@mkegop You can delete, but you can't hide. pic.twitter.com/24Qp5tE0Ml
— Miss T (@TaMarasKitchen) September 25, 2018
I hate these people. If you’re on Twitter, feel free to go express your outrage. (If that tweet disappears, I have a screenshot)
UPDATE: I’ve added my tweet with the screenshot
My morning started on a frustrating note. At 7 am I received a text from my niece/goddaughter. She’s not quite 12. She received a “code violation” this morning and to quote her “had to take time out of learning to change my clothes.” She knows the score.
For the last three years, she and I have had the tradition of going back-to-school shopping together. Fewer tears when you’re doing it with Auntie. If you’re a mom, you understand. We’ve gone from shopping in the kiddie section of Target and Old Navy, to the Juniors section. And with those changes, the conversation changes. To code violations.
Seriously, before she was 11 years old, she was being told she couldn’t wear things because they would distract the boys. Luckily, she has me, her mom and my brother, who know bullshit when we hear it. So her response is a sassy, “oh, look, do my shoulders distract the boys? Maybe that’s their problem.” And we put that sweater back and look for another.
She’s promised to call me when she’s free today – she’s a competitive dancer who just tried out for the school play, is in band and choir and is on the honor roll, so free time won’t be easy. But really, what the ever fuck? This is how it starts. This is what our girls are up against.
Okay, rant over. Open thread.
ETA: Because Feathers said it so much better than I ever could
I am more and more convinced that these dress codes are all about teaching boys to abuse and harass girls, and later women.
Think about it. Why don’t we let the girls wear what they want and punish the boys if they tease or touch them. That would be far better than teaching them that girls are responsible for boys bad behavior, and will, in fact, be punished for being girls daring to exist in a world where boys are still the norm.
Note: there can be room for a dress code, but it cannot be one which excludes what is being sold in the stores that year. If you are banning mainstream clothes being sold at Target or Walmart, then you are just taking your anger at the changing world out on the young women in your care.
It also teaches boys that girls don’t have a right to be in the class as human beings. Their inclusion is reliant on correct performance of femininity.
TLDR: Whatever a school punishes girls for, the boys are learning is what the acceptable excuse for getting away abusing and harassing them later.
schrodingers_cat
Why don’t public schools have uniforms? One less thing to think about everyday.
Flanders Other Neighbor
Can’t even believe I grew up there. Wait. Yes, I can.
japa21
Mrs Japa told me this morning that she wished both our mothers were still alive (they would be in their late nineties) so they could come forward and talk about how Hatch and Grassley groped them in the supermarket line.
rikyrah
I understand all the criticisms about school uniforms. But, man, they sure are easy on the family.
You have two choices; regular uniform or gym uniform.
Makes the morning way easier.
rikyrah
More sexual misconduct accusations made against Kavanaugh
Rachel Maddow looks at new accusations of sexual misconduct made against Donald Trump’s Supreme Court pick Brett Kavanaugh, including graphic depictions by Michael Avenatti who claims to represent a Kavanaugh victim.
Betty Cracker
@schrodingers_cat: Some do, but even then, they zealously police what girls wear (hemlines, buttons, etc.).
Corner Stone
Speaking of general outrage, I fucking hate that stupid, lumbering, bigfoot swinging gait that Trump does. Like if he changes pace he’s going to fall over. Which would probably be the least embarrassing thing he’s going to do to the country on any given day.
Bruce K
Thoughtless cruelty is really not a good look, for a person or a political party.
RobertB
@schrodingers_cat: I go back and forth on that, and at the moment, I’m ‘against’. The world they’ll live in as adults isn’t one where everyone is in a uniform. So they need to get used to what they can/can’t and should/shouldn’t wear in their daily lives. However, I’ll grant you that 21st-century school board dress codes are a nuisance.
rikyrah
Avenatti: Kavanaugh accuser client may pursue criminal case
Michael Avenatti, attorney for a person he describes as a “witness and victim” of Brett Kavanaugh, talks with Rachel Maddow about his client presenting her allegations to the public in the next 48 hours and the need for an FBI investigation of Kavanaugh accusations.
Joe Falco
The knuckle-dragging mouth breathers will always be with us. I just hope we’ll vote them out of office this November and hear their lamentations. That and the Notorious RBG is still on the bench when Trump is tossed out of office and into the garbage bin of history (or prison! I’m not picky!).
japa21
Big difference between school uniforms and dress codes which are mainly directed towards girls. School uniforms tend to be both male and female oriented. Dress codes are all about making sure boys don’t let their hormones dictate their behavior because, after all, boys will be boys.
That being said, sometimes I think both genders go a little too far with some of their clothing options.
rikyrah
Kavanaugh accuser’s lawyer blasts Grassley for prejudging hearing
Rachel Maddow reads a letter from Michael Bromwich, a new lawyer representing Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, criticizing Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley for the prejudice Republicans are showing against Ford.
Corner Stone
@rikyrah: Whatever Avenatti has, I hope he brings it forward with full sound and fury ASAP. This isn’t a time for a lot of PR hype-man style BS.
rikyrah
Senator Klobuchar: Congress must protect Mueller investigation
Senator Amy Klobuchar talks with Rachel Maddow about the possibility of Donald Trump firing Rod Rosenstein as a means of undermining Robert Mueller, and the need for Congress to protect the Trump Russia investigation.
waratah
@schrodingers_cat: I did not mind the uniforms until I was in high school. Sexless hot tunics long sleeve white blouse with school color tie and thick black stockings. Terrible for young women becoming of age, but we were told we were ladies.
James E Powell
Yeah, I do too. And even more I hate that there is really nothing we can do to get rid of them.
rikyrah
Klobuchar: Republicans rush Kavanaugh case at expense of fairness
Senator Amy Klobuchar talks with Rachel Maddow about the need to hear evidence from Brett Kavanaugh’s accusers, and how the Republican rush to skip a proper investigation is making a fair evaluation of Kavanaugh impossible.
Corner Stone
@rikyrah: I do not believe Mr. Bromwich came to play around.
schrodingers_cat
@Betty Cracker: I went to an all girls school with uniform and yes all those things you said were policed but not by teachers but peers who we had elected. Our nails had to be trimmed, no nail polish. Hair if below shoulders had to be tied up. No dangly earrings and black shoes and white socks.
