Remember the girl who got pulled out of class because her shoulders were too distracting? Or the time the other girl was attacked at night and was told it happened because she was asking for it by the way she dressed? In this society, women at a very young age are taught to conform to the “needs” of men. Now why is that? Because this society we live in is still very sexist. From the clothes she wears, to the things that happen to her, society teaches girls that they must be careful or bad things will happen to them.
When a student is called out of class because of her clothing,, she is not learning. Instead she is being told how to avoid distracting her male peers.
At Verona High School, students say the dress code restricts the girls more than the boys. Teeaisia, a Verona senior, says girls “Can get kicked out for small things.” These small things could include spaghetti straps, an exposed upper back, or shorts that are a bit too short. Jared, also a senior at Verona says, “Yeah, the school dress code does target girls and it is because girls are showing too much.” Jared however does not find a little bit of skin distracting. As Laura Bates wrote for “TIME” ,“When teachers punish girls for wearing clothes deemed ‘too distracting’ for boys to handle, it teaches a damaging lesson.”Girls should not be taught to conform to their fellow male teachers/peers.
As adolescents grow, they find that rape is a big issue. A woman’s chance of being raped in the U.S. is one in five says Soraya Chemaly, a feminist, writer, and satirist who wrote 50 Actual Facts About Rape on the “Huffington Post”. This shows how messed up the system of teaching is; we are not teaching our boys and men how to respect our women. “911rape” shows a scary statistic: 80 percent of the girls and women who were raped were victimized by someone they knew.” This is not okay. Instead of teaching girls how to cover up, we should teach our boys how to treat them. This will not only help break down the wall of sexism, but allow a safer environment for everyone.
Those who may not see the sexism in society may say, “Well look at how she is dressed, she looks like she wants some attention, she was asking for it.” Is someone asking to be fired when they make a mistake? No; we all give each other this thing called trust. To trust each other to keep each other safe and equal. Society still does not provide that trust and safely because we are teaching only our little girls. We must teach our little boys the difference between what is right and what is wrong.
What doesn’t need to be taught from right or wrong is the way someone dresses. We can live in a society where girls are not pulled out of class because of their clothing choices or being raped because they were “asking for it.” We need to not only teach our young girls about how to protect themselves from harassment and prejudice thoughts, but also teach our boys about how to act. It is not okay that society targets girls and their bodies.