Confession of a shameless hussy

There’s lots of foofaraw in the news about young, scantily- clad women in high school classrooms. Back in the olden days, when I was an elementary school kid, girls had to wear skirts to school. Boys had to wear long pants. Now, as far as I was concerned, the whole idea of girls wearing skirts to school was just plain unfair and nuts. I often wondered, usually out loud, how the H E double standards was a girl-kid supposed to have any fun in the school yard if she happened to be wearing a skirt? The swings, the slide, the monkey bars, the trees and the fence were all off limits if the boys were around. The boys could roll around in the dirt, climb the fences and trees or tumble around like acrobats but the girls were expected to be ladies. Heck, I went to elementary school so long ago, we were expected to wear bloomers over our undies, under our skirts. You never knew when a breeze would blow that skirt up. We had to spare the world the sight of our knickers.

High school was just an extension of elementary attitudes, as it turned out. The fellas could wander around in the gym hall in their shorts, and often played football or ran the track bare-chested. The boys, at least where I went to high school, enjoyed their swim classes in the nude. The girls, however, had a special hallway to get to and from the gym and pool change area to the track, gym or pool. Goodness knows the mere sight of a gal wearing a baggy, navy blue romper, white knee socks and a pair of Keds would turn those boys into lascivious wolves. If the romper didn’t do it, the shapeless, knitted tank suit and bathing cap would. Of course, it was a girl’s fault if a boy got stirred up at the sight of an acre of white thigh sticking out of those shape-defining PT outfits. Yup. Back in the day, girls were vamps. A hint of a Maiden Form or a soupçon of a Daisy Fresh could send a boy into an uncontrollable frenzy of lust. Girls were taught we had no one to blame but ourselves for improper advances. And, as it turned out, workplaces in the sixties weren’t any better. The first company I worked for had a lengthy dress code for women, the shameless hussies that we were. Human Resources would not tolerate bare legs, sleeveless garments, T-shirts, trousers, jeans or a lack of foundation garments. V-neck tops were verboten, eyeshadow and rouge was for sluts and low-lifes. Women actually had to spend an orientation day being told how to sit, what or what not to wear, how to speak without sounding like “we wanted it” and how to open the bottom drawer of the file cabinet without causing a commotion.

What’s all the fuss about what kids wear to school these days? I’m old-fashioned enough to know I’m not going to wear a tummy-top and a pair of low-rise short-shorts. This craziness is more about making an issue about how women are “asking for it” by the way they dress than it is about the way they dress. I know. I know. I can hear teachers, around the province, saying, “Easy for her to say. She doesn’t have to teach half-dressed girls.” No, I don’t. Nor do I have to teach half-dressed boys. I say if a school is going to have a dress code, it has to be fair. You can’t be telling girls to cover their tummies without telling the boys to cover their butt-cracks, to put away the wife-beaters and bathe. If you’re telling the girls to make sure their bottom-wear goes at least to the top of their knees, then you have to tell the boys the same thing. If a girl’s shirt is too low cut, don’t forget the boys need the same instruction. No flip-flops for girls? Ditto for the boys. Argh, I do hate those Adidas flip-flops.

True, I don’t particularly like the way kids dress these days, but I’m an old fart. I was schooled by nuns and misogynists, and worked with the real Mad Men. If there’s going to be a dress code anywhere, I firmly believe it should apply to everyone, including the management and the teachers.

theresa@wellingtontimes.ca