For gym white shorts and white blouse. It was not a big deal. We survived.
geg6
My niece is graduating from high school this year. She has always been the kind of only child who isn’t spoiled at all but who clung to her childhood as long as possible because she had such a good one.
The last two years, she’s decided it was time to grow up. She started dating, wearing makeup, wearing much more adult fashion. But she’s so sure of herself. So unlike me or her mom at that age. She doesn’t put up with any shit. She’s the only girl on the golf team at school and deals with boys and their shenanigans pretty well. Of course, the boys are all a little intimidated by her. She’s pretty good at the golf, she’s pretty popular, she’s very active in everything and she’s currently in a contest with a guy she sometimes dates to see which of them will graduate #1 in the class. Oh, and she takes no shit. No. shit. at. all. I wish I’d been like her. She’s my hero.
rikyrah
Regard for Kavanaugh plummets, Americans want hearing delay: poll
Rachel Maddow shares the results of a new Fox News poll showing Brett Kavanaugh losing support among registered voters, with particular opposition from women and independents, and most Americans thinking the Senate should delay Kavanaugh’s confirmation to allow sexual misconduct accusations to be heard.
burnspbesq
@Corner Stone:
He’s 72 and 50 pounds overweight. What the fuck do you want?
Shit, talk about inability to focus on what’s really important.
Election Day is in six weeks. Think you can hold it together that long, Bunky?
James E Powell
@schrodingers_cat:
I’ve worked in schools with uniforms, “uniforms,” and no uniforms. I detected no difference in behavior or academics.
rikyrah
Why Brett Kavanaugh’s Fox News interview mattered
09/25/18 08:00 AM—UPDATED 09/25/18 08:14 AM
By Steve Benen
Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and his wife sat down for an interview with Fox News yesterday, and the conservative jurist said largely what everyone expected him to say. By my count, Kavanaugh used the phrase “never sexually assaulted anyone” seven times in the fairly brief discussion, pushing back against recent allegations of misconduct from years past. (He used the “fair process,” meanwhile, 17 times.)
But while viewers probably didn’t learn much from the interview, the fact that the on-air Q&A happened at all told us a great deal. This New York Times report captured the significance of the media appearance nicely:
Since the Eisenhower era, 35 people have been nominated to the Supreme Court – and 34 of them went out of their way not to speak to the press during their confirmation processes.
Spanky
Well, Milwaukee County GOP, ol’ Abe went to put a friendly hand on your shoulder, but your head was so far up your ass that his hand landed someplace he never wanted it to be.
TaMara (HFG)
Okay, I’m going to assume by most of your responses, you do not realize that almost all dress codes are directed at girls and girls only.
Betty Cracker
So, Trump is giving a speech at the UN right now, and apparently he started with an absurd boastful lie, got laughed at by the assembled dignitaries and said, “I didn’t expect that reaction.” I hope it goes downhill from there. What a fucking embarrassment.
dmsilev
@Corner Stone: For whatever (little) it’s worth, he said he’d be putting forward his clients “within 48 hours”. That was yesterday, so we should either get something concrete by tomorrow or he’s just blowing hot air.
Obvious Russian Troll
@schrodingers_cat: That’s got to be much better than the school doing it.
Or Hell on Earth, depending on your peers.
jacy
@schrodingers_cat:
It doesn’t make it much easier. If your child has a weird size, it becomes impossible to find uniform clothes that fit properly. If the uniform says “khaki pants,” what color constitutes khaki? Does the school say that the uniform for girls is skirts, and they can’t wear pants? What shoes are allowed with the uniform — is it only one color of shoe? If the uniform states that boys must wear a belt, what happens when they forget their belt? What height of socks are allowed?
I have had kids who had to wear uniforms in different schools and have run into each of these examples multiple times. Each time it was either having unhappy children because they had to wear clothes that didn’t fit or I was called into the office because khaki was the wrong shade, the white tennis shoes had a stripe on them, the boys forgot their belts, the socks were the wrong height. Cold in the classroom? That’s not an approved uniform jacket. When the boys went to Catholic grade school, there was NEVER a day I went into the office when there weren’t at least three kids there on “uniform violations” waiting for their parents to bring them belts or different socks or different shorts because the length was wrong.
The problem is trying to control what kids do in ridiculous ways that have nothing to do with learning.
burnspbesq
@rikyrah:
If you want to be chased out of town by a large pack of my female contemporaries, howling for blood, just say the words “RHS gym uniforms.”
rikyrah
GOP acts as if it’s completely forgotten Merrick Garland’s nomination
09/25/18 08:40 AM
By Steve Benen
Some rhetorical hyperbole is inevitable in politics, especially during an election season, especially in the midst of a fight over a controversial Supreme Court nominee. But this is awfully difficult to take seriously.
……………………….
Hatch, Graham, McConnel, and their Republican brethren refused to give the compromise nominee so much as a hearing. GOP senators not only held open the Supreme Court vacancy for a year, several Republicans said that if voters elected another Democratic president, they were prepared to leave that vacancy open until 2021, at the earliest.
Old School
The tweet has been deleted, so I guess it is time for the screenshot.
dmsilev
@Betty Cracker: Trump giving a speech _anywhere_ starting off with an absurd boastful lie is, ummm, fairly typical.
Adam
Most of the GOP members have been around since 1862.
geg6
@burnspbesq:
Oh god. Ours were giant royal blue onesies. Just horrific.
Corner Stone
@burnspbesq: Him to keel over dead of natural causes or get put in the pokey wearing bright orange.
Oh, and go fuck yourself, fuckface.
schrodingers_cat
@James E Powell: Never said that it did. Its just one less thing to fret about early in the morning. That’s all. Also, since everyone looks equally dorky and thus flattens the hierarchy.
@TaMara (HFG): Yes I did get that, hence I specifically mentioned that I went to an all girls school.
My brother who went to an boys school was also policed but just for the hair. No hair over the ears and no dyes. Sloppy and incomplete uniforms were not allowed.
TaMara (HFG)
@Old School: Updated
schrodingers_cat
@Obvious Russian Troll: Peers were cool, only checked for nails and nail polish. Not the hem line.
