Thighs. Shoulders. Low-cut. Navel. Buttocks. Do school dress codes send the message to young girls that these body parts should not be visible in school? And with what consequences?
Posted yesterday at 9:00 a.m.
Rose Moisan-Paquet took a close interest in dress codes in her master’s thesis in sociology submitted last February, entitled Girls’ experiences and perceptions of dress codes in Quebec public secondary schools.
In all the debate that occupies the news these days, these questions come up: what are the objectives of the school dress code? How is it lived? These questions are central to the study of M.me Moisan-Paquet.
“What’s interesting is to understand what current dress codes do,” says the 25-year-old doctoral student in sociology at Laval University. What exactly is regulated and how is it experienced? »
To fully understand the situation, Rose Moisan-Paquet studied seven dress codes of public secondary schools in Quebec and interviewed eight girls aged 17 to 19 who had attended other public secondary schools. She also put it into context: dress codes have existed for a long time in schools… and the demands to modify them, abolish them or have them applied differently too. The first protests listed took place at Robert-Gravel high school in Montreal in 2016.
PHOTO PATRICE LAROCHE, THE SUN
Rose Moisan-Paquet
It was in 2003-2004 that dress codes were tightened. At the time, it came from all the discourse on hypersexualization in the early 2000s: we wondered where young people were going, we said that their sexuality was unbridled, amoral. Women’s fashion was considered sexy, and that was presented as a problem.
Rose Moisan-Paquet
The shortcut between the “dress of girls” and a “depraved sexuality” is established… even if it is only a perception, recalls the sociology student. “Several studies belie this point. Young people may have a more progressive vision, but they reproduce the same sexual behavior as 30 or 40 years ago! »
An example of this tendency to judge a teenager’s conduct by her clothing? Marylise*, a third-grade student from Quebec City, was sent home because of shorts deemed too short. The 15-year-old girl claims that her teacher would have told her that she looked like a “guidoune” dressed like this. “I felt embarrassed, especially since it was said in front of a lot of other students,” she says.
Never mind: school dress codes are a framework for decency, respect for certain proprieties and moral standards. Mme Moisan-Paquet notes in his memoir that the words chosen are often vague, leaving room for interpretation. “It opens the door to a subjective application of the rules,” she writes in a chapter devoted to school clothing policies seen through the lens of gender and sexuality.
And that’s where the shoe pinches: the application of the dress code, designed for everyone, however, regulates the outfit… of the girls. This amounts to saying that it is used to “control the bodies of girls in the public space”, underlines Rose Moisan-Paquet.
Tammy*, 14, from Montreal, illustrates this point well: “My brother wore jeans with holes in them several times to school. I borrow a day from him and I get warned, because the holes are considered too high and you can see my thighs. I had to go home to change because I refused to wear disgusting lost property pants…”
Iniquity, guilt and sense of injustice
According to Rose Moisan-Paquet, dress codes impose restrictions on “typically” feminine clothing: the length of the skirt, the depth of the neckline, the wearing of leggings, the width of the straps of the camisole. The only unisex item of clothing covered: shorts.
But here again, the inequity is very real. “My brother and I wear the same shorts for the school volleyball team,” says Amélie*, 16, from Gatineau. “I get warning after warning at practices, but not my brother. Obviously, the garment does not fall in the same way: we are not made the same…”
The reactions of informed girls? Stress, humiliation, shame, guilt, anger. And feeling of injustice. “Do my studies count? wonders Maélie*, 15, from Montreal, who had to miss an afternoon of school after being warned for a skirt deemed too short which could “distract boys from their studies”.
One of the biggest issues related to the application of the code is there, according to Mme Moisan-Paquet: the responsibility lies… with the girls. They must “manage themselves” and “be careful”…
Although we are after the era of denunciations of sexual violence, think of the #metoo movement for example, we are still in a perspective of the accountability of victims, and not in an accountability of the aggressors.
Rose Moisan-Paquet
Does the dress code reflect this? Is it justified in a masculine view of the thing? This is what the student concludes in her dissertation, writing: “I argue that the dress codes of Quebec public schools (re)produce inequalities that are not only gendered, but also classified and racialized […] School dress policies thus represent both a mechanism for dominating girls’ bodies and a device for repressive control of female sexual expression put in place in the name of an essentialized “masculine gaze”. »
Just because teenage girls think dress code rules are “obsolete and humiliating,” says Rose Moisan-Paquet, doesn’t mean they’re keeping quiet. They are well aware of what is happening. “They have things to say,” she insists. They have a point of view. They are not passive and they manifest and claim. »
* All of the girls who testified for this article did so on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals at school.