It has now almost become a tradition, the good weather brings to the fore the question of the relevance of dress codes in schools. It was recently learned that supervisors had “inappropriately” checked1 » the length of skirts at the Père-Marquette school, that the Robert-Gravel school adopted a “gender neutral” dress code2 and that a master’s thesis explained that the dress code in schools was nothing more or less than a “mechanism of domination of girls’ bodies3 “.
Posted yesterday at 1:00 p.m.
It goes without saying that some schools have verification processes that are simply inadequate. There’s something intrusive about using your fingers or a ruler to make sure the skirt is the right length, reminiscent of the religious school of yesteryear. But it is not because the means of ensuring compliance with the dress code are out of place that the code is too.
In fact, these events that we have talked about a lot in the news raise a fundamental question: does the dress code, which limits the length of skirts or the depth of the neckline, liberate or enslave?
Those who criticize the code argue that it enslaves, because it unfairly sexualizes the body of adolescent girls, that is to say that the school institution would send the signal that the body of these is a sexual object and that it so you have to hide it. In short, it is not adolescent girls who sexualize themselves, it is actually the gaze of others, generally that of men, that eroticizes young women.
Let’s be honest, there is a certain naivety in such an idea. Teenagers seek to seduce and please their loved one. In other words, to consider that sexualization takes place only in the eye of the observer and that it has nothing to do with the intention of the person who dresses, is to deny the reality that we have all lived in adolescence.
Some justify the dress code on the basis of this idea, but add that it serves not to “distract boys from their studies”. Those who criticize the code are right to say that this rationale does not hold water. The girls are not responsible for the inattention of the boys and the latter are not little perverts who lose their means in front of a short skirt.
That said, even if this argument is muddy, the dress code still makes sense.
Indeed, one can campaign for a “strict” dress code by simply saying that school is not the place of seduction, but of study and that in this sense, a decent dress which standardizes the student clothing is required. No need to fall into outdated clichés to say it.
School or social media?
But in all this history, what we forget above all is that by removing the “oppressive” rules of the school, we are only replacing this “mechanism of domination” by another, which is much more insidious.
If it is not the school that imposes rules, it will be social networks, the gaze of classmates and fashion, in short, peer pressure, which will largely dictate how boys and girls will dress. girls. Especially these last ones. Countless studies show that girls are much more sensitive to the image they project and that they react strongly to the gaze of others.
We mistakenly imagine that the choices of adolescents are necessarily made freely and that the rules enacted by the school restrict this freedom. However, it is quite possible to think that rules, which certainly have their faults, succeed in emancipating the individual from peer pressure. In this sense, a dress code does have its place in Quebec schools.