Vhh
@Corner Stone: Look up Vogon on Youtube. Same profile, same lumbering gate, same utter contempt for fellow beings.
jacy
@TaMara (HFG):
I joke to my kids that when I was in high school (in the ’80s in Colorado) you could wear two coconuts and a grass skirt to school and get away with it. (That’s actually not that far off). I can tell you that if they had instituted uniforms in my high school, I would have quit and got my GED. I was not so much into conformity…….. Lochlainn says that the best thing about college is that he gets to wear whatever he wants and doesn’t have to shave or cut his hair. Nick is looking forward to high school, because his high school of choice has relatively few guidelines for anybody as what they wear. (I think the big one is no sweat pants, for whatever reason).
SFAW
@burnspbesq:
Bullshit. His then-doctor, the almost-not-quite-but-oh-so-close-to-becoming head of the VA said his BMI was 29-point-something, and he only weighs 239, and he’s six-foot-five (taller than that other guy), so he’s practically svelte.
And he’s young, not like Harridan Hitlary, who’s older than Strom Thurmond.
Gin & Tonic
@rikyrah:
I’m sorry, was there another interview, other than the one they aired, that’s being described here?
Corner Stone
@Betty Cracker: You do have to admit that his bright orange patina sets off the muted green and gray-green tiles behind him rather stunningly.
SFAW
@Vhh:
And same desire to destroy the world so that he can build an interstellar bypass (with his name on it).
Joe Falco
@rikyrah:
It’s always “partisanship for me, but not for thee” with these traitorous scum.
SFAW
@Spanky:
I’d steal that, but I’m not sure another context exists where I could use it appropriately.
RobertB
@TaMara (HFG): IIRC, the boys at my daughter’s high school had one as well, and once in a great while a boy would get bounced. The girls’ dress code had much sillier stuff in it. Spaghetti straps, exposed midriffs, and shorts with legs shorter than X were verboten. My daughter fell afoul of it a couple of times, for straps. I wanted to mention to the school officials that they probably had better things to do than to sniff around at strap widths, but the missus didn’t want to have that fight. Pissing off my wife to argue with a dumbass school board wasn’t a hill I was going to die on.
TaMara (HFG)
@Betty Cracker: I could not bring myself to watch. I am supposed to be on a self-imposed blackout this week, last week just did me in. But that has been difficult to do – I guess head in the sand just doesn’t work for me. Sigh.
Feathers
@japa21: I hope that was sarcasm, because I am more and more convinced that these dress codes are all about teaching boys to abuse and harass girls, and later women.
Think about it. Why don’t we let the girls wear what they want and punish the boys if they tease or touch them. That would be far better than teaching them that girls are responsible for boys bad behavior, and will, in fact, be punished for being girls daring to exist in a world where boys are still the norm.
Note: there can be room for a dress code, but it cannot be one which excludes what is being sold in the stores that year. If you are banning mainstream clothes being sold at Target or Walmart, then you are just taking your anger at the changing world out on the young women in your care.
It also teaches boys that girls don’t have a right to be in the class as human beings. Their inclusion is reliant on correct performance of femininity.
TLDR: Whatever a school punishes girls for, the boys are learning is what the acceptable excuse for getting away abusing and harassing them later.
jacy
I have the sound off on the news (I mute it whenever Trump is talking or when people are being idiots, so it’s quite often muted.) But I clicked over and the idiot is bloviating about somesuch. I hadn’t looked at him lately, but does it seem like there’s something funky going on with his skin? He’s sort of orange-peelish, like he had an unsuccessful chemical peel or something. He’s looking increasingly unwell, like an opposite Dorian Grey, where there’s a portrait of a normal-looking person in an attic somewhere.
schrodingers_cat
@jacy: It depends on the school I guess. Our school was pretty cool about it. At most I remember having to trim my nails because I had forgotten to trim them. We were usually given one warning, to clean up our act. No adults involved.
Leto
@schrodingers_cat: I’m glad you got your military training out of the way early. I get to deal with the same thing every day: I too police my Airmen on a myriad of uniform/grooming standards, as well as relying on their rank equivalent peers to enforce standards.
Of course a big difference is that we give our Airmen money to buy the uniforms. I remember when my son went through his last two years of school in the UK. We got to shell out a bit over 400 pounds for his new “school uniform”: 2 suit jacket tops, 4 pairs of pants, 4 button up shirts, 3 ties and a pair of dress shoes. Now the jackets and ties will be fine the next year, but kids typically wear out the other items (pants/shirts/shoes). Also ask me how many of those he uses now?
Do the poor students in your “we survived” category get monetary assistance with their new uniform requirement? Is there a scientifically proven point that school uniforms = better students/scores, or is this a hold over of dumb British style education with a healthy topping of being able to further exert control over women/kids? Also “It was not a big deal. We survived.” can basically be said about not having a school uniform. It’s not a big deal. They’ll survive.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Corner Stone:
I believe it’s a a Yeti swinging gait, but point taken.
Mike in NC
Fat Bastard launches rambling, incoherent tirade against UN, demanding to be treated as a god-emperor or else he’ll burn the shit all down. Nobody saw that coming!
TaMara (HFG)
@RobertB: Yeah, I think we are all in the, “these rules are stupid, but not worth making life miserable for my niece in a small town” camp. Her parents and I talk to her about why they have them, why they are sexist and then move on. Save the fight for bigger issues that are inevitably going to come up in regards to issues like this. Which in the very red state they live will be many.
Gin & Tonic
Just because an “outrage” thread needs a smile, here’s an “official” UN ID for NZ PM Jacinda Ardern’s 3-month-old daughter. Counterweight to the baby the US sent.
TaMara (HFG)
@jacy: Same here. I loved (and still do in many ways) expressing myself through what I wore. In college, the arts crowd lived in thrift store finds. Thought we were so unique – until of course, I realize we were all wearing the same thing in a way. Our uniform, so to speak.
japa21
@Feathers: It was sarcasm. And your more detailed statement is spot on. Dress codes which are almost exclusively directed towards girls do two things: They provide boys with an excuse and they create an environment which increases guilt within girls.
Unfortunately there is still an attitude of blaming the female if she is attacked and people saying it was because of the way she dressed.
Which, it occurs to me, is not any different than Geraldo Rivera’s comment about Trayvon Martin and how if he hadn’t been wearing a hoodie he wouldn’t have ended up dead.
Blaming the victim has been a hallmark of conservative thinking for decades unless, of course, the victim is one of them. When was the last time a person with real money who was mugged was blamed for dressing too nicely?
