A viral video, described as “condescending,” lays out the dress code at Marcus High School in Flower Mound, Texas.
A “sexist” dress code aimed at high school girls at a Texas high school is so offensive that the principal has been forced to issue a public apology, WFAA-TV (Dallas) is reporting.
As school season gets started up again, parents and kids across the country are dealing with the rigors of being back at school and, indeed, learning the rules. And for some kids, that means learning the dress code. However, the new dress code for girls at Marcus High School in Flower Mound, Texas, has gotten attention in the media, for all the wrong reasons. First, it’s aimed specifically at girls – it doesn’t mention the boys’ dress code at all – and second, it could be considered condescending.
“I will not wear athletic shorts.”
In the video, which you can see below, a classroom of girls, with a female teacher standing at the blackboard, repeats, over and over again, “I will not wear athletic shorts.” Later in the video, girls wearing long shirts over short shorts can be seen walking through the halls, smiles on their faces, while the camera cuts back to the teacher, leading the class in repeating the rules.
Seniors Catherine Moring and Nicole Hollowell were appalled.
“They were zooming in on girls legs in the video. They were showing up close of the girls in shorts. They were doing this at the same time saying shorts were too sexual too be worn at school. This is oversexualization. We’re not okay with this, we’re not going to just let it happen and sit on the sidelines.”
Mom Lauren Anderson was equally unimpressed.
“It’s like a PSA from like the ’50s saying, ‘Be a good girl,’ so that means you can’t wear shorts.”
The younger ladies say that it’s downright impossible to buy shorts that don’t violate the rules; they said they went to three stores and were still unable to buy any.
Unable to find what they needed, the ladies instead took a different approach: public shaming. They asked a teacher for a link to the video, and after they got one, they posted it on Twitter. The video has since been seen over 30,000 times.
It seems to have worked. As USA Today reports, Marcus principal Will Skelton issued an apology.
“This video absolutely missed the mark. Please accept my sincere apology for not ensuring our video achieved its intended purpose – to remind ALL students of our dress code expectations.”
According to WSPA-TV (Greenville), the dress code has been updated to mandate “shorts of appropriate length” for both boys and girls.
Source: Read Full Article