Everyone’s favorite day in high school was when, instead of actually learning anything useful, the class got to watch a movie. Aside from watching the middle-aged teacher attempt to operate a DVD player or Netflix, there was virtually no downside to movie day.
Female students at Devils Lake High School in North Dakota, however, had the worst possible movie day when an assembly was held to reinforce the dress code. The movie in question? “Pretty Woman.”
Two female teachers compared the students to the film’s main character, Vivian, who is a prostitute. Yes, two adults insinuated that a group of teenage girls dressed like prostitutes. How do prostitutes even dress in North Dakota, anyway? Parkas and ski masks?
High school is where freedom goes to die and where it is apparently OK to say that the female students are akin to street walkers.
Two specific scenes were shown to the students at this awful-sounding assembly. There is a scene in which Vivian visits a department store dressed in her “work clothes,” but a saleswoman turns her down because of her outfit. Later in the film, Vivian returns to the same store dressed “more nicely” and is treated with more respect.
Instead of using the “don’t judge a book by its cover” logic that is displayed in the film, the school is actually preaching the opposite.
If this feels like déjà vu, you’re right. I wrote about this same issue back in March. Something similar at a different high school is probably going to happen next semester and the semester after that, until all of the schools give up and force students to wear unisex uniforms reminiscent of the jumpsuits in “1984.”
The most absurd part of this is the clothes the administration is so riled up about — yoga pants and leggings. I don’t know about you, but I don’t know many prostitutes who go around wearing yoga pants.
What’s so bad about leggings anyway? What kind of message does that send to others? When I see a girl wearing yoga pants, I don’t think, “Wow, that girl must not have a lot of respect for herself and is probably a prostitute!”
This is overt sexism at work. The male students at this high school were presumably not shown “Magic Mike” and compared to strippers. The boys of this school didn’t have to get a lesson in “People Will Call You a Slut Because of Your Outfit 101” because, frankly, that doesn’t happen to them.
While it is an unfortunate truth that young women are judged on their appearances and outfits, the assembly should not have been a blind reinforcement of that idea. I’m aware that this one high school assembly couldn’t actually reverse all of the damage that has been done based on this common occurrence, but the least they could do was tell the female students that it was not right for them to be judged like that.
Phyllis Kadyrmas, one of the teachers who led the assembly, told the Devils Lake Journal that she thinks the situation has been overblown. With dress code controversies popping up every time school is in session, one would have thought high schools would quit doing things like this.
Until high schools quit trying to enforce blatantly sexist dress codes, controversies like this will only continue to occur.
SidneyRose Reynen is a 19-year-old film and media arts and art history sophomore from New Orleans. You can reach her on Twitter @sidneyrose_TDR.