School leggings ban must address faulty reasoning

On March 18, swarms of angry girls wearing leggings could be seen in Evanston, Ill. No, this wasn’t a Lululemon factory sale. Rather, it was students protesting against a proposed school dress code to ban leggings and yoga pants at Haven Middle School, according to the Evanston Review.

Wendy Fu | Daily Trojan

The drama began when students claimed they had been told they weren’t allowed to wear leggings because they were too provocative. Student Sophie Hasty told the Evanston Review that administrators said the stretchy — and not always opaque — garment was “too distracting to boys.”

The school’s course of action was a valid one, but the issue is the reasoning behind it. Administrators have every right to ban clothing they deem inappropriate. Different schools might take a variety of approaches in doing this, from going as far as instituting uniforms to barely enforcing the dress code, but it is within their jurisdiction to make sure students dress according to their standards.

This is also a good lesson for the students themselves. Girls must learn to be taken seriously, especially in the professional world, which requires maintaining a certain standard of dress. School, as the precursor to work, should require at least some level of appropriateness, preferably through a dress code that falls somewhere in the wide range between pajamas and business casual. This will benefit the students much more than the school.

The phrase “dress for success” isn’t just a dictum parroted by women’s self-help and lifestyle blogs — it’s an actual, scientifically proven phenomenon. A study conducted by Northwestern University showed how clothing affects the cognitive process in an effect known as “enclothed cognition,” according to The New York Times. The study, which was published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, showed that if someone wears a coat he or she believes to be a doctor’s coat, his or her attention span will improve.

If the motivation behind such dress codes does not come from this psychology, however, it must at least come from a requirement of respectability. Students should be asked to wear apparel that meets certain rules out of respect to their teachers, their administrators and even their peers. None of these demands should have anything to do with adolescent boys and their possibly wandering eyes. The idea that the burden of making sure boys stay on task should be placed on girls and their apparel is simply ludicrous and perpetuates society’s idea that girls have a responsibility not to “tempt” the opposite sex.

This idea isn’t new; in fact, it has repeatedly arisen in different areas of society. In many Islamic countries, women must wear coverings ranging from a hijab to a niqab. In the United States, women are blamed in cases of rape because they were “asking for it” by what they were wearing, in what has been deemed a part of “rape culture.”

Wearing leggings without a top or dress that’s long enough should be seen as bad taste, but not because it distracts middle school boys. Not only does having to think about the opposite sex create an unfair burden on girls’ right to express themselves through their clothing, but it also gives boys no credit.

It appears Principal Kathleen Roberson realized the school’s mistake after the protest. According to the Evanston & Skokie school district, Roberson sent a letter home to parents telling them that “the enforcement of the dress code is not in response to the perceived distraction certain clothing may or may not cause and is not a mechanism in which to place blame,” but rather “an effort to maintain a respectful learning environment for all.”

Let’s hope that’s true.

Isabella Sayyah is a sophomore majoring in international relations and print and digital journalism. She is also the Associate Managing Editor of the Daily Trojan.