Dress Code

While digging around in my thousands of emails for another file I ran across this little thing that I wrote in 2006 in response to some new (now forgotten thankfully) school dress code initiative that directed me to scope out the necklines of all of my female students. Me now is impressed with the badass passion of me then, and I post it here for your consider fucking ration.

Why do all these rules seem be directed towards policing the dress of women?

Because we live in a world where female sexuality is always ALWAYS policed and it never belongs to the woman who really fucking owns it.

A world where…

            A girl can still be thought of as “asking for it”

             Where one in four girls in the state of Texas will have to personally endure a violent sexual act in her lifetime and our best idea of a solution is to tell them not to walk alone at night

             Where a man’s erection is a woman’s fault, and worse, somehow her responsibility

A world where

            Even though every conservative hack with a tv show, radio hour, or syndicated column will tell us that provocative dress is ruining our society and our little darlings’ purity, girls see and know that a shapely piece of skin will get you more quick attention than math and science savvy

           

             Where people can usually separate a man’s looks from his brains, his physicality from his sexuality and both from his intellect, but not so much for women.

            Where women who are told to cover up, are uncovered in the billion dollar porn industry which has to cover itself up on magazine stands and hide in the shady part of town so that ministers and husbands and dads and football coaches and other perverts can gaze upon them and then hide them away in a closet or a secret file.

A world where

            A whore will and a bitch won’t

             Where governments make it hard for girl to run their own bodies: maybe you can have emergency contraceptive, maybe you can have an abortion, maybe you can have an HPV vaccination that protects you from FUCKING CANCER!

            Where little girls are told they need a husband and should grow up to be a mommy and boys are taught that they need a good job and a lot of pussy to be a man

A world where

           

            Wearing a short skirt could make you a slut in some people’s eyes, but wearing athletic pants could make you a lesbian. Supposedly that’s bad too.

            Where women are looked at every day by millions of eyes that say pretty, not pretty, great tits, fat ass, gross thighs, hot body, not after 30 beers, I’d like to hit that. It never stops, no matter what you look like.

            where men look at little girls all the time; we blame the men; we tell the girls to act like ladies, but everything we hold up as beautiful in women (small waist, perky breasts, etc) is best done by little girls. Its all of us.

And you want me to tell a girl how to dress? You want me to look at her skirt to see if its too sexy? Shouldn’t I be welcoming her to my engaging learning environment? I am supposed to check to see if she has been burdened/blessed with the kind of breasts that spill out of shirts? Shouldn’t I be trying to assess her reading comprehension skills or wondering if she could be a poetic genius with the right kind of encouragement?

.

When I was in high school, I rarely dressed in ways that my school fully approved of, but I was pretty used to the idea that the school got to regulate that somewhat. I tested the boundaries, and the school let me know they were there by sending me home to change from time to time. There were many other arenas that taught me that my body was policed, under control, and male property, at least visually if not actually. And some other healthier voices, but I just didn’t hear them over the din of patriarchal, paternalistic noise. So, in my senior year, when my boyfriend told me to wear shirts that covered me up, it seemed like a fairly natural thing. I may have even thought it was a compliment, him protecting me from the eyes of other men like that. It wasn’t until he got violent with his possessive protection that I understood that none of this was his right or his duty. I don’t know if my experience or all the similar experiences would really turn out differently if we didn’t put out the message that girls need their daddy and their principal to protect and police their sexuality, but I’m inclined to think it would help.

So, I won’t do it. I’m a woman; a feminist; and a proud rule breaker. Not a traitor.  I don’t need a government or a school, a parent, a man, or an employer to tell me what to do with my body and I won’t tell a young girl that she does either.  I own this body. Its easy to forget in this world where… well…you know, but most of the time I remember that I get to decide if this body is pretty or not. I clothe it. And I give out permission to touch it. I decide what it does. It’s mine. And I promise you I had to dress like a slut, whatever that means, a time or two, or right now to fucking get here.