Recent data shows nearly 4,000 reported incidents of sexual battery and over 800 reported rapes and attempted rapes occurring in our nation's public schools. Being subjected to a high school who's main motive is to completely shut out and hide a woman's body leads to male students believing that it's normal that woman should be subjected to such actions, such as being singled out in class, limiting their individual creative thoughts, and hiding their true self behind baggy bronco blues. Being dress coded due to having a small portion of our leg show through a hole in our jeans, or having our shoulders show, while men walk around in muscle tanks revealing their entire side body view, or in their "chubby" non-fingertip length shorts, looks a little sexist to me. Considering we're allowed to wear shorts that are finger tip length (aka showing our entire legs CRAZY I KNOW), don't you think we should be able to show a tiny part of our knee cap through our jeans? In 1848, women were given the right to vote, declaring women to be treated as equals along side of men. So why, in the year 2014, are woman still suffering the same consequences as being labeled as sexual beings and nothing more? Telling young women that we should not be proud of the body God gave us and we should completely cover up due to the fact that our body parts are "distracting" to the males, don't you think that the males should be the ones getting help if they get aroused due to someone's shoulders showing? Blaming a woman's body for someone's poor test grade or inability to pay attention in class is like blaming a women's body for the reason they were raped. "So sorry you should've covered up more!" NO. Society needs to learn that women's bodies are not the problem, it's the mind-set that people think woman are objects of sex and nothing more. Not only is it just the rules about the clothes on our bodies, but the rules against facial piercings, hair color that is not deemed "normal", and our inability to wear hats. I apologize if my tiny nose stud that can't even be seen by someone 10 feet away from me is too distracting in class, but it's absurd for that to be against dresscode. Nose and other facial piercings can even be part of religious views, and how is it fair to take those rights away? We go to a PUBLIC school, shouldn't we be able to express ourselves? Who decided what a "normal" hair color was anyway? Just because we are not born with blue or green or pink hair doesn't mean that it isn't normal and if someone is too distracted by hair to pay attention in class then maybe public school isn't for them. And no hats? Last year after I shaved my head for a cancer fundraiser at our school I got dress coded several times for wearing a beanie. When the teachers are keeping the classrooms freezing like they do, it was miserable not being allowed to wear something to keep my head warm. I was also uncomfortable with people seeing my bald head and I wasn't even allowed to wear something that made me feel a little better about myself. That doesn't seem reasonable to me.
On another note, every year almost 1.2 million students drop out of high school in the United States. Don't you think the faculty of our schools should be more invested in creating new ways to keep students interested in pursuing educational opportunities after high school instead of taking away their class time to send them to the office to strip and change? I don't know about you, but this all seems too sexist and just plain ridiculous. Although all the dresscode rules apply to both genders, how often do you see males getting dresscode compared to females? I guarantee if you went back and looked at the amount of girls who got dresscode compared to guys, the numbers would speak for themselves. We may only be 13-18 years old but we aren't stupid and we know reasonable from culpable despite what adults these days may think. Isn't the whole point of school to prepare us for the real world, not to sheild us from it? (OH and I guarentee there are clocks, coffee AND Chickfila in the real world).If you've read this and see where we are coming from please sign this petition so we can be heard and get the change we deserve. Thank you!