In early 2016 Nicola Thorp arrived for work at a finance company in London. Her receptionist role was a temporary position through a third party who had been contracted by the finance company to provide front of house/receptionist staff. On arrival at the job she was told that her shoes did not fit the dress code and that she needed to either go and buy a pair of shoes that had a least a 2inch heel or go home.

She argued, pointing out that heels where not practical for spending a whole day on her feet and asking why none of the men in office where being subjected to the same standards. She was laughed at for that question. She declined to go and buy the shoes and never completed her days work but instead went home without any pay.

That very same year in Buckinghamshire in the UK 70 girls were sent home from a school for dress code violations. That is 70 girls told that what they wear is more important than being in school and this is what the Head-teacher had to say about it

"We are protecting our female students. They should look demure and modest and not appear oversexualized in figure-hugging trousers or very short skirts."

Noting that the school has six flights of stairs, she added,

"The last thing we want is boys peering up girls' skirts while they are climbing the stairs." (Source)

Think that is bad? She (yes the head-teacher was a woman) then went on to say

"Ironically, for those girls who are not very slim, the tight clothing emphasises their heftiness and is unflattering,"

This is a female head-teacher who is not only completely comfortable with shaming young women under the guise of protecting them but in the same breath implies that boys looking up their skirts is caused by the girls behaviour not the boys and then to top it off goes full on body shaming about any of the girls that do not fit the standard acceptable body shape.

Not isolated incidents

These two examples are not isolated incidents. If you Google “sent home from school clothes” you get tons of articles about similar stories and when Nicola Thorp spoke out about her high heels experience it ignited a flood of woman telling similar stories about skirt length, hair, make-up and no trouser rules for women.

What really connects all these stories though, the school and the work place ones? Is they are exclusively about women and girls and what they wear/look like and not a single one of them involves boys/men unless it is to excuse their behaviour as they forced to behaviour in an inappropriate manner by the woman/girls.

What lesson is this teaching?

The other thing that jumps out to me is the mixed messages of both these things and what we are teaching our young woman and men for that matter. At school girls are being taught to cover up/ dress demurely. Skirts must be at least knee length, trouser must be loose fit and tailored, shoes must be plain and flat, small stud earrings are often the only jewellery, no or minimal make up, hair must not be dyed bright colours and must be neat and tidy and then young women leave school and enter the work place suddenly the expectations shifts to almost the direct opposite, high heels, make up, dyed hair, short skirts and well fitted blouses or jackets are portrayed as not only desirable but in some work places compulsory.

[clickToTweet tweet=”At school the message to girls appears to be that they are doing something wrong” quote=”At school the message to girls appears to be that they are doing something wrong”]

At school the message to girls appears to be that they are doing something wrong if they dress in a way that could be at all revealing or distracting to the boys because, well the poor boys how are they to concentrate on their work when there are girls in the room showing off their collar bones? But then in the work place the message is completely turned on its head. Women are suddenly expected to look ‘attractive, alluring, womanly’ all in a professional manner mind you. Who for one has to ask? I am fairly sure it is not for their fellow female colleagues.

Double Standard

Now before you men all start leaving comments telling me that men are subjected to dress codes too I am well aware of that but no boy at school has ever been told to tuck his shirt in or do up the buttons on his shirt because ‘he should look demure or modest’ and/or because he is distracting the girls with what he is wearing and I feel pretty confident that no boy in the history of schooling has even been told that his clothes make “emphasises [their] heftiness and is unflattering,” Not to say that his peers might not bully him for his size but he is never going to hear that from the authority figures.

Likewise once we move this conversation out into the work place men’s experiences with dress codes are completely different. Yes, they are maybe told to wear smart/business attire but that is usually where it starts and ends and for man to be sent home from work because of his clothes? I suspect it is almost unheard of. At the most someone is likely to have a ‘quiet/friendly word in his ear’ about it rather than humiliating him in front of everyone he works with.

Don’t get me wrong, work place bullying and for that matter school place bullying happens to both males and female but this is not about bullying this is about widely accepted dress code policies that clearly discriminate against women.

The power of people

The case of Nicola Thorp really bought this issue out into the limelight. She started a parliamentary petition that was signed by over 150,000 people and triggered a Commons review committee to be appointed to look at the issue of work place dress codes and disparity between man and women.

The committee concluded that the company involved in the incident had broken the law and it has since changed its dress code policy. The attention also triggered a number of other companies, some of them high profile employers to re-write dress code policies. Clearly in work places there has been a small shift towards a more even approach although when British Airway’s female crew (employed on new contracts) have spent the last two year in legal battles for the right to wear trousers at work companies are not exactly discarding these sexiest policies without a fight and as far as schools seem to go, there is no move to combat the inherent and institutionalised sexism of school dress codes for girls.

Back at school

A number of years ago my daughter came home from primary school and told me that we needed to go to the shops to buy her more pairs of PE shorts to wear under her skirt at school. When I asked her why she told me that the play ground supervisors had told her and a number of other girls that if they wanted to play on the monkey bars and hang upside down then they had to wear shorts under their skirts because it was making the boys be silly when they saw their knickers.

As you can imagine I didn’t take her to the shops to buy her some shorts to protect her modesty but I sat down and explained to her that no one has ever been damaged in a negative way from seeing a girls knickers and that no girl has been damaged by having someone see her knickers.

[clickToTweet tweet=”no one has ever been damaged in a negative way from seeing a girls knickers” quote=”no one has ever been damaged in a negative way from seeing a girls knickers”]

“If I bend down and my skirt blows up and someone passing by sees my knickers, what has happened to me?”

She thought about it for a while and said nothing really, someone saw your knickers but nothing actually happened to you.

The next day I went into the school and asked the playground supervisor if what my daughter had told me was true? To her credit she looked a bit shamed faced when she said it was. I pointed out to her that the appropriate response would have been to talk to the boys about their inappropriate response and raise the expectation of their behaviour rather than place the burden on the girls. She agreed with me and apologised and said that she would talk to both the boys and the girls who she had instructed to wear shorts and correct them.

It might only be one small incident, but I was determined to not only teach my daughter how this kind of narrative was nonsense but also challenge it directly. Like Nicola Thorp and the British Airways crew I decided that the only way forward was to take a stand and in my own small way be part of the change I wanted to see.

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