Due to recent events, the staff at Tucker County Highschool has decided to "crack down" on our dress code. The dress code is standard for most highschools, meaning that it is sexist, body-shaming and promoting rape culture.

Personally, I find the fact that staff are interrupting a person's learning in order to hound them for their outfit choice, especially when it is targeting the women of our school.

In the dress code, any straps that show from under a shirt (bra straps,) are prohibited. How many men do you see wearing a bra in the halls of our school?

If a pair of pants is to have holes, the holes must not come above where your fingertips meet your thigh, but when I see people being dress-coded for this, I only seem to see women or feminine-presenting people having this happen to them.

If a top happens to be a tank-top, the straps must be the width of two fingers, but again, I only see women and feminine-presenting people targeted for this.

These few examples, of course, are not the only instances of sexism and bias in the dress code.

I believe that our dress code is completely sexist, or at least the way the staff go about it is. 

Not only this, but it is promoting rape culture.

"rape culture

noun.

a society or environment whose prevailing social attitudes have the effect of normalizing or trivializing sexual assault and abuse."

I believe this is happening in the sense that we are teaching young women the mentality of "how to not get assaulted/harassed," instead of teaching our young men "how to not assault/harass."

I do not believe in the statement, "Boys will be boys." No. I will not take that. That is an excuse for an education system too lazy to educate young men on how to be decent human beings.

Instead of teaching girls what they should and should not wear, let's teach boys that other people are not sexual objects to be looked at and fawned over in inappropriate ways at inappropriate times, since this is what we are so worried about.

No, I do not think a bra strap or shoulder is distracting, midriffs aswell. No young man has ever had a hard time focusing on his schoolwork because of a bra strap showing.

In a typical work environment, if a woman's bra strap or shoulder is showing, and a male is distracted by it, this is a problem for HR, where the man is typically scolded for again, looking in an inappropriate way at an inappropriate time. So why can't our schools be this way? You want to prepare us for the work environment, correct?

I'm not saying we should abolish the dress-code alltogether, but I am saying that if we are going to enforce it, then we should enforce it equally and make the code itself less aimed towards young women in the student handbooks.