Gelfling 545
We went through this with my granddaughter. She is an activist type so got involved in the “wear tank tops to school day” (males and females) and numerous other protests. They met with school and district authorities many times, always carrying the same message: we are not responsible for boys’ learning and they would do better to learn to live in the world as it is rather than sheltering them from it. I mean, if a boy is going to lose his mind over a sleeveless top he’s a danger to himself and others. By her senior year they seemed to give up their wardrobe policing and accepted that these kids were going to dress however. Parents got involved too, even parents of boys saying essentially “What? Do you think my son is some kind of animal or has never seen females before?” The thing is, this was the arts academy and they were trying to regiment the wardrobe choices of some of the most creative kids in the city. It was doomed from the start but they wasted much time on it.
Joe Falco
Growing up and attending schools in the ’90’s, the dress code cracked down on spaghetti straps and short skirts. I had only heard of girls getting in trouble just a handful of times that I can best remember. Stories of inappropriate prom dresses took up the majority of talk though when the conversation was about school dress code. My mother worked in the public school system for nearly 40 years and advised for student prom committees for about a decade. Most of those stories I heard from her years after I had graduated.
TaMara (HFG)
@Feathers: This. This. This.
Sab
@geg6: So were our. Hideous.
TaMara (HFG)
@Feathers: I put that in the original post. Thank you.
trollhattan
@schrodingers_cat:
My kid’s grade school (K-6) had, not exactly uniforms but a very narrow range of acceptable clothing that removed any ambiguity and the PTSA made sure low-income kids had ways to acquire them. Sure made that phase easy.
Still remember being in junior high on a very rare Seattle snow day when the school sent home any girl who dared show up in pants. I’ll bet there were more than a few “thrilled” parents that day. It’s worth noting my junior high was three years of “Lord of the Flies” and there were far bigger issues that fashion sense.
germy
“So true. Didn’t expect that reaction, but okay.”
Leto
@trollhattan:
Yours too? Fashion was included with mine: think Levi’s vs Wranglers as another way to socially ostracize people. Maybe that’s another reason I hate Trumpov/GoP so much: perpetual middle school bullies who refuse to grow up.
Nicole
Here in NYC, I notice that generally it’s the schools where the students are predominantly poor, or predominantly really rich, that require uniforms.
I’m not a fan of school uniforms because for poorer families, it’s a financial drain, especially with places like Success Academy, that require the uniforms to be purchased from their vendor, and those uniforms are $$$. They also are required to purchase the backpack, the whole thing. Get a kid like my son’s buddy, who grew out of 3 sizes in one year, and that’s a lot of money spent on uniforms.
And for the rich kids, eh, they have other expensive doodads for ways of establishing their status; I don’t think the uniform code does anything in terms of creating a sense of equality.
Dress codes for girls are bullshit. I think better to tell the boys that life is full of distractions and it’s on them to keep their eyes to themselves. Likewise white folk who find some (usually black) hair styles “distracting.” Worry about your darn hair.
That said, I can see where some policing of t shirt graphics might be necessary. I remember Frankie Goes to Hollywood t shirts were banned in my middle school, because teachers didn’t like seeing “Franke Say: When You Want to Come” on middle schoolers’ chests. They also, as I recall, didn’t want to explain “why” that wasn’t acceptable, so I think the ban eventually extended to all Frankie Goes to Hollywood t shirts.
Being an exceptionally naive kid, I didn’t understand the shirts and thought the ban was stupid. As an adult, I’ll grant the administration that one.
Roger Moore
@jacy:
This. I would also point out that school uniforms, and dress codes more generally, are usually a way of enforcing gender rules, so they’re especially hard on transgender and other gender-noncompliant kids.
trollhattan
@Leto:
I even knew at the time, not just in retrospect, that a good portion of the student body might as well have been institutionalized (“Lock us up, lock us up”). Horrid.
Was very happy how quickly my kid’s two years of middle school went by. She was spared a good deal of my experience.
SFAW
@germy:
I would pay good money to witness the Kiwi, Aussie, Brit, or any other English-language country’s ambassador(s) responding, LOUDLY, “You really believe your own bullshit, you moron? Because no one else in America or the World does.”
MagdaInBlack
@TaMara (HFG):
oh Im fully aware and its damned infuriating.
FFS, Im 60 and people still police
schrodingers_cat
We had uniforms. They were uncool. No one was sent home. They were no boys and only one male teacher in my school. We were given several days to fix an issue. And there was financial help available for students who couldn’t afford books or uniforms. I had two pairs of the regular uniform and one of the gym uniform.
The uniform policy accommodated real life, if it rained, the rule about wearing socks was relaxed and so on.
Independence comes from things besides apparel. Every minute of my free time was not regulated like I see it for many kids now. I did things for fun not because they would look good on a college application.
I am not advocating for uniforms just giving a counterpoint based on my own lived experience. YMMV.
Martin
We had to finally pull my daughter out of her high school and put her in a one-on-one private school. Lots of reasons why, but a huge one was the constant harassment by the boys.
My daughter is pretty (of course she is, I’m her dad) but she’s a nerd. Her Pikachu hoodie is about the most revealing thing she wears to school, but that didn’t slow the boys down. The problem is that the school administration is overwhelmed by this stuff. They do try, but they can barely make a dent. I despise zero-tolerance policies, but if you want something to be taken seriously, you need to advertise that fact. Quiet suspensions don’t work. It’s a real shame because the kids are really tolerant around issues of race and sexual orientation, but boys still seem to horndog on girls the same as when I was in HS.
Luthe
@Feathers: Dress codes also punish non-binary people by mandating arbitrary gender-based standards for appearance. But as you say, they most reinforce the idea that girls are nothing by objects for the male gaze and any unwanted attention is their fault for dressing “incorrectly.” (This doesn’t even get into how it demeans men as well, since they are assumed to be nothing more than slavering slaves to lust who can’t control themselves upon seeing a bare shoulder)
Death to the motherfucking patriarchy, y’all.
Humdog
At my “Christian” HS, there was no uniform but a dress code for both sexes. What nonplussed me, my sister and I shared all our clothes. I was a known as a good girl, but sis wasn’t so much. I was taller and a skirt length that was ok according to admin on me was too short on my shorter sister. They police personalities, not just hem lengths.
lofgren
Yesterday I read a story about a girl who was told she had not made it clear enough to the boys who kept groping her that she did not wish to be touched. She wore a t-shirt to school that said “Boys are not allowed to touch me,” and got sent home for wearing inappropriate clothing and also for discriminating against boys.
