The Ridiculousness of High School Dress Codes For Girls

I have just completed my first year at George Fox University. This is a Christian school, just like my high school, Portland Adventist Academy. However, one of the bigger differences I noticed is the dress code for girls. When I came to GFU, I felt relieved that I no longer had to worry about shorts coming to my knees and tops coving most, if not all of my shoulders. I would never consider myself a risqué dresser. All my life I have been interested in clothes and fashion. I have been interested in creating outfits that made me feel like myself and utterly beautiful. When I started growing long legs and breasts far over the average size of a girl my age, I began to get criticized for my features I had no control over. Suddenly, skirts were always too short for me. Tops were too low or straps were too thin. Luckily, my parents had raised me to value myself and look at myself as attractive, inside and out. However, thats not to say when one of you teachers approaches you and tells you that your skirt is too short, I felt a bit of a blow to my self-esteem. You see, in my high school, it was ok for boys to walk down the hallways without wearing shirts or having jeans almost sagging to their knees. Because there is no way in hell a girl would look at them and decide they must have sex with that boy as soon as possible. No. That just sounds silly doesn't it? However, reverse the situation, and that is exactly why high school dress codes, at least in my experience, were placed; to keep from turning boys on. Now, I think it is very important to dress modestly no matter your gender, however the reasoning for doing so should not be in fear of turing someone else on. That is incontrollable. Honestly, boys will get turned on no matter what a girl is wearing. If an extremely attractive girl wears long pants and a modest long sleeve shirt, a boy will still notice her body regardless of the lack of skin showing. That's just nature. It is so wrong to me to teach girls that it is their fault for having attractive features that just so happen to grab the attention of males, or in some cases, other females. This is like telling a surviving murder victim that  it is their fault for leaving the door unlocked at their house so a murderer could get in. Quite frankly, not all males are going to be just crazed with sexual urges all the time either. It is so wrong to say that all boys are going to feel this way if all girls dress this way. Women should not be treated as a distraction, nor should men be treated as sex crazed uncontrollables. It is all twisted and wrong. If it really is male sexual urges that High Schools are worried about, wouldn't it make sense to teach the male part of the student body how to respect females? And have a class teaching females the same kind of thing?

One other thing about high school dress codes that really bother me is the fact that not everyone gets called out. When I was a senior, I got called out for wearing a skirt that was just a tad too short for school standards but the same day a girl shorter and less curvy than me was wearing an even shorter skirt and a crop top (which were not even allowed). She was never told to change or that her outfit was in violation of the dresscode simply because she could pull the outfit off, thanks to her body type.
This is why the leaders, the adults, of our society need to adjust dress codes to understand different body types, the reasons why a dress code should be in place, and add one for the boys as well in much more detail. My main point however though is this, girls, your bodies are beautiful. No matter if you weigh 98 or 298. You are beautiful the way you are. You should dress how you want to, because it is an expression of who you are. Always remember that.