DeBakey High School for the Health Professions has recently instituted a rule requiring all girls to wear leggings under their skirts. There are many problems with this:

1. This expectation is not held up in the male uniform. Boys can wear shorts that go up much higher than girls’ skirts without wearing leggings. This means that the new requirements for the uniform target specifically skirt-wearing people (which is primarily girls) and is blatantly sexist.

2. As many of our female-identifying students are seeking out careers in STEM, setting an ideal that women must adapt to better fit a “man’s environment” is the last thing we should be doing. If it is an issue with inappropriate behavior from boys when girls do not wear leggings (ie. looking up skirts while on the stairs), that should be a behavior corrected in the boys, NOT a burden placed on the girls. In this day and age, we as a community need to stop putting the burden of inappropriate male behavior on young girls, and start stopping this behavior from its start.

3. Houston can get up to 90 degrees during the summer, fall, and spring months of the school year. Asking specifically girls to add an extra layer to their uniform is not only sexist, but environmentally unaware and a health risk. Heat exhaustion is a prominent issue in Houston weather.

4. The way that the dress code is enforced specifically targets girls. Girls/skirt-wearers are more frequently stopped in the halls in regards to what they’re wearing, and get dress coded at a significantly higher rate, even when not wearing skirts. 

This is a call to action from DeBakey students to our administrators to fix this sexism in our dress code. DeBakey should be a place to foster independent and strong young women, not oppress them starting at age 14. We ask that the uniform requirements be fair and held to the same standards across all genders.