By Heidi Stevens
Chicago Tribune
WWR Article Summary (tl;dr) Heidi Stevens tackles prom season, particularly the policing of women’s fashion choices that often takes place.
Chicago Tribune
Students at a Dearborn, Mich., high school were greeted recently by a “modesty poncho,” a neck-and-shoulders-covering wrap that administrators promised to distribute to girls whose prom dresses they deemed too revealing.
“If your dress does not meet our formal dance dress requirements, no problem!” read a note attached to the poncho, displayed in the school lobby. “We’ve got you covered, literally. This is our Modesty Poncho, which you’ll be given at the door.”
Now they’re saying, “Not really.”
“To be clear: The poncho will not be passed out at Prom,” Eric Haley, principal at Divine Child High School, wrote in a letter to parents. “It was on display to proactively remind students of our dress code policies and eliminate any confusion prior to this special event.”
If necessary, Haley added, “we may also provide wraps and shawls, as we have done at school functions for many years.”
I get it. High schools have dress codes, even at prom. Catholic high schools really have dress codes.
But can we talk about how confusing and counterproductive it is to police girls’ bodies in this way, as though a poncho (or a wrap or a shawl) works like a wet blanket to distinguish teenagers’ completely normal and inevitable attraction toward each other?
Particularly when the policing takes place without counterbalancing messages about consent and safe sex?
Every year, prom inspires a collective dialogue, among parents, among school administrators, among casual cultural observers (i.e. Facebook), about how much skin girls should reveal.
This year, that dialogue takes place amid a federal push toward abstinence-only education and Health and Human Services Department cuts to teen-pregnancy prevention grants.
We’re hoping, I suppose, ponchos will do the job.
I have my doubts. Teenagers have sex, always have, always will.
On average, young people in the United States have sex for the first time around age 17, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a sexual and reproductive health policy organization. Among 15 to 19 year olds, the organization says, 44 percent of females and 49 percent of males have had sexual intercourse.
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Sticking our heads in the sand (or covering them with modesty ponchos) won’t change those numbers. But empowering teenagers with knowledge about safe sex will decrease the attendant risks.
“Comprehensive sex education reduces rates of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections by teaching young people how people become pregnant and get other people pregnant and how STIs are transmitted,” Chicago-based sex education teacher Kim Cavill told me. “All proven strategies for risk minimization are also taught, including abstinence and all available forms of contraception. Once young people have all the facts, they are empowered to make decisions they feel good about regarding their own sexual health and well-being.”
Data show, time and again, that comprehensive sex-ed classes are more effective at reducing teen pregnancy than abstinence-only programs.
They also provide a welcome opportunity to talk about consent.
“We role-play. We have conversations about strategies for when a person wants to choose abstinence, but also when a person chooses to be sexually active and how to insist on condom usage,” said Cavill, who offers sex education workshops to parents, families and organizations. “Young people take that information and take control of their own health and decision-making.”
I worry that we chip away at that control, at girls’ belief that they are in charge of their own bodies, when we overemphasize and override their wardrobe decisions, even as we under prioritize their health education.
“When a school makes a statement like the one about modesty ponchos, what they’re really telling every young woman at that dance is, ‘Not only are you responsible for yourself and your own body, you’re also responsible for all the bodies around you, including the young men,” Cavill said. “You’re not just robbing young women of their own agency. You’re saying boys can’t be responsible for themselves, which is not just unfair to the young women. It’s also really unfair to the boys.”
I’d love to see us, parents, school administrators, casual cultural observers (Facebook), move toward trusting that girls arrived at their prom dress decision after careful consideration of a million different factors: their individual style, their family’s religious beliefs and/or value system, comfort in their own skin, cost, comfort, and so on.
I’d love to see us applaud those choices, rather than throw shade, or a shawl, at them.
And I’d love to see us empower girls to exercise knowledgeable, informed control over all parts of their body, not just what sort of clothes they put on it.
