I know, I know. It's a tired topic. But the fact that it's still a topic at all tells me that it still needs to be talked about. Obviously, despite the fact that it feels tired because everyone is talking about it, those that need to be listening to what people are saying aren't because nothing is changing.

This should be a non-issue by now. Yet, girls are still policed daily on what they can and cannot wear. And I'm not talking about the fact that yes, sometimes people (girls AND boys) wear things that are inappropriate, whether for the setting, occasion, ect. It happens. There will always be someone doing something they shouldn't. But that isn't the thing that I'm talking about today.

I'm talking about girls being told their shoulders can't show, that their legs need to be covered, that even when their legs are covered it might still be a problem (yup, looking at you, yoga-pant shamers), that their clavicle (seriously?) is too enticing and so on and so forth.

To those who abide by these rules and genuinely believe in them, take a step back and think "would I apply these same rules to boys?" And if the answer is no, you might want to re-evaluate. Even if your answer is "yes," I'd wager you have no problem with guys wearing baseball pants, muscle shirts or shorts.

I mean this has gotten to the point that girls are being sent home from school based on their "distracting" outfits. And this is telling girls that their education is less important than their "job" to remain discrete so that boys can behave themselves.

And I've heard every, yes, every single excuse in the book as to why these standards are acceptable, understandable, or reasonable. Most recently, I read an article which explained "Think about it like this. If you're on a diet and trying to lose weight, but the rest of your family isn't dieting and all they eat is junk food right in front of you, how hard is it going to be to stick to the diet? The temptation would be so big, you would just go back to eating junk food too."

Actually, as someone who religiously practices healthy eating in a world that is not designed towards those that are conscious about their health, no, no that isn't how it works at all. And anybody else that has ever said no to, well, anything, can also attest to the fact that just because everyone else is doing it does not mean that you have to (didn't our moms teach us this in like, kindergarten?).

If you are on a diet, you do not go to your friends, co-workers, or family and say "I'm sorry, you cannot eat a doughnut because I have decided that I am not going to eat doughnuts."

It might be really nice if the world worked that way, yielding to your own needs and desires and making life incredibly easy for you. But, news flash, it doesn't!

And furthermore, women are not food to begin with. And the fact that people who are hellbent on making the world a convenient place for men who have not been taught to behave themselves appropriately continue to associate us with inanimate objects (meat, junk food, a fancy watch in a bad neighborhood - the list goes on and on) frankly, pisses me off. Because women are not objects. And cheapening us to such things is disgusting and a pathetic basis for an argument.

It is not okay to make it my fault that a guy cannot be a decent human being. It has nothing to do with what girls are wearing and everything to do with people telling boys from the beginning of time that acting in whatever way they want is totally okay because at the end of the day the girl they acted against "shouldn't have been so revealing/flirty/whatever."

When someone is murdered, you don't say "man, they really should have avoided being so tempting to that murderer."

And what scares me the most is that while these dress code issues may seem small, what they all add up to is the society we now live in where violence against women in the form of battery and rape is incredibly prevalent. Just so you know, 1 in every 6 American women have been victims of rape or attempted rape (RAINN). And, 1 in 4 women will experience domestic violence during her lifetime (Safe Horizon).

But honestly, I can't see why the idea of abusing someone who has been equated to nothing more than an object your entire life would be especially difficult to come by. Maybe next time before you decide to police a girl on what they're wearing you might try thinking about the fact that doing so could add to the growing statistics involved in this nations rape and battery rates.