A major topic that has created controversy on our ERHS campus has been the dress code. This topic has recently come to my attention because two of my friends have been dress coded in this past week yet in this same week I have seen many boys walk around shirtless after their weight room/ practices. I decided to go out and ask one girl and one guy what they think about this situation and this is what they had to say:

Question: “Do you agree with the school dress code between boys and girls? Do you think it is fair that guys can run with their shirts off but girls cannot run in sports bras? What about guys rolling up their football jerseys and girls not being able to show their stomachs? Why is that?”

Sasjah Dade (Junior): “No, I do not agree because girls might wear sports bras that don’t cover as much, and there would be even more restrictions. We girls don’t have our jerseys rolled up during our sports games. This is because it happens so often that it is not a problem with guys anymore.”

Christian Tarui (Sushi): “No, I feel the dress code is unfair and puts limits on how people express themselves through fashion and their style. No, I don’t see it as fair as guys should be required to follow the same rules of over garments on at all times. No, guys and girls should have the same rules, if girls must have stomachs covered so should guys. I feel these rules limit people’s way of being comfortable and expressing their freedoms, I feel dress code should apply in sports as it’s monitored by the states but as in class and school, it should be taken lightly.”

So why, why are boys able to get away with breaking rules while girls have a harder time getting away with these things?

In our ERHS planner, under “unacceptable for school attire” it states that you are not able to go shirtless. Why is that not enforced while not being able to wear “tube tops” is?

The problem we need to address is not teaching girls to change the way the express themselves, but to change how girls are viewed. Instead of telling girls when they get dress coded “What you are wearing is distracting” which implies that they are distracting the opposite gender, they should be dress coded for something that is truly inappropriate like nudity. Boys completely shirtless get less attention than girls wearing tube tops, so obviously the problem is deeper than the amount of skin being shown. The problem comes from the same issues that have been occurring since the dawn of time, inequality of the genders. If girls can keep themselves from getting “distracted” by shirtless boys, why can’t boys do the same?