NotMax
“Above all, no patent leather shoes, young ladies!”
;)
Amir Khalid
@burnspbesq:
I seriously doubt Trump is overweight by only 50lb. Overweight by 100lb — now that’s more believable.
schrodingers_cat
@MagdaInBlack: They do. Uniforms gave me and the other girls in my school a vacation from that scrutiny. In India on my visits I am told I dress to casually, over here I am more formally dressed than those around me.
Its not just the clothing either. Its also the hair. Too short, you are trying to be a man. Too long, not professional, holding on to youth etc. There is an unspoken uniform for women. I have always dressed and kept the length of hair depending on what pleased me.
Martin
@schrodingers_cat: At least in parts of the US, public schools cannot mandate that students/parents buy books or a uniform. Those need to be covered by the taxpayer or other source.
But I agree on your overall points. My kids would have preferred uniforms. They are extremely independent and despise the ‘trying to fit in race’. By the way the ‘look good on a college application’ is almost always misunderstood. An applicant that spent a summer learning how to restore a car is a lot more interesting to the reviewer than being one more of a thousand kids that handed out water at the Special Olympics, or did a wilderness cleanup. We’re looking for independence, not billable hours.
TaMara (HFG)
@schrodingers_cat: I’m actually not against uniforms. I believe if they are subsidized they can cut down on a lot of the social ostracizing and focus on learning. And that dreaded, what do I wear today.
I’m just not for treating our girls as if they are somehow responsible for distracting boys. My niece is not responsible because someone’s son cannot keep his thoughts, hands, mind on his own business, so to speak.
Amir Khalid
@SFAW:
Alas, the UN General Assembly is in that respect not like a parliament.
schrodingers_cat
@Martin: OMG you should talk to friends of mine. Their crazy regimen for their only child would have driven me completely crazy.
schrodingers_cat
@schrodingers_cat: * too not to.
Martin
@schrodingers_cat: Oh, I know. I read a few thousand applications per year, so I see them all the time. I don’t fault the parents, though. The process of getting into college is utterly opaque and seemingly arbitrary. I know they’re just trying their best.
schrodingers_cat
@Martin: My friends are making their son learn the cello and then write Carnatic music ragas on cello and play them. And they have made a YouTube channel for him. He hates doing it.
SFAW
@Amir Khalid:
Well, then, I expect you to become Malaysia’s Ambassador to the UN, and remedy that situation, ASAP!
Harumph!
rikyrah
@germy:
We can’t blame them for laughing.
schrodingers_cat
@TaMara (HFG): They will find a way to blame girls no matter what. Patriarchy is not giving up that easily. So it was kinda good to go to a school where boys did not exist.
Martin
A little diversion. California is really trying to reform criminal justice. Elimination of cash bail is the most prominent, but we’ve been voting on initiatives to shift drug addiction from criminal to medical for some years now. Here’s an interesting piece on how hard some of this is to get right.
Big changes take time. You can’t legislate people’s attitudes or assumptions. You have to make the best of it, measure the outcomes, and then convince people from those measurements. It can take years for a given legislative move to actually show its promised results.
BC in Illinois
@Humdog:
True. I don’t remember much of the dress code in the 60s [no t-shirts, keep your shirt tucked in] and I really don’t remember what the girls had to deal with. But my daughter went to a school with a fairly robust dress code and one of her friends made it her goal in life to “push the envelope”** on the dress code. She was regularly called in to the office . . . as much on attitude as on appearance.
They didn’t have a written policy on fish-net stockings until she was there.
**I am fairly sure that my daughter’s description of what ________ was doing, was the first time I had heard the term “push the envelope.” Early 90s.
WaterGirl
@Corner Stone:
That needs to be a rotating tag line.
NotMax
A favorite cartoon about school uniforms.
And a runner-up.
WaterGirl
@geg6:
I’m guessing that you may be part of why she has grown into the wonderful young woman that she is.
gvg
@Feathers: Well I totally disagree. Have you READ what Walmart and Target sell as children’s clothes? Especially Walmart. Sexist garbage on toddler clothes. Girls are being conditioned to consider themselves as sex objects before they can read. And the parents buy it (both sexes) and think it’s so cute. Barf.
A lot of schools dress codes say things like no words on clothes. That can seem silly when it comes to brand names, but even those can become codes adults miss, and a way to argue about which words, so after awhile the rules end up being really strict about no words.
There are other rules that grow up and some that are just about impossible to fairly enforce. Some areas like too sexy are too subjective and have to be abandoned even though I would wish it were possible.
My opinion of Uniforms is not good. Seems like too controlling to me. However some of the arguments and supporters were interesting and well intentioned. We did it here for awhile, then quit. It seemed to me that support lasted about 10 years and then people just got tired of it. Nothing helped when a child’s parents just didn’t care though.
CliosFanboy
as a former teenage boy (I got better) I understand the whole “distracted by girls” thing. But all a girl has to do to distract a boy that age is exist within his view. But that’s the boys’ problem. Part of growing up is learning to deal…
SFAW
@schrodingers_cat:
Agree. Unfortunately, NO group having long-term/entrenched power — whites, males, non-Jews, billionaires, Rethugs, you name it — willingly cedes power. And that unwillingness to cede ANY power generally results in inflicting a lot of suffering on a lot of people.
And they wonder why people think of pitchforks or tumbrels.
Immanentize
@Martin: @schrodingers_cat:
making a kid play cello? That is nuts. And we wonder why kids have so much anxiety these days.
We never made our son do anything except what he was interested in, and his passions won out and he is doing OK, I think. Since he was young, we told him that there is not just one college for him, but scores. He has been amazingly mature and unstressed about his college search. (Perhaps not so much his Dad) I think he feels confident that wherever he ends up, he will be just fine. Without any cello.
H.E.Wolf
Sometimes there is a racial discrimination component involved in dress-code enforcement. Monique W. Morris, Ed.D., discussed that in one of the chapters of her 2016 book Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in School.
School boards are a good target for Blue Waves. Among other reasons: they’re sometimes a “starter” job for political careers.
WaterGirl
@TaMara (HFG): At 11 years old, they are already telling girls that they are responsible for how boys behave.
