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Perhaps you’re familiar with the sad tale of the
Quebec-based high school student who started an Internet revolution with
nothing more than some computer paper and a pair of jorts. John Cena would be
so proud.
Quick
recap: The girl wore a pair of jorts to school one day, a pair of vice
principals did a spot uniform check during one of her classes, her shorts were
short enough to violate policy, they asked her to change, she refused, she got
PO’d and printed out a bunch of signs accusing the school of sexism and fostering
a culture where girls are viewed as sex objects, the school got PO’d and
suspended her for a day.
This is
what I can piece together from Internet
accounts.
Somehow,
this story that should have ended right then and there found its way online. Oh
wait, that’s right. It’s 2014 and every ridiculous one-off story has to get
squeezed into some larger narrative.
In this
case, some folks on Twitter hailed the student as some sort of leg-baring
messiah, carrying the torch for oppressed women everywhere, fighting the good
fight against a dress code policy that guilts girls for their bodies.
Of course, as far as I can tell
that’s mostly poppycock. She isn’t a hero, she’s a teenage girl who knowingly
broke a rule, threw a fit when she didn’t get her way and then got punished for
it. Or in other words, she’s every teenager who has ever lived ever.
Also on
the list? Low-riding pants. Is that some sort of cruel assault on male expression?
Or more likely, is it because school officials want a dress code, they have to
draw a line somewhere and that’s where they’ve chosen to draw it?
When I
was in high school, I had fairly long hair. I knew a fellow student who had a
full-blown Carl Winslow moustache. We were both constantly in violation of our
Catholic school’s dress code.
His
facial hair was banned and hair on guys couldn’t go past their shirt collar.
And you know what? The vast majority of teachers couldn’t have cared less about
where my hair stopped or what he had on his upper lip. Except for two female
teachers.
My
buddy was constantly under the watchful eye of this one teacher, who made it a
point to write him up for the stache in front of our entire study hall, even
threatening to shave him herself on one or two occasions.
As for the other teacher, I had no
classes with her, but she always managed to track me down in the halls and
remind me to get a haircut.
Why did these two female teachers
do this to us? I guess the only answer is that they were concerned that my friend’s
overt, rugged masculinity and my more soft and sensitive, yet still manly
version would overpower the school’s female students and they’d start throwing
themselves at us in the halls. (Trust me, that never happened.)
Or
maybe those teachers were jealous that he could grow a moustache and that I had
longer hair than the pair of them.
Or you
know, maybe it’s because there was a rule on the books and they felt compelled
to enforce everything in said book, unlike the majority of our teachers who
were more interested in picking their battles.
One of
the most important lessons kids learn from actually going to a school each day
is how to be fully-functioning members of society. That includes following
rules, dealing with authority figures and with your peers and so on.
If this
girl from Quebec gets an office job, there’s a damn good chance there will be
some sort of dress code she’s going to have to follow and her boss likely isn’t
going to give a shit how hot it is outside. It’s easier to start learning that
lesson early rather than getting canned later because you can’t understand why
a fishnet top isn’t an appropriate thing to wear to a client meeting.
You
could ask the question: Should short shorts be banned? Is that sending the
wrong message? But that’s not the point. The school has decided that’s where it
wants the line. Just like guys can’t have their jeans sagging down to their
knees. (Also, an aside, if a guy showed up in cut off shorts that stopped
mid-thigh, he’s probably getting sent home too. No proof, just a gut-feeling.)
I’m not
blaming the student in this case. I mean, she’s absolutely wrong about every
single part of this, but that’s not her fault. She’s a teenager, that’s her
job.
The
real blame, as it always is, is on her parents.
This
isn’t about rape culture or slut-shaming or any other buzzword. It’s just
typical teenage nonsense. The only difference is, back in the day her parents
would have jumped in with a “No daughter (or son) of mine is going to do XYZ”
speech, told their kid to listen to the principal and defused the situation.
Now, no parent wants to believe
their precious kid could do anything wrong and so it’s off to Twitter or the
evening news if someone even thinks about suggesting their perfect angel is anything
less than that.
I’m not sure mom and dad steered
that media car in this case, but I know they didn’t pull it over.
The
school has a very clear no-butt policy. It doesn’t want to see the top of your
butt hanging out of some sagging pants or the bottom slipping out of the bottoms
of your short-shorts. Even though the shorts in this case weren’t THAT short,
let’s just acknowledge such a thing is hardly out of the question.
If the
school had a rule mandating all blue-eyed students must be treated as inferior
to brown-eyed ones, then by all means, feel free to rebel to your heart’s
content. That rule makes no sense.
But on
the revolutionary spectrum, crying about shorts falls closer to “Corey and
Shawn go on strike because they don’t like tests” than it does to “Boston Tea
Party.”
