<p>Tom1944, believe you are naive as to how many (I won’t say all, but certainly many is appropriate) high school/college girls dress. A simple, “we don’t dress that way at Local High” would result in limited wardrobe changes. </p>
<p>My sister is a dean at a fairly big public high school and she spends a large portion of her day dealing with issues of dress. She’s had many moms tell her she was being unrealistic about the length of skirts and shorts for girls in this age group. Their handbook says shorts/skirts are to be no shorter than “mid-thigh” and their midriff is to be covered. Seems pretty straightforward to me, but girls get suspended multiple times for being in violation of this policy. She wants to scream: “Where are these girls’ parents when they are leaving for school in the morning?” </p>
<p>High school girls are very fickle. The men have a very difficult time dealing with this. Her male colleagues have been told they are dirty old men for noticing their plunging necklines and short hems when sending them to the office for inappropriate dress. </p>
<p>While I would never defend a pervert, please bear in mind male teachers have very little defense when such accusations are made. I know of more than one man whose career in education was threatened (one was forced out and never returned to the classroom) because of spiteful h.s. girls who made allegations about them. Administrators must be very careful about such things.</p>
I’m not so sure about this. I think it’s more that they want the right guys to ogle them. Unfortunately, if you throw bait in the water, you never know what kind of fish you’re gonna catch. ;)</p>
<p>masslou- I am not naive I understand they dress. I also understand that telling them not to dress that way may not get the desired results. It does not mean you do not tell them. When I see young women dressed in a manner that does not leave much to the imagination I notice I do not leer.</p>
<p>A friend of my D wanted to get her navel pierced at age 15. Her father was adamantly opposed. He said it would make 40 year old men who saw her on the beach think she was easy. In typical teenage girl fashion she turned his argument around and said, “Are YOU looking at teenage girls at the beach?” He sputtered, “NO, that’s not my point…”</p>
<p>Misslou, I suspect that many of the girls (especially freshman) I see in spaghetti strap tops and short-shorts didn’t leave the house that way. They had a sweatshirt or yoga pants on… until they got to school. And our school isn’t air conditioned. My senior D was complaining about the “slutty” way this year’s freshman class dressed last Sept. She said, “Everyone knows, you don’t violate the dress code on both the top and the bottom. If you’re wearing a spaghetti strap or low-cut top, you wear jeans. If you’re wearing short-shorts, you wear a t-shirt that’s not too low cut. Break the rules on the top or the bottom, but not both. Geez, this isn’t the beach!” And I work in the building, so I KNOW what my D’s wearing. She’s pretty conservative.</p>
<p>*At one point my son asked him point blank if something was going on between the two of them and the teacher lied to his face. *</p>
<p>This is typical. And, when the “higher ups” do get involved, they ask and are told, “nothing is going on.” And, the higher ups accept that answer - case closed! Do they really think a teacher is going to say, “Yes, I have the hots for Susie Q and she feels the same; please let me keep my job.”</p>
<p>*The girls were wearing flip-flops and the type of shorts that barely cover the buttocks and groin. (The kind that basically give no more coverage than underpants or a bathing suit bottom.) Their upper garments were skin tight. BTW, the temperature here is still in the 50s most of the time. It’s not like they “have to” dress like this because it’s hot.</p>
<p>I was really wondering where a 40 yr old guy is supposed to look and how he is supposed to react when girls are parading around in public in highly provocative outfits like these. Obviously they want guys to ogle them. *</p>
<p>I was recently in a morning bagel shop and some high school girls came in similarly dressed (or really undressed). The high school is across the street.</p>
<p>I remember thinking, "Gee, I’m glad my boys went to a private high with uniforms because I doubt they could keep their minds on calculus and chemistry with all that bare fresh young skin within inches of them.</p>
<p>I remember thinking, "Gee, I’m glad my boys went to a private high with uniforms because I doubt they could keep their minds on calculus and chemistry with all that bare fresh young skin within inches of them.</p>
<p>I don’t think it matters how they are dressed- from what I remember the kids who went to parochial school were always the wildest out of the bunch.</p>
<p>Teenagers may wear revealing clothes and act “flirty”, but the onus is on the adult to not be a filthy pervert. (This goes for both men and women.) Teenagers put on attitudes and acts, dipping their toe in the swimming pool of adulthood. Maybe it’s unwise, but . . . teenagers do a lot of unwise things. It’s no excuse for an adult to take advantage of them.</p>
<p>And someone who ogles girls with their boobs hanging out is going to look at appropriately dressed girls and IMAGINE what they’d look like with their boobs hanging out. I am not buying that these people have “nowhere safe to look” unless the girls have taped pictures of boobies to their faces.</p>
<p>This attitude is part of the reason this kind of thing is underreported–because the first question on everyone’s lips is “how was she acting” and “what was she wearing”–because those poooor middle-aged men just can’t resist the seductive wiles of teenage girls and it is clearly the girls’ fault. Good thing those men aren’t teaching college art classes, whatever would the poooor things do when they had to sit in a class with an UNCLOTHED model?</p>
<p>With all of the studies that show that men have sex on their minds way more than women I don’t think women can fully understand why many of them have difficulty dealing with scantily clad young women. I certainly can’t. </p>
<p>Now, as a woman, I still have trouble understanding all of these female teachers fooling around with teenage boys. As a high school teacher of 11th and 12th grade students all I see are young boys who are still awkward, not always tops with personal hygiene, * but much better than 9th grade boys*, and in need of many more years of maturing before I will be able to see them as men. A lot of the 11th and 12th grade girls won’t date boys in their grade because of the immaturity issues and to think 30 and 40 year old women are interested???</p>
<p>Even though I wish young girls would cover up more, all of this talk about how little they wear reminds me of rape trials of old when then woman’s dress and location were factored in and led to many women being blamed for the rape. Rape is about power and yes women need to make better choices as they are victimized sexually far more than men are, but it still doesn’t excuse the rapist. Maybe the school situations are similar, maybe they are about power and control by insecure adults, if we can even refer to them as adults.</p>
<p>What a woman - or a teenage girl - wears is NEVER an excuse for inappropriate behavior by adults, or sexual assault by their peers. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t make for awkward situations for male teachers. I really don’t think the girls understand that. </p>
<p>I really don’t envy the male teachers in our hs. Even admitting that there is a problem with how the girls are dressing can get them branded as a pervert. That’s completely different, of course, from an adult who does become involved with or make inappropriate comments to students.</p>
<p>Even though I wish young girls would cover up more, all of this talk about how little they wear reminds me of rape trials of old when then woman’s dress and location were factored in and led to many women being blamed for the rape.</p>
<p>That is a different issue. No one thinks that a sexy dressed girl is asking to be raped or should be blamed if a rape occurs. Rape is an act of violence against women…</p>
<p>The point that I was making is that I would imagine that male classmates (equals) would have a hard time concentrating on calculus or whatever while the girls surrounding them are barely dressed. That doesn’t mean that the boys are thinking of raping these girls. These boys are just going to be overly or smesexually stimulated in a place (the classroom) where they shouldn’t have to deal with that issue in such an exaggerated way.</p>
<p>:) Imagine how hard it would be for many girls to concentrate on their studies if there were pics of cute clothes, shoes, and purses, or smells of chocolate all over the classroom. LOL (OK…that’s a stereotype! Don’t flame me! )</p>
<p>Girls dress in that matter BECAUSE it’s both provocative and fun. Yet boys get tarnished for merely “seeing”. Which is another part of the fun. </p>
<p>I wasn’t trying to say that the boys were more likely to rape a girl who are scantily dressed, I was making a comparison between comments regarding how difficult it is for adult males to ignore a provocatively dressed teenage girl to how (if you look at the legal history for rape cases you will see this to be true) female victims were blamed on the rapes because of their dress, occupation or location (wrong place-wrong time). I understand that it would be very difficult for a male (young or old) to ignore and not be distracted by an attractive and provocatively dressed female, but for an adult male to act upon these “distractions” and pursue a relationship to be is akin to rape in the sense that rape is about power and control. </p>
<p>A friend told me that her daughter’s male cousin told her that teenage boys have two things on their minds : food and sex. When they are hungry they think about eating and when they are eating they think about sex and then when they are full they still think about sex. The male cousin was in his early twenties when he said this. Not being a male I can not verify this statement, but studies do suggest that it it true.</p>
<p>Indeed, but perhaps we are overlooking the degree to which the GIRL is exerting power and control by deliberately flaunting her body in front of people whom she KNOWS will be turned on but whom she also knows are constrained from reacting the way they could react in a setting where dressing provocatively is appropriate, such as at a party or nightclub. In other words, by indicating their attraction and interest. (I’m not talking about rape or harassment.)</p>
<p>We seem to have fallen into some kind of commonsense void, where the idea of appropriate dress is equated with shame or lack of empowerment or terminal dowdiness. Add that to the gross sexualization of little girls seen everywhere, and you have a strange situation.</p>
<p>Oddly enough, this same issue came up last year in our local federal court conference! Some of the judges complained about inappropriate courtroom attire worn by some attorneys – particularly women with plunging necklines and push-up bras. The judges caught some flak for making this complaint: “His mind ought to be on the case!” Yes, of course it should, but we are all human beings, not robots. It’s a lot more difficult to focus on the case when you look down from an elevated bench into a bowl of cleavage. I don’t think that has very much to do with gender or even orientation. It’s always distracting to see too much of someone’s body in what ought to be a professional environment.</p>
<p>Exactly, Hanna, and moreover as everyone knows the entire point of such attire is to attract attention to one’s sexuality! While no one should have to go around in a burkha, it is no more appropriate for a woman to go to court in such an outfit than it would be for a man to go in skin tight pants and six-pack-baring half shirt.</p>