The questions for me is --- isn't female fashion geared towards the male gaze?
I am bi and when I see an attractive woman wearing tights that show her labia I do get turned on.
Low cut clothing is mainly produced for women (and now children).
You don't see men walking around showing off skin to attract women. Or lesbian women showing of their cleavage and midriffs.
Gay guys are known to dress in more attention grabbing and tight clothing primarily to appeal to the male gaze. Choice feminism, even when considering clothing, refuses to acknowledge that choices are caused by the surrounding environments.
Why do girls want to show off their breasts/legs etc?
Why is fashion, even for toddlers, geared towards the male gaze?
In reference to the boys in speedos, I am sure the female swim team would have been able to wear their suits in their photos. I am also sure that boys were not showing off the shape of their sex organs in the photos.
We need to respect our bodies and dress appropriately for the occasion. The urge to be sexually appealing in dressing is the result of patriarchal colonization of the mind and ideas of self worth.
Else we are always going to be stuck between fashion being geared towards the male gaze and then males complaining about us being sexually attractive in non romantic contexts.
Look at female leaders/scientists - they don't dress to appeal to males
Waaay back in the 1970's, in my very religious and conservative small Southern town, our schools had no air conditioning. In sweltering August and May, all the girls wore the short shorts and spaghetti strap tops or sundresses that were fashionable at the time. The boys were often wearing short athletic shorts and tank tops (it WAS the 70's) because we were all wilting in the heat. Nobody suggested that our clothes gave the boys any excuse for being distracted or for misbehaving. The adults didn't sexualize our attire and so we didn't. I honestly can't remember it being an issue. Flash forward to the early 2000's when my daughter was in middle school. It was a miserable struggle trying to find fashionable girls clothing that passed her school's dress code because they couldn't show even a sliver of midriff with their arms raised. I remember thinking that the school administration seemed to be pushing the kids to think of themselves in a sexual way rather than reacting to any behavior by the kids. I felt they were pushing their adult interpretations onto my child's body and destroying her innocence.
Thank you for this thoughtful piece. To me it is just another example of the ways that schools bully girls, especially non-white girls, socializing them through different rules than boys into a submissive position.
Sometimes older women tell girls to dress more conservatively because they think they are protecting young women from male aggression. But the example given of cultures where women literally hide under clothes with only their eyes peeking out is instructive. Women in those places are not more safe. Older people also misunderstand the cultural signals of the younger generation. Because clothes are signals but the culture changes. Showing a movie about how a prostitute dressed in the mid 80's is not only slut shaming, it's irrelevant now. Some girls do wear revealing clothes because school is boring and demoralizing and they want attention from boys to make it more interesting and boost their ego. But not all girls, probably not even most girls, wear revealing clothes for that reason. And if they do, the schools should start by making the classroom a more compelling and exciting learning environment so the kids change their focus. And teach girls that they can have other avenues of power (through their brains and talents and character and hard work) besides their sexuality. Either way, boys can ignore girls' clothes and bodies if they want to. If they struggle with that, it's a learning opportunity so they won't end up getting sued for harassment when out in the real world. Boys don't get punished for having bodies that people find attractive, so neither should girls get punished for that. Most kids just want to feel comfortable and are not signaling anything to anyone else with their clothing choices except their efforts to belong in the group (through dressing like their friends), or their personal style. Regardless, the signal a pair of leggings or spaghetti straps sends to a fifteen year old kid today is not the same signal that the same clothing item sent thirty years ago. And any adult who thinks a teenaged girl is signaling to him is delusional and dangerous (and disgusting). Schools should never slut shame girls for any reason no matter what. The adults are the ones with the power, creating the atmosphere that allows the boys to claim the girls distracted them rather than owning their boredom or attention problems or learning struggles. No one else can make you feel something or fail something. Schools that encourage boys to blame girls for their problems are teaching aggression against women instead of modeling personal responsibility. When it comes to clothes, I like the adage "dress for the job" and the idea of appropriateness. You don't wear a bathing suit to chem lab nor heels to play soccer. The appropriateness is about the job