Just when I thought it wasn’t possible for me to be any more enraged.
We need another fucking word. Maybe three more words for my anger alert system. If it’s color-coded, we need 3 more colors after red.
???
??
?
Rage
Anger
Leto
@trollhattan: My son managed to escape most, but still had issues. Idk wtf it is about middle school, but jeebus I wish it would improve.
@schrodingers_cat:
Their apparel is one of the few things in our highly structured society that they do have a voice in, although in reality even that is pretty much our of their hands. Most of the kids who think they’re not conforming are still conforming to the norms expressed within that social group. Take the punks from the 80s and look at the punks today. Most of them are wearing the same style clothing, have the same style hair, down to the matching addon safety pins.
My take on the school uniform (besides my kid doing it for 2 years) is it’s another way for us to tell kids to conform: conform to these sets of societal norms we expect you to follow. It’s why I likened it to my military uniform. We expect you to look this way. We expect you to act this way. Any deviance from the “norm” and you will be punished. Conform, conform, conform… of course I might be over thinking it, but that’s my take.
stinger
TaMara, thank you for this post, and for Feathers’ comment.
SFAW
@geg6:
If you haven’t already told her that, you should. I mean it.
trollhattan
@Amir Khalid:
“Two, two, two Trumps in one.”*
*Five Quatloos to the first to I.D. the product of this ad campaign.
WaterGirl
@dmsilev: He’s now saying 36 hours, so between last night and this morning he has adjusted the timeframe.
Martin
@WaterGirl: Well, 12 hours have passed…
Ivan X
I’ve got a friend (with whom I don’t really talk politics, and I don’t know what hers are) whose son just turned 18. He visited me last month. I asked him if he was gonna vote (CA-25, it turns out, which apparently is a D pickup opportunity) and he barely had the vaguest idea of how the government works, nor did he think Trump was necessarily all that bad and you can’t trust what the news says, etc. Not that he knew very much about him. (But I thought it was interesting that as the product of a white dad and asian mom, he specifically referred to himself as “white” several times.)
He didn’t really know what congress was, or the Supreme Court, or what Democrats and Republicans stand for, or really any of it, so I did what I could to explain, whether or not he wanted it. Turns out he got credit for high school civics (or whatever) credit by taking an online class, for which he got the test answers at some answers-for-cheaters web site.
I tried to get him to register than and there, and he just told me it wasn’t gonna happen. I was pretty bummed out, he seemed like a smart cool kid, but I was unimpressed. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t all that knowledgable when I was 18, but still. I couldn’t have been that bad.
Anyway, I petulantly never responded to his thank-you-for-hosting-me text, until today, when I said he could thank me by registering to vote today (I sent him the link), and then voting for Katie Hill. Might have been self-righteous of me, but shit man, we need the House. And citizens need to vote. (If they’re voting Democratic. I now reject being high-minded about this.)
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
I agree. People go crazy though- they hate the idea. The general answer to any question that starts with “why don’t public schools..” is “people go crazy and they hate it”. Everything is an elaborate negotiation and everyone is never happy with the outcome because they have different ideas and they bring a lot of strong emotion to it. The “public” part is what makes it difficult :)
It doesn’t really solve the code violation problem anyway, because then they just have to enforce the uniform code.
Sloane Ranger
@schrodingers_cat: Late to the thread but that was my first thought too! Of course I grew up in the UK where school uniform is the norm. Not that it eliminated all problems. Skirts were mandatory in my time (1970’s) and couldn’t be shorter than 3 inches above the knee when you were kneeling down. This was an all girls school and the staff checked! We all used to roll them up, leading to everyone looking like they were carrying a spare tyre around their waist. In retrospect not a good look.
Seanly
@Feathers:
This same viewpoint was instilled in me by my mother. People are responsible for their actions, not the dress of someone else.
I know it’s not proper progressive thought, but I find the cultural/religious garb issue disquieting also. Why should women have to hide under a habit, hajib, or burka? If it’s a personal choice to placate your make-believe sky fairy then fine. However, is it truly a choice if being stoned to death is the option? Forcing women to wear such garments belittles their autonomy and gives cover to misogyny. Looking online, I see there are some progressive arguments against religious garb so maybe I am not as ungood as I thought.
lollipopguild
@trollhattan: Breathmints.
Immanentize
@trollhattan: Certs
TaMara (HFG)
@H.E.Wolf: Agree with all of this. And one only had to read the news the past few weeks to realize hair has become a target. It’s disgusting.
SiubhanDuinne, Badass Jackal
@WaterGirl:
Something like this?
schrodingers_cat
@Immanentize: Cello because it is unique. Everyone and their mother plays the violin and the piano. Besides that voice lessons for western classical music and Indian classical music. Tennis lessons and he is not even a teenager yet.
Amir Khalid
@Martin:
So he’s doing a countdown. Avenatti certainly knows how to work his audience.
Immanentize
@Ivan X: Sometimes, you just need to be directive.
schrodingers_cat
@SiubhanDuinne, Badass Jackal: Red (orange) giant then supernova then black hole (or white dwarf?)
oatler.
Nothing fires up good old American Sexrage more than schoolgirl uniforms.
Immanentize
@schrodingers_cat: How will that kid ever figure out what HE wants to do? What he likes. My Dad told me, “just because you are good at something doesn’t mean you have to do it.” My heart really goes out to kids like that — and I know plenty in the Immp’s sphere. Not generally a happy lot.
Maybe Professor Chua at Yale can remind us why this is a good thing. Or maybe the mental health counselors at MIT can remind us why it is not.
Seanly
@Corner Stone:
And that is the least objectionable thing about the jerk! I can’t stand his face, his voice, his uninformed racist grandpa opinions, his stupidity… the list goes on…
SFAW
@trollhattan:
Shimmer
dnfree
@japa21: When I was on our local school board (1990s), a mother approached us and wanted the high school to declare that flannel shirts were against the dress code. When we asked why, it turned out that her son liked to wear flannel shirts and she didn’t think they were appropriate.
schrodingers_cat
@Amir Khalid: May be they meant 50kg.
