Dress codes are meant to be put into place in order to prevent people from wearing items that are too revealing, scandalous, or inappropriate, which is understandable. School is a place for learning, not showing off your body to impress other people. However, dress codes have progressively gotten worse, and particularly worse for women.
In high school, I had to deal with a strict dress code, but it's not even the worse dress code out there. In my school if we wore tank tops, they had to be four inches wide, they couldn't be too low cut, and basically, if you had more cleavage than the average female, just don't wear tank tops because you're going to get sent home. If you had holes in your jeans, they could only be below your finger tips and the holes couldn't be too wide. People with shorter arms could get away with so much more than tall people with long arms.
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Dress codes in high school are important, don't get me wrong, but sending a female home for having a three and a half inch strap or a hole slightly above your fingertips is ridiculous. A woman's education is just as important as a man's. I remember in high school, boys would show up to school with cutoff shirts on and no one said a thing, but god forbid a woman wears a tank top in the heat of summer. I guess a woman's shoulders are just too distracting, or her bra straps showing are too revealing.
In high school, I stuck to the dress code as best I could. I burned alive every day, but I followed the rules. Even on class day my senior year, I followed the rules. I wore a black long sleeved, high collared dress that fell below my fingertips. I wore this dress several times before class day and it was fine; however, when I showed up to school, my teacher pulled me aside. She said she didn't think it was appropriate to wear that dress because you could slightly see the silhouette of my thighs through the black material. I argued with her because there were girls wearing spaghetti strap dresses, dresses that were way to short, and some girls with their cleavage being overly exposed, and my dress covered everything.
She wouldn't listen and went and got the vice principal who sent me home and said she was sending everyone else home to change too. Twenty minutes before we walked out. I was furious. I left, changed, and came back and only two other girls were sent home to change. I was outraged. The vice principal came up to me and thanked me for changing even though my dress was the least inappropriate of the group, but I needed to change because I was distracting and dressed inappropriately. The other girls wouldn't even look at me because they knew I was so mad they didn't have to change because they were favorites of the teacher.
This to me is why dress codes are getting ridiculous. I was not dressed inappropriately. I was dressed tastefully and fit the dress code to the tee, and yet, I was still sent home, and the other girls who broke every rule in the code were allowed to stay. Sometimes I just believe people let the power from sending girls home for their clothes go to their head, and allow their "favorite" students to get away with a lot more than other students. High school was ridiculous, and I'm so glad it's over. Now that I am in college, I wear tank tops and guess what? Boys can still learn and teachers can still teach. Who knew?
