Jef Rouner picked his daughter up from school last week to find her wearing a T-shirt over the dress she'd worn that morning. The school said the five-year old had been in violation of the dress code, because her shoulders hadn't been covered.
Rouner, who's a writer, had a pretty amazing response. In a post titled "The Apparently Immoral Shoulders of My Five-Year-Old Daughter," Rouner writes that while he expected to face unique challenges from the minute he realized he was having a daughter, these challenges came sooner than expected:
Have you ever stopped to think how weird a school dress code really is? I went and checked out the one for my daughter's school district, and it's amazing in how hard it tries not to say what it actually means. There are literally no male-specific guidelines anywhere on that list. I mean prohibitions against exposing the chest or torso could hypothetically apply to boys except that they don't. Not really. They don't sell boys' clothes that do that. There's nothing that is marketed to boys that is in any way comparable to a skirt or a sundress. Essentially, a school dress code exists to prevent girls from displaying too much of their bodies because reasons.
Rouner says his daughter has worn the full-length dress to church before with no eyebrows raised among the congregation.
He makes a solid point: Clothing for men and young boys is much less likely to flaunt chest or torso areas. Most — if not all — dress codes do not exist with boys in mind. Rouner adds: "Make no mistake; every school dress code that is not a set uniform is about policing girls and girls alone."
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