Yearbook quotes used to just be little cute ways of being remembered or sharing jokes with friends. Now, in the age of social media, many students hope to be able to share their sense of humor or their ingenuity with thousands of people who never attended their school. Sometimes, it works, and their photo and quote get shared all across the world. One student’s yearbook photo has gone viral for making a hilarious point about sexist dress codes. When Tori DiPaolo tweeted this photo from the yearbook, she included a caption. “Tori: 1; Dress Code: 0.” She wasn’t just congratulating herself for an entertaining quote that poked fun at the hypocrisy of school photos that bare those scandalous shoulders when the school itself bans them. She’s apparently waged a lengthy battle against the school’s outrageously sexist dress code policies. “Over the past four years, myself and many of my friends have received dress code violations for clothes that were nowhere near inappropriate.” That’s all too common. And while many students are quick to blame teachers for reporting them for their “offenses,” they should realize that most teachers only do so for fear of getting into trouble if they don’t report dress code violations. “I became a bit infamous around school for fighting the administration about dress code, so I figured I’d use my senior quote as one final jab.” Great callbacks to your reputation are a great way to use a yearbook quote. Second only to the folks who use their yearbook quotes to come out of the closet. “I just found it funny that the outfits for senior portraits technically violated the dress code by exposing our shoulders, so I saw my opportunity and ran with it.” Funny, yes … but not funny haha , you know? Dress codes can be especially onerous in the south, where soaring temperatures can combine with humidity to make even a tee shirt feel like its smothering its wearers. But no matter the location, dress codes are clearly and aggressively based on gender discrimination. “It’s all based on sexism, and it is completely unreasonable.” She’s not pulling that out of nowhere. So much of dress codes has to do with the idea that a girl’s bare shoulders or, gasp, if her tee shirt rides up, will distract the boys in the classroom. You know, because shoulders and the small of your back have magic powers that force boys to stop paying attention. One of my favorite anecdotes about girls responding to stupid sexist dress code enforcement was a girl who was told that her bra strap was showing so she needed to change outfits who then reached under her shirt and removed her bra. All the while without breaking eye contact with the teacher. Not all heroes wear capes. Or bras. “There have been a number of incidents where I was called into the office due to what I was wearing. Whether it was my bra strap showing, or my midriff being a quarter inch exposed, administration always gave me a problem.” Pulling her out of class and wasting her time when she could have been learning. Shame on them. Like, the idea of a dress code makes sense, but basically you should just need to wear clothing that wouldn’t get you banned from Instagram or, like, a McDonald’s. That’s just part of life. Instead, students — most of whom are in the middle of growth spurts and many of whom may not come from families who can afford to be picky about clothes — are expected to go above and beyond. Because apparently certain parts of the human arm are just too darn sexual. (But in ways that only impact boys) Policies are inconsistently enforced, so a girl might only get in trouble for her attire after having worn it a dozen times before, thinking that it wasn’t a problem. The most insidious part of how dress codes are enforced is that, in case she might distract boys from their educations, girls are called out of class or even sent home. Which effectively prioritizes the educations of hypothetical boys who lack basic self-control skills. The fact that girls are supposed to be responsible for their male classmates’ educations is ludicrous, but it’s enshrined in countless dress codes across the country. That kind of thinking is only a few steps below “that witch hexed me into lusting after her!” DiPaolo isn’t the only students or former student to have expressed these concerns or fought this battle. There have been viral stories, like that parent of a female student who invited the school’s principal to go shopping with them to see how absurd the dress code was an how difficult it was to meet. There are adults fighting similar battles against what’s considered inappropriate for grown women vs what men are allowed to do. There are even cases where men are directly impacted — right now in Europe, there are numerous men wearing skirts to protest their companies’ bans on wearing shorts during soaring temperatures. Though, honestly, skirts have to be way more comfortable. Maybe they’ll stick with them. And maybe society should care a little less about how people decorate their meat prisons.
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High School Senior SLAMS Sexist Dress Code with Scathing Yearbook Quote