Kay
@H.E.Wolf:
There’s an element of “zero tolerance” to it too- they transplanted some of the “broken windows” theory of policing to public schools. Small infractions lead to large infractions, is the thinking. They’re moving away from it now because it didn’t work and it was too subjective, so black boys would be much more harshly punished than white boys for the same offense.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Ivan X: I’ve seen her commercials; with the first one, I didn’t know if she was a Dem or Rep. The ones that are running now are a bit more pointed(she’s also getting funds from the DCCC).
schrodingers_cat
@Immanentize: They have his future mapped out. Small liberal arts college and then an Ivy for law school. They think they are being liberal because they don’t want him to have a STEM career like them.
Ella in New Mexico
@jacy:
Exactly.
Thing is, at some point kids will either spend too much time and energy trying to dress in a way that gets peer-group approval if there’s no uniforms, or being uncomfortable in the poorly made bullshit they offer when schools go to narrowly prescribed styles of uniforms. Lord, I remember middle and high school misery because I couldn’t afford a lot of the trendy stuff and I’d be in agony dressing in the mornings before school. I was always jealous of the boys who pretty much just had to wear jeans and t-shirts to be “in”.
The way to solve it is to have boys and girls all wear comfortable, unisex style T-shirts with school logos/colors (change up with shirts from the activities they participate in, e.g. band, cheer, soccer, etc. )but they can choose the pants/jeans/sweatpants that are comfortable and fit reasonably well (rules could state no super low cut or ultra baggy–not because of sex but because it’s uncomfortable and unsafe.)
Dress at school needs to be about being comfortable so that the focus is on learning.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Amir Khalid: Avenatti is really annoying, so I’m glad he’s on our side. We need a variety of champions.
WaterGirl
@Martin: That was exactly my point. It was 48 hours, and then when time passed, the number of hours changed. The person I was replying to was stating that the timeframe was never changing and therefore discredited what Avenatti was saying.
Leto
@TaMara (HFG): @Nicole:
Man, we can’t even get teachers proper salaries. What about school supplies? How many parents are still having to subsidize their kids classroom via chalk, erasable markers, paper, crayons, glue… Proper heat or AC? How about not teaching in trailers? Non-crumbling school buildings? Drinkable water? There are about a thousand things that public taxpayer money could be used for, that would be a direct improvement on learning, before uniforms even come into play. Honestly I feel like if parents want their kids to have that school uniform experience, they need to pony up the money and send their kids to the elite private schools where school uniforms cut down on distraction. Those elite prep schools seem to have less sexism and gender enforced roles (distractions), and more high minded learning that colleges/parents/society deem vital.
(In case it wasn’t obvious, the last two sentences were heavy on the sarcasm in light of our recent SC news. Molasses heavy sarcasm.)
Ksmiami
@James E Powell: hmm… you sure about that? I’m ready to investigate the birth right citizenship of moron America and send them back to their original countries
bemused
@rikyrah:
I’m visualizing Clarence and Ginny Thomas doing an interview defending his reputation on Fox today. Ginny would do all the talking fueled by a couple of drinks and Clarence would just sit there and grunt once in awhile.
FlipYrWhig
The Ginsburg joke demonstrates just how bad the Republican imagination is. The parallel case should be that someone says Ginsburg grabbed HIS ass. It should be about one of “our” judges being accused of harassment. But they can’t even figure that out. They’re too stupid to even figure out the logic of dumb jokes.
WaterGirl
@SiubhanDuinne, Badass Jackal: The top two don’t speak to me, but FURY is most excellent. It has been officially accepted into the Anger Alert System. Letter to follow.
bemused
@Betty Cracker:
He is going to be so pissed off and who knows how he will retaliate.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Immanentize: When our kid was in high school, we used to tell him that he was in school to learn something. If he got an A but learned nothing, we were unhappy, and if he got a C but learned a lot, that was fine with us. We were also pretty relaxed about what college he chose, getting in, etc. He was clearly smart and motivated. He’d do fine no matter where he went. And he did.
Parents can go kind of crazy about college choice. Do people still display the name of their alma mater on the back window of their car?
WaterGirl
@schrodingers_cat: @SiubhanDuinne, Badass Jackal: Black Hole of Rage is most excellent, also! I won’t know whether it’s level 4 or 5 until we find the missing piece.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
(Looks at the back of my car…) Yes.
Kay
When I was in the early primary grades in public school girls couldn’t wear pants except between certain dates – it had to be cold outside. They changed it when I was still little but I remember thinking it was unfair.
Kids have a great sense of fairness. If you listen to them in their dispute it’s like they create a code and the code pretty much lines up with broad legal notions- “he hit me first” or “she’s bigger than me so she can’t hit me”. They have mitigating factors in their “sentencing schemes” too “we’re not mad at him (despite this obvious code violation) because his father just died”.
When my middle son was in high school there was this disturbed boy who made a list of people he planned to punish. My son was on it but the targets just dismissed it- they had known him so long and they just didn’t consider him a threat. It didn’t meet their threat threshhold. He got expelled anyway, which was unfortunate, because all that means is he’s home alone and he was anti-social anyway. But the school sacrificed him for the good of the whole, which is what they have to do.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Is that an American thing? Or do they do it elsewhere too?
I always like the cars that claimed Starfleet Academy.
WaterGirl
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I know! I love that he can say stuff that would be a total distraction of partisan bullshit if an elected official said it. I love that they don’t know how to deal with Avenatti.
bemused
@geg6:
My high school had those blue onesies too. Everyone hated them. I was a runt so very difficult to get one that fit plus I hated gym and the gym teachers. I had blocked this out. Horrible era.
Immanentize
@TaMara (HFG): We had a big deal extensions case in a town near me. Kids won! (after the ACLU got deeply involved).
Tokyokie
I’m proud to say that way back when I was a junior in high school, a group of fellow libs and I helped dispose of the dress code once and for all. Back then, girls couldn’t even wear bluejeans to school, and when our group (about a half-dozen of us, mostly boys, but a couple of girls as well) met with the principal about that and other issues, he began sputtering about what would happen were, heaven forfend, girls allowed to wear clothing that might be interpreted by an especially sick male as being mildly provocative. To which I replied, “I can only speak for myself, sir, but I believe I have sufficient self-control to be able to deal with it.”
That ended the meeting. As well as the dress code.
Immanentize
@schrodingers_cat:
I am a lawyer and I am so glad my son is a STEM kid. But he would make a really good lawyer, too.
