Girl Humiliated At School For Not Wearing A Bra

Lizzy Martinez, a student in Florida, was told that her not wearing a bra was "distracting" to the boys. In addition to telling her to wear a second shirt, the (female) dean told her to move in order to assess the "situation" at hand and suggested that she cover her nipples with band-aids. The situation angered Martinez's mother--and rightfully so. Telling a teenage girl to show how her breasts move is sexual harassment no matter if the dean is male or female.

Dress codes are put in place to encourage safety, professionalism, and create a specific environment. Humiliating a teenage girl does none of those things and instead makes girls think more about if their bodies agree with their clothes than the class material. If you don't call out boys for having accidental erections or tell them to not wear gray sweatpants, don't call girls out for not wearing an undergarment that you're apparently not supposed to see anyway.

The enforcement of dress codes should not involve the degradation that Martinez underwent. Not only that, Band-Aids can tear the skin off the nipples and cause allergic reactions in those who are allergic to the adhesive. That is definitely not a pleasant place to have a rash. If the school just told her to wear the second shirt, I would have been fine with that. If this school really has issues with nipples, require everyone (yes, that includes the guys) to wear pasties.

Dress codes are also put in place to reduce wardrobe teasing and shaming. However, the rules that target girls actually encourage it and that humiliation comes from the adults with power over the students, which makes it more difficult to deal with. This situation also involves another set of double standards--those that affect teachers. If the dean were male, he would have been called out for sexual harassment. Even worse, would anyone have cared if Lizzy Martinez were Lance Martinez being lectured on why having an accidental erection was making the girls uncomfortable?

https://www.today.com/style/lizzy-martinez-says-she-was-punished-not-wearing-bra-school-t126924
https://www.dailywire.com/news/29197/braless-teen-school-humiliated-me-making-me-cover-amanda-prestigiacomo
https://www.buzzfeed.com/briannasacks/high-school-asks-teen-to-cover-nipples