to girls seriously about.

No similarly "provocative" signs in the boys? I don't understand how this is not sex discrimination?

it’s definitely worth talking to girls seriously about.

I agree. But not by shaming them.

Much as I think the fake tan, heavy eyebrow, heavy foundation and false eyelash look is bloody ugly (and frankly, a dead giveaway as to class).

It’s ugly and time-consuming and sucks up brain space. They’d be better off out in the fresh air or reading books or generally improving their thinking, but that’s just my personal disapproval.

It is not OK to shame or victim blame young girls for this ugly “aesthetic”.

I agree. And it is a dead giveaway of class. Total commercialisation, too. How to get round it I do not know, except to teach our daughters not to...but peer pressure!

I am also local to this school and one quote from the head said that the mirrors had been vandalised, and smeared with shit and used tampons 🤢🤢🤢 which is why they had been removed.

Blocking the way/door to the toilets?

Ermm, it couldn't be to stop boyz going in there, could it? Just a thought! Did the head even think about that, at all?

@Grammarnut " I agree. And it is a dead giveaway of class "

Ooooh, harsh.
I'd rather see a gang of working class girls in bad make up, than a gang of middle class kool mummies taking their kids to a paedofest!

The senior teachers in this school sound sexist to me. It makes me wonder what else is going on there.

They could just impose rules of no make up in school if they're that worried (but then they'd have to pull their fingers out and enforce it), instead they're victim blaming the girls and implying the reason they wear make up is solely in relation to men. So sexist it's untrue.

Not healthy at all.

Apologies to @Grammarnut it would seem that @BlueHeelers was the originator of the comment regarding class.
They also seem to decry the shaming of these girls, while shaming them at the same time. As if they can help what class they were born into!

oh hang on a mo, actually you did agree with the comment, i take the apology back.

They've removed all the mirrors from my child's primary school this week too !
7 years olds could really do with a mirror to see how much lunch they have around their faces so I don't understand why 🤷‍♀️