you're there to do, not the way others perceive you. And the rules have to be equitable for the boys and the girls, always. Boys need to be socialized in schools to respect girls and see them as equals and students, not sex objects. Adults have to change their attitudes and stop adding fuel to the boys' misogynistic fire. And yet we will never stop all boys and men from being dangerous predators. There will always be risks for girls and women, unfortunately. We also have to teach our girls to protect themselves and recognize dangerous people and situations. They have to learn to choose for themselves how they dress and send signals and what risks they are comfortable with. We have to teach them not to be cowed by the sexists to cover up nor pressured by peers to dress in a way that is more revealing than they are comfortable with, just to fit in. Because that happens too - girls just trying to fit in and act more adult-like than they feel. There is so much cultural pressure on girls to sexualize themselves too early now. Girls deserve to be confident no matter how they look, to be allowed to be non-objectified "girls," for much longer, not forced at ever-younger ages into objectified/sexualized "women" before they are ready, or to be free to safely explore their sexuality without judgment if that's what they're ready for. But they decide, no one else. These dress codes are all about justifying the male gaze and forcing girls into an objectified, self-restricting mindset too early. Bottom line is schools need to discipline inappropriate behavior, not police bodies or clothes, especially on girls, that make other people uncomfortable. Girls are told to manage their feelings when boys say nasty things or exclude them from leadership opportunities all the time -instead of boys being taught to change their behavior and stop trying to intimidate people or gang up against girls and minorities or use their privilege unfairly. (The same is true of course about BIPOC being told to manage their feelings when they are denied opportunities or mistreated.) Schools need to teach boys to manage their own uncomfortable feelings, rather than forcing girls to cover up! We'll never get to a better society if schools encourage and reinforce everything that's wrong now. Kudos to any girl or parent of a girl who fights back.
One of the more popular/pretty girls in my class would keep a mental list of all of the other girls she had seen violating the same dress code she was violating that day and then call the principal out on how transparently creepy the teachers must be if only she was getting in trouble. Obviously she was right so her call out never got anyone else in trouble. I’ve always admired her for it.
This is all very true and very maddening. I think what ALWAYS happens in discussions about issues that pertain to gender or sexuality, is that the conversation is about women and what they're doing, or not doing, or what they could be doing different. We rarely interrogate the male side of the equation.
As a man I feel qualified to speak about that side, and I will tell you, it has increasingly become my belief that testosterone is one of the most dangerous substances known to humans. I guess it's good for immunity or other health reasons, because evolution has kept it around, but it motivates a LOT of antisocial behavior. If you've seen The Wolf of Wall Street, you know it's a great illustration of how much bad behavior in our civilization is down to men and testosterone run amok.
To the issues in today's article, yes, it's the adults that are sexualizing these girls, and yes it's the men (and women thinking of things from the male point of view). And it's the men's problem. Covering up or changing clothes is not a solution. In societies that do that, the issue just moves to claiming women are titillating with their ankles or their hands. As long as men are full of testosterone, a sexual component is ALWAYS going to be part of how we view women. And that's OUR problem.
What I think we need to do is reevaluate our approach to men and hormones. Everyone knows women have a menstrual cycle and hormone levels that change and it's part of being a woman and you're expected to manage it, that's part of growing up. If women were doing all sorts of bad things under the influence of their hormones (which not surprisingly men often claim they do!) we wouldn't just give them a free pass and say there's nothing that can be done.
It needs to be the same with men. Managing your testosterone is the most important and yes maybe most difficult part of becoming a man. We need to teach boys that from little up, and not keep making the excuse that 'boys will be boys'.
It is endlessly frustrating to see the male part of the gender equation left out of most of these conversations, and I think because women are the ones put at most harm, women are leading and engaging in more of the conversation, and women may not feel qualified or that they're allowed to make sweeping statements about men and our testosterone. Men need to get off the sidelines and take responsibility for our role in all of these issues. It is not going to get better until men admit that it's our hormones and our inability or refusal to regulate our behavior that's the problem.
