Erykah Badu Thinks Girls Would Be Better Protected if They Just Wore Longer Skirts

Erykah Badu being Erykah Badu. (Photo: Getty)

Henderson High School in West Auckland, New Zealand, is making headlines over (what else?) their dress code, which some people are saying unfairly targets girls. At a uniform inspection at a school assembly, a group of girls were told they needed to make sure that the hemline of their skirts fell below the knees. Sounds like a standard, innocuous dress code requirement, right? It wasn’t until Year 11 student Sade Tuttle heard why she needed to adjust the hem length that things got real. According to Tuttle, the deputy principal said the rule was in place to "keep our girls safe, stop boys from getting ideas, and create a good work environment for male staff.“

Yup. Because nothing says safety like making young women dress a certain way, instead of training boys and fully grown men to stop sexualizing them. "The rules themselves aren’t the problem; the problem is when these codes target girls specifically, because their bodies are sexual and distracting,” Sade told News Hub. But there is at least one person who doesn’t necessarily agree with Sade, and that’s Erykah Badu, who took to Twitter to add her two cents to the issue.

Oh, Erykah. Creepers gonna creep for sure, and as she said, they need to be held accountable. However, to act as if a longer hemline is going to keep boys from checking out girls, or keep lecherous teachers from being, well, gross, is short-sighted. Women are targeted no matter what they’re wearing, and to act as if so-called revealing clothes are the root of these issues is just inaccurate. Just ask Christen Brandt, who had the pleasure of being harassed by a random creep in New York City for wearing… a big green parka, thick scarf, knee-high boots, and tights that were mostly covered by the coat itself. If a parka can elicit unwanted attention, what makes her think longer skirts are going to keep male students and teachers from being pervy?

Furthermore, it’s crazy that we keep speaking as if young boys and men are the only people who have desires, and teenage girls aren’t also checking out their pubescent classmates or daydreaming about a hot teacher. But we don’t tell boys not to wear their pants too tight or to wear long-sleeved shirts to cover their biceps to not distract girls. Though Badu mentions that we must hold men accountable, the point is that the burden should not be on girls and women to control the feelings of men and boys, period. As one commenter on Twitter pointed out, “what about the girls who cover up & R harassed becuz of male entitlement? The problem is not how we dress, it’s the male gaze.”

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