When administrators banned off-the-shoulder tops for female students, their male peers responded.
Students
from San Benito High School in Hollister, California, are protesting
their school’s sexist dress code in a pretty awesome way.
When
the students went back to school on Aug. 10, administrators reportedly
began enforcing the school’s dress code, which prohibits female students
from wearing off-the-shoulder shirts. Around 50 female students were
reprimanded for wearing the shirts and sent to the administrator’s
office, according to Yahoo Style.
One female student who spoke to Yahoo said that she had worn this type of shirt to school in the past and it was never an issue.
“The
dress code policy hasn’t been an issue the past two years I have been
here,” the student, who chose to remain anonymous, told Yahoo.
Fellow
San Benito student Andrei Vladimirov told HuffPost that on Monday, two
fellow senior students named Aydrian and Brody wore off-the-shoulder
shirts in solidarity with their female peers. The next day, Vladimirov
said he joined the protest as well, donning a purple off-the-shoulder
top.
“I
felt bold and subversive, as I actually, physically oppressed something
that I saw as wrong,” Vladimirov said, adding, “But this story isn’t
about me, it is about those who are actually affected by dress codes.”
Take a look at some of the awesome protestors and their rather fashionable off-the-shoulder tops.
Andrei Vladimirov
One Twitter user even pointed out that in San Benito’s yearbook photos all of the female students wear off-the-shoulder tops.
“San
Benito is dress coding a lot of girls for showing too much shoulder,
but yet for your guys’ senior pictures you guys show your damn
shoulder,” the Twitter user says in the below video.
Vladimirov
said that the school told students the dress code policy is to “keep
kids safe,” but Vladimirov believes it’s just downright sexist.
“What
I find problematic about this [keep kids safe] response is that if
someone did try to assault a woman, the responsibility should lie solely
on the attacker, not the victim,” he explained to HuffPost. “A woman
never ‘asks’ to be objectified, assaulted or raped ― and such thinking
is what creates harmful consequences. Women deserve to be treated with
respect ― and to be treated with respect is to be given the freedom to
express one’s self, and hold agency as an individual.”
The
17-year-old added that the idea of covering women up to keep them safe
is damaging: “The notion that women should clothe themselves because it
is ‘distracting to men’ undermines both the agency and volition of women
― which has long been suppressed ― and the maturity of men, and
reinforces the idea that all men are only concerned with sex.”
San Benito Principal Adrian Ramirez told Yahoo that the protest has been a really great way to sit down and listen to students.
“It’s
been a really good process for me as principal to sit down and hear
where issues arose,” Ramirez said. “We would never blame a female
student for another student being distracted by something they wore. The
other thing is as a school, we should be looking back and looking at
how consistently we address the dress code across campus, and that’s
something else students have brought up.”
Ramirez
said that he will be discussing how best to change the school’s dress
code in the next faculty meeting. He’s also meeting with the Associated
Student Body organization on campus to “start a conversation regarding
dress code.”
“I
already have several students who are interested in being a part of
it,” Ramirez said. “The goal is to make sure they are heard and can
express their opinions and concerns.”
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