I hope the tone of my rant is coming across the way it's intended! It makes me mad because women can talk about these issues until the cows come home, and it's not going to change until men own up to that it's US.
I remember being so innocent in the fifth through seventh grade that when I wore short-shorts my only concern was that my butt (or underwear) wasn’t showing. My friends and I used to ask each other, “is my butt showing?” As long as my actual buttocks were covered, I thought I was fully dressed. Oh, to be that innocent kid again. I had no inkling of the responsibility implied by “ girls are responsible for boys’ desire and behavior” back then. Because it makes no sense, of course. Boys are responsible for boys’ desire. I don’t know why we still have to explain this to them today, but it’s depressing and exasperating.
While I hate that this is still happening, I am glad to see people finally asking about the impact on girls.
I feel fortunate not to have experienced or witnessed this particular form of discrimination at school because I would not have witnessed any push back from other grown-ups regarding the impact of enforcing such dress codes on girls. However, as an adult woman with a disability my body has been policed at work in the name "safety". Unlike my colleagues, I had to ask permission if I wanted to work in a quiet room. My workplace also has a collaboration space which has better lighting, ventilation, fewer distractions during off-peak use periods, etc. than my cubicle. Once management noticed I was completing my work there, they demanded I provide medical information--at my expense--to explain my "concerning behaviour". (At the same time my employer never checks in to see if I made it out of the building okay after a drill or emergency.) Safety seems to be more about about policing, shaming and humiliating certain bodies.
This story made me so mad!!! It reminds me of when I got in trouble in high school for wearing low rise jeans (duh, this was 2001). My principal pulled me out of lunch and told me to go to his office after lunch, and when I refused, he made an announcement over the loudspeaker for me to come down, where I got detention. For wearing jeans. And a T-shirt. Infuriating!!!
Thank you for this! This was my experience growing up and something I fight against every day on behalf of the girls who don’t need to go through this bullshit.
The questions for me is --- isn't female fashion geared towards the male gaze?
I am bi and when I see an attractive woman wearing tights that show her labia I do get turned on.
Low cut clothing is mainly produced for women (and now children).
You don't see men walking around showing off skin to attract women. Or lesbian women showing of their cleavage and midriffs.
Gay guys are known to dress in more attention grabbing and tight clothing primarily to appeal to the male gaze. Choice feminism, even when considering clothing, refuses to acknowledge that choices are caused by the surrounding environments.
Why do girls want to show off their breasts/legs etc?
Why is fashion, even for toddlers, geared towards the male gaze?
In reference to the boys in speedos, I am sure the female swim team would have been able to wear their suits in their photos. I am also sure that boys were not showing off the shape of their sex organs in the photos.
We need to respect our bodies and dress appropriately for the occasion. The urge to be sexually appealing in dressing is the result of patriarchal colonization of the mind and ideas of self worth.
Else we are always going to be stuck between fashion being geared towards the male gaze and then males complaining about us being sexually attractive in non romantic contexts.
Look at female leaders/scientists - they don't dress to appeal to males
Waaay back in the 1970's, in my very religious and conservative small Southern town, our schools had no air conditioning. In sweltering August and May, all the girls wore the short shorts and spaghetti strap tops or sundresses that were fashionable at the time. The boys were often wearing short athletic shorts and tank tops (it WAS the 70's) because we were all wilting in the heat. Nobody suggested that our clothes gave the boys any excuse for being distracted or for misbehaving. The adults didn't sexualize our attire and so we didn't. I honestly can't remember it being an issue. Flash forward to the early 2000's when my daughter was in middle school. It was a miserable struggle trying to find fashionable girls clothing that passed her school's dress code because they couldn't show even a sliver of midriff with their arms raised. I remember thinking that the school administration seemed to be pushing the kids to think of themselves in a sexual way rather than reacting to any behavior by the kids. I felt they were pushing their adult interpretations onto my child's body and destroying her innocence.
Thank you for this thoughtful piece. To me it is just another example of the ways that schools bully girls, especially non-white girls, socializing them through different rules than boys into a submissive position.
Sometimes older women tell girls to dress more conservatively because they think they are protecting young women from male aggression. But the example given of cultures where women literally hide under clothes with only their eyes peeking out is instructive. Women in those places are not more safe. Older people also misunderstand the cultural signals of the younger generation. Because clothes are signals but the culture changes. Showing a movie about how a prostitute dressed in the mid 80's is not only slut shaming, it's irrelevant now. Some girls do wear revealing clothes because school is boring and demoralizing and they want attention from boys to make it more interesting and boost their ego. But not all girls, probably not even most girls, wear revealing clothes for that reason. And if they do, the schools should start by making the classroom a more compelling and exciting learning environment so the kids change their focus. And teach girls that they can have other avenues of power (through their brains and talents and character and hard work) besides their sexuality. Either way, boys can ignore girls' clothes and bodies if they want to. If they struggle with that, it's a learning opportunity so they won't end up getting sued for harassment when out in the real world. Boys don't get punished for having bodies that people find attractive, so neither should girls get punished for that. Most kids just want to feel comfortable and are not signaling anything to anyone else with their clothing choices except their efforts to belong in the group (through dressing like their friends), or their personal style. Regardless, the signal a pair of leggings or spaghetti straps sends to a fifteen year old kid today is not the same signal that the same clothing item sent thirty years ago. And any adult who thinks a teenaged girl is signaling to him is delusional and dangerous (and disgusting). Schools should never slut shame girls for any reason no matter what. The adults are the ones with the power, creating the atmosphere that allows the boys to claim the girls distracted them rather than owning their boredom or attention problems or learning struggles. No one else can make you feel something or fail something. Schools that encourage boys to blame girls for their problems are teaching aggression against women instead of modeling personal responsibility. When it comes to clothes, I like the adage "dress for the job" and the idea of appropriateness. You don't wear a bathing suit to chem lab nor heels to play soccer. The appropriateness is about the job you're there to do, not the way others perceive you. And the rules have to be equitable for the boys and the girls, always. Boys need to be socialized in schools to respect girls and see them as equals and students, not sex objects. Adults have to change their attitudes and stop adding fuel to the boys' misogynistic fire. And yet we will never stop all boys and men from being dangerous predators. There will always be risks for girls and women, unfortunately. We also have to teach our girls to protect themselves and recognize dangerous people and situations. They have to learn to choose for themselves how they dress and send signals and what risks they are comfortable with. We have to teach them not to be cowed by the sexists to cover up nor pressured by peers to dress in a way that is more revealing than they are comfortable with, just to fit in. Because that happens too - girls just trying to fit in and act more adult-like than they feel. There is so much cultural pressure on girls to sexualize themselves too early now. Girls deserve to be confident no matter how they look, to be allowed to be non-objectified "girls," for much longer, not forced at ever-younger ages into objectified/sexualized "women" before they are ready, or to be free to safely explore their sexuality without judgment if that's what they're ready for. But they decide, no one else. These dress codes are all about justifying the male gaze and forcing girls into an objectified, self-restricting mindset too early. Bottom line is schools need to discipline inappropriate behavior, not police bodies or clothes, especially on girls, that make other people uncomfortable. Girls are told to manage their feelings when boys say nasty things or exclude them from leadership opportunities all the time -instead of boys being taught to change their behavior and stop trying to intimidate people or gang up against girls and minorities or use their privilege unfairly. (The same is true of course about BIPOC being told to manage their feelings when they are denied opportunities or mistreated.) Schools need to teach boys to manage their own uncomfortable feelings, rather than forcing girls to cover up! We'll never get to a better society if schools encourage and reinforce everything that's wrong now. Kudos to any girl or parent of a girl who fights back.
One of the more popular/pretty girls in my class would keep a mental list of all of the other girls she had seen violating the same dress code she was violating that day and then call the principal out on how transparently creepy the teachers must be if only she was getting in trouble. Obviously she was right so her call out never got anyone else in trouble. I’ve always admired her for it.