Gin & Tonic
@schrodingers_cat: Well, there’s always room for cello.
mali muso
I am so glad that my daughter is still too little to have to deal with this BS. She’ll be 2 in November and already is showing that she has opinions about what she wants to wear. I had picked out a color-coordinated outfit this morning and got her halfway into it, when she started to protest. She opened the drawer and pulled out her dinosaur T-shirt and indicated in her limited vocabulary that this was what she was wearing today. I’m trying to teach her that she is the boss of her body, so I helped her take off the cute clothes that I’d picked out and we put on her choices. Side note, I am SO not looking forward to dealing with hair policing in her future. She has kinky mixed hair that defies order. I will go to the mat to protect her right to wear it any way she wants.
Let’s not even talk about the rage-inducing that shopping for toddler girl clothes can entail. Pink for miles and atrocious messages on shirts (daddy’s little princess, etc.) Ugh.
C Stars
@Roger Moore: Yeah, I was wondering how my kid would fare in a school that required gendered uniforms. My guess is that they would just be allowed to wear whichever uniforms they preferred on whichever day they preferred, but that is probably because I live in a liberal bubble and am naive about how hideous most schools are toward gender nonconforming kids.
A relative of mine teaches in a big urban public school in the Bay Area that requires students wear uniforms, and he argues against it. Which is surprising, because he’s actually kind of a conservative dude (once chewed my ear off for twenty minutes about taking my kids out of school for travel). But he asserts that enforcing uniforms is basically a futile attempt to teach conformity to kids at a moment (high school) when they least need to learn that lesson, and all it accomplishes is setting up an adversarial relationship between the school and the students from the get go.
I went to a private Catholic school for a year and racked up 60 detentions for uniform violations (to be served in the form of summer school, which, of course, my parents would have to pay for). Every once in a while I pushed the envelope, but often the violations came as a surprise to me; my socks weren’t the correct amount of inches in length, my undershirt was “off-white” and not white, etc. Essentially, a few nasty nuns there saw that I was ok with being a bit different, and made it their mission to step on me. They definitely could have been doing better things with their time. The teachers at the public school I transferred to the next year (because fuck summer detentions!!) were so much smarter and more interesting. I’ve always been confused about why people pay big bucks to send their kids to private schools where the teachers are complacent and/or uncredentialed, when usually a better learning experience can be had at the local public school. I guess because they want to create awful little Brett Kavanaugh spawn.
WaterGirl
@Gin & Tonic: Groan.
CliosFanboy
All three of them, plus where I teach now
Immanentize
@FlipYrWhig: On top of that, RBG is only a few months older than Grassley and has just a year on Hatch.
dnfree
Here’s when I knew Kavanaugh was both a liar and a person who would do anything to get this job. The very first words out of his mouth in accepting the Supreme Court nomination were “Mr. President, thank you. Throughout this process, I have witnessed firsthand your appreciation for the vital role of the American judiciary. No president has ever consulted more widely or talked with more people from more backgrounds to seek input about a Supreme Court nomination.”
Really. NO PRESIDENT HAS EVER….” Flattery for Trump, check. Factually true–not even remotely possible.
WaterGirl
@bemused: We had pale blue onesies for gym. They were awful. On the bright side, they were the great equalizer, because even the cheerleaders looked awful in them.
jacy
@Amir Khalid:
I don’t have a massive problem with Avenatti (He is what he is, both good and bad), but I think a little less showboating this time might be helpful.
r€nato
god forbid she show her ankles
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Pretty common here in CA. BTW, the location they used for Starfleet Academy for TNG was The Japanese Garden in the Valley.
Gin & Tonic
@WaterGirl: I was just shocked we’d got so deep in this thread without anybody else doing it.
WaterGirl
@Immanentize: Maybe there should be a cartoon where all the old shriveled white male leadership should be seen playing cards with Moses, or someone else really old. Maybe not moses because he is linked to the 10 commandments.
Immanentize
@Dorothy A. Winsor: That was great advice. Many parents still display the stickers, but it’s a hodgepodge up here. A car might have Cornell and UMass Boston. Or, Boston College Hockey and Colorado College. It doesn’t seem to be a status-y thing as much as the family decides to do it for all kids. But I must admit I like living where the general expectation is college is part of the natural learning cycle.
WaterGirl
@Gin & Tonic: It it true the sometimes a thing just cries out to be said. I can how this would fall into that category.
bemused
@WaterGirl:
PALE blue! I can’t even imagine how awful they looked. Ours were more of a medium royal blue, I’m guessing for the school colors. Please don’t tell me your school colors included pale blue.
Leto
@Kay: @Sloane Ranger: Just wanted to give an update to the UK, circa 2014 (when my son graduated): girls were still not allowed to wear pants. Skirts, long socks/stockings. Go down to the local elementary schools, boys are in pants, girls skirts. Maybe that’s changed someplace else, but Northhamptonshire is still like that.
Speaking of fairness: in middle school my son got into a fight. By fight, I mean the bullied bounced his head off the gym floor like a basketball. My son doesn’t fight. He doesn’t like to fight. He gets super unconformable in any type of physical altercation. What did the school do? Suspended him along with the bully. Because “those are the rules when a student is fighting”. What did his “peer group” do in response? Nothing. The kid kept on being a bully. My kid was sacrificed as well, and it wasn’t for “the good of the group”. The lesson that that group took away was: you’ll be punished right along with them aggressor. It doesn’t matter. As far as I know, that’s still the zero tolerance policy still in effect.
Immanentize
@WaterGirl: How about cards with good old Jack the Ripper (1880’s).
gene108
@TaMara (HFG):
There’s not a lot for boys to choose from, with regards to fashion and/or dressing.
You get a shirt – button down, pull over, half-sleeve or full sleeve -, pants and/or shorts, depending on the season. And boys shorts, for the last 20 years, are really fucking long and baggy, so there’s no issue of short shorts. Pretty much any set of shorts I buy will end at my knees. No chance for my thighs to be exposed.
I mean look at shorts today and look at a photo from the 70’s or 80’s and you’ll so how men’s/boy’s shorts have gotten longer.
I think the bigger issue is so much of fashion is targeted at women/girls, you create a target rich environment, with regards to what to exclude or include.
SFAW
@Gin & Tonic:
I don’t know whether to laugh loudly at that one, or hunt you down and throttle you for it.
Nicole
Eh, I will be the contrary one who says it’s okay to make kids learn an instrument. I think it’s actually one of the most best things we can do for a young brain’s neurodevelopment, but unