Dress Codes And Sexism Essay

Why dress codes are sexist
One day you wake up and decide you want to look nice for school, so you throw on a dress. While you are walking to class, you get dress coded. Your teacher says, “your shoulders are distracting to the boys in the class, which will take away from their learning time”, and tells you to either change or go to the office. Here is some insight on to why this is sexist.
Sexist is defined as “characterized by or showing prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex”. Research shows that girls get dress coded over 5 times more than boys. More than half of the dress codes rules pertain to girls’ clothing rather than boys. Girls can get dress coded for things such as: short skirts,

They get told that they can’t be wearing revealing clothes to prevent the boys from being distracted. This teaches young women the harmful view that their bodies are vulgar and inappropriate. This in the long run can teach boys that it is ok to objectify girls and what they wear.
This can also make the students believe that the boys’ education is more important than the girls. By forcing girls to go home and change or go and find a cover up to prevent taking time out of the boys learning time, it is taking time out of that girls learning. She must leave to go find “more appropriate clothes” because her shoulders are out, rather than the teacher telling the boy to focus on class rather than her shoulders.
This is why rather than enforcing strict dress codes that mostly pertain to girls, they should instead teach boys to respect young women. When a boy grows up being taught that girls can’t wear certain things because they are so called distracting, they will grow up to think that it is ok to see them in an inappropriate way. If a girl decides to wear a tank top to school that shows her shoulders, rather than objectifying her the boy could be taught self-control instead of it being sexual to have your shoulders

For instance, at my school the dress up theme was cowboys. All the boys came to school with shorts that were shorter than their boxers, and t-shirts with the sleeves cut off and their stomachs hanging out. All the teachers thought this was hilarious and they all loved the outfits. One of my friends got dress coded that day for wearing shorts and a tank top. This shows that the dress code objectifies girls much more than boys. Both of their legs and shoulders were out, but only the girl got told to change. If that girl would’ve said the boys’ legs were distracting and taking away from their learning time, she would not have got taken seriously because how could a guy’s legs be seen as inappropriate? It is because from such a young age we are only taught that women’s bodies are sexual and not