Divine Child High School, a private school in Dearborn, Michigan, decided to put up a display at their entrance. They offered free - and hideous - ponchos to any GIRL who failed to follow the prom dress code.
They are called “Modesty Ponchos” by administrators at Divine Child Catholic High School. It’s new this year to keep female students in line with the dress code at prom. What do you think? pic.twitter.com/hd2NM3CvKP
— Jessica Dupnack (@JDupnackFOX2) April 30, 2018
Unsurprisingly to anybody who's been on the internet for longer than 5 seconds, the school had a can of old-fashioned social media judgement whoop ass delivered unto them, and it was good.
"We won the battle!" cried all the people, "They're no longer making the girls wear the ponchos!" And they went off on their merry way, completely overlooking the fact that the school planned to offer wraps and shawls to the girls instead.
"Well, isn't that better? " you might ask. Sure, it's better, in the fact that they're no longer threatening actively slut shaming - I mean, humiliating - girls who might be showing a little too much shoulder with a poncho that looks like it's been made out of cloth destined for a pair of pediatric hospital scrubs. So they're no longer going to go out of the way to make a girl feel super ugly on what's going to be the most special night of her highschool years. GREAT.
But they're still forcing girls to cover up. And that's a problem. Why? Because they're telling GIRLS (and only girls) that their bodies are an object that others will judge. An offensive object, no less.
That, my friends, is called objectification.
When we make our daughter's (or hell, even our own) body an object to be criticized and judged so harshly, we're putting an awful lot of emphasis on the packaging instead of the interior. And we're associating a large part of the female body with a lot of shame. And it perpetuates a lot of the rape culture - that a woman's clothes may determine the way she's treated.
That wrong.
Obviously, there's a minimum requirement for public decency, and that should be required equally of both boys and girls, women and men. But beyond that? Modesty should be a PERSONAL choice, no different than consent.
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