This is all very true and very maddening. I think what ALWAYS happens in discussions about issues that pertain to gender or sexuality, is that the conversation is about women and what they're doing, or not doing, or what they could be doing different. We rarely interrogate the male side of the equation.
As a man I feel qualified to speak about that side, and I will tell you, it has increasingly become my belief that testosterone is one of the most dangerous substances known to humans. I guess it's good for immunity or other health reasons, because evolution has kept it around, but it motivates a LOT of antisocial behavior. If you've seen The Wolf of Wall Street, you know it's a great illustration of how much bad behavior in our civilization is down to men and testosterone run amok.
To the issues in today's article, yes, it's the adults that are sexualizing these girls, and yes it's the men (and women thinking of things from the male point of view). And it's the men's problem. Covering up or changing clothes is not a solution. In societies that do that, the issue just moves to claiming women are titillating with their ankles or their hands. As long as men are full of testosterone, a sexual component is ALWAYS going to be part of how we view women. And that's OUR problem.
What I think we need to do is reevaluate our approach to men and hormones. Everyone knows women have a menstrual cycle and hormone levels that change and it's part of being a woman and you're expected to manage it, that's part of growing up. If women were doing all sorts of bad things under the influence of their hormones (which not surprisingly men often claim they do!) we wouldn't just give them a free pass and say there's nothing that can be done.
It needs to be the same with men. Managing your testosterone is the most important and yes maybe most difficult part of becoming a man. We need to teach boys that from little up, and not keep making the excuse that 'boys will be boys'.
It is endlessly frustrating to see the male part of the gender equation left out of most of these conversations, and I think because women are the ones put at most harm, women are leading and engaging in more of the conversation, and women may not feel qualified or that they're allowed to make sweeping statements about men and our testosterone. Men need to get off the sidelines and take responsibility for our role in all of these issues. It is not going to get better until men admit that it's our hormones and our inability or refusal to regulate our behavior that's the problem.
I hope the tone of my rant is coming across the way it's intended! It makes me mad because women can talk about these issues until the cows come home, and it's not going to change until men own up to that it's US.
Amen to the max.
I remember being so innocent in the fifth through seventh grade that when I wore short-shorts my only concern was that my butt (or underwear) wasn’t showing. My friends and I used to ask each other, “is my butt showing?” As long as my actual buttocks were covered, I thought I was fully dressed. Oh, to be that innocent kid again. I had no inkling of the responsibility implied by “ girls are responsible for boys’ desire and behavior” back then. Because it makes no sense, of course. Boys are responsible for boys’ desire. I don’t know why we still have to explain this to them today, but it’s depressing and exasperating.
While I hate that this is still happening, I am glad to see people finally asking about the impact on girls.
I feel fortunate not to have experienced or witnessed this particular form of discrimination at school because I would not have witnessed any push back from other grown-ups regarding the impact of enforcing such dress codes on girls. However, as an adult woman with a disability my body has been policed at work in the name "safety". Unlike my colleagues, I had to ask permission if I wanted to work in a quiet room. My workplace also has a collaboration space which has better lighting, ventilation, fewer distractions during off-peak use periods, etc. than my cubicle. Once management noticed I was completing my work there, they demanded I provide medical information--at my expense--to explain my "concerning behaviour". (At the same time my employer never checks in to see if I made it out of the building okay after a drill or emergency.) Safety seems to be more about about policing, shaming and humiliating certain bodies.
This story made me so mad!!! It reminds me of when I got in trouble in high school for wearing low rise jeans (duh, this was 2001). My principal pulled me out of lunch and told me to go to his office after lunch, and when I refused, he made an announcement over the loudspeaker for me to come down, where I got detention. For wearing jeans. And a T-shirt. Infuriating!!!
"Don't make me hurt you," said every abuser and weirdo ever.
Hell yes!!!
Thank you for this! This was my experience growing up and something I fight against every day on behalf of the girls who don’t need to go through this bullshit.
this is so infuriating