Slut Shaming School District Shows ‘Pretty Woman’ Clips And Bans Tight Pants

A North Dakota High School has reportedly taken ‘slut shaming’ to incredible lengths, as staff not only implemented a new dress code limiting female students’ clothing choices, but supported it by showing clips from the movie Pretty Woman. While school dress codes, which often seem to focus closely on how much girls’ bodies are covered, are always a hot-button topic, a direct comparison between a prostitute in a 1990 movie and girls’ daily attire makes this case, at Devil’s Lake School District, stand out.

Valley News Live reports that after a tip from a parent, they called the school, where a vice principal confirmed that girls have been forbidden to wear leggings and tight jeans to school. He also confirmed that the students were shown clips of the Julia Roberts movie, Pretty Woman, in which Roberts portrays a prostitute hired to play escort to a wealthy man.

Some female students have complained that the newly-implemented dress code rules out most of their wardrobes.

It’s long been a complaint that the usual way of implementing dress codes has a heavier effect on girl students, and in essence, tells them that providing boys with a distraction-free environment for learning is more important than providing girls with a safe and comfortable learning environment, and freedom of expression.

A recent Think Progress piece used another school’s new dress code to illustrate the disparity in effect of these rules. In that case, 200 students received detentions for their clothing, and 90% were girls.

Students defying these clothing rules are often made to leave class until they are provided with different clothing, suggesting to teenagers that their schools would prefer for girls to miss class entirely than for boys to have to struggle through with distractions.

Girls are also being given the message that they are responsible for the actions of boys in their presence — a strong, early message that they are at fault if they are the victims of someone else’s sexual misconduct.

[photo credit: Matthew Kenwrick]

The message is even stronger when, such as this case, a dress code is clearly, explicitly, and overtly directed at female students only.

Slut Shaming School District Shows ‘Pretty Woman’ Clips And Bans Tight Pants