This Girl Was Locked Out of Class For Wearing This Outfit
This is Deanna and her 16-year-old daughter, Josephina. They live in Huntsville, Alabama, where, until recently, Josephina was attending high school.
Last fall, Josephina came home upset and infuriated. She had been pulled out of class, put in a room by herself, and told that she could not leave that room until somebody brought her "something appropriate to wear." A friend's mother showed up with some jeans, after which she was allowed to go back to class. This was her offending outfit:
"[She said] 'Mom, they're telling me that boys are more important than me. They're telling me that wearing a pair of leggings, showing that I have actual legs and a butt oh my God, distracts boys, which makes them more important than me. This is insane,'" Deanna told Seventeen.com.
Deanna was furious, not least of all because it wasn't the first time she had had an issue with the school's gender-biased dress code policy.
"When my oldest daughter was only 12 years old, I was called to the school to have a little conference with all of the teachers, which was really just an excuse for me to be put in the middle of a circle, with all her teachers telling me that my 12-year-old daughter was showing too much cleavage,"she said. "They said that her shirts were cut too low, and that she needed to get a camisole or a modesty panel. I was absolutely dumbfounded."
Deanna told the teachers that if her 12-year-old's "sexuality" distracted the boys then maybe they should hold a conference with the parents of those boys to discuss why their kids couldn't pay attention in school.
This time, she was similarly up in arms, writing a lengthy open letter to the city schools. The apple didn't fall far from the tree, either.
"The days that followed, Josephina and her friends decided to start a mini feminist revolution," she said. "She plastered the inside of the school with posters they had made damning the gender bias and stupidity of the dress code. They had T-shirts made, too. One day, they all decided to wear midriff shirts. There were so many of them that the school couldn't keep up."
While the school did not issue an apology and said they have no plans to change their policy, Deanna said that she's noticed more girls breaking the dress code and not getting in trouble for it.
Still, Deanna ultimately decided that homeschooling Josephina would be the best option for her education, and pulled her out of school last summer.
"She approached me, and said that she was miserable. She said that the teachers were just glorified babysitters, and that she didn't feel like she was learning," she said. "I had felt for a long time that they were teaching for the tests, and not educating. I asked Josephina to write an essay for me, listing the benefits of homeschool, and why public school was not a good fit for her. She made valid points, and a concise argument. I withdrew her and started her on a curriculum geared toward her future intentions. She's doing amazing. Great grades, and her whole demeanor has improved."
