Why are we still talking about dress codes? Aren't we beyond that by now? How about we think more about what kids are learning in the classroom and not whether or not their shoulders are visible? School dress codes are such a hot-button issue and it just keeps getting worse. Not only are girls being sexualized at inappropriately young ages, but boys are also entirely left out of the conversation. What's the deal?
We are living in times where gender identity is more fluid, and people are expressing themselves differently. Yet when it comes to school, it seems that the dress codes are still based on traditional male and female gender norms — and show a lot of bias. Teen TikToker Drew Jarding took on his high school's dress code in a social experiment supporting his female friends, and the results were nuts.
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How much skin is too much skin?
Jarding's TikTok blew up with 9.9 million views. It is a simple 22-second clip that opens with a text-to-speech voiceover saying, "Dressing the same to school to show dress codes are sexist."
He and his female friend both have on crop tops, his markedly shorter than hers. He has on shorts, and she is in leggings. Jarding walks into school, pulling his top up, and no one says a word. He and two female friends in crop tops stand in "front of like five teachers," but he says it's still all good.
That means everything is A-OK, right? Oh, heck no! Jarding and his friend are walking out of school, and with a shocked look on his face, you hear, "They wrote her up."
You have to be kidding!
He was literally half-dressed, and no one said a word.
Jarding was clearly showing off a lot more skin, yet it was evidently deemed fine. But what about that is acceptable? Did he go unnoticed? Unlikely. Maybe teachers didn't want to deal with it? Perhaps they didn't care. But the fact that his friend got written up is awful, and TikTokers agree.
"Fr. I'd wear a tank top and so would a few guys and I'd get written up but they wouldn't Love the schooling systems," a person admitted.
Others cheered him on.
"Aaaaa honestly i'm really happy you did this cause most guys like to ignore the dress code double standard !!" someone wrote. "Ty for supporting us ."
"They probably didn't dress code you because they didn't wanna seem homophobic," another TikToker suggested.
But that wasn't the end of his little experiment.
Jarding returned to school in his skimpy shirt to see what would happen. You guessed it! Not a darn thing. Yet in the video, he shows girl after girl who all received dress code violations for doing the same thing as him, and they were even more covered up!
One girl even received a write-up while he was standing right next to her and teachers let it go. Jarding also once went to school in a skirt, because "clothes don't have genders." Teachers let that go, too.
The comments on his videos are both alarming and sad.
Followers have told stories from other high schools, and what some people wrote is unreal.
"There was this one girl with ripped jeans in my school and she got wrote up but there was this guy who had his pants down so low u could see his," someone recalled.
My principal straight up told us the other day that the dress code is mainly for girls because he doesn't want them to distract anyone ," commented someone else.
Wait, what?
Many TikTokers think that dress codes are enforced for females because they might actually be a distraction to teachers, which is both gross and scary.
"Because boy teachers get distracted because of the girls," someone wrote.
"Oh and a horrible fact I learned the dress codes aren't because of the students they are because of the teachers… let that sink in," another person agreed.
Guess what? This misogynistic behavior isn't just happening at Jarding's high school.
These types of stories pop up a lot. A mom on TikTok recently posted a video of her daughter's school after they put duct tape over her jeans to cover up rips that were manufactured in the pants. Another mom posted about her daughter's school that denied her lunch because the 7-year-old had "distracting" spaghetti straps. Yes, you read that correctly: She was 7 years old!
In a world where students struggle in the classroom because districts don't have the funding to provide students with the resources they need, is a little skin really that big of a deal? No, not so much.
And thankfully, young women have young men like Jarding to help support them and lift them up, even if he's wearing a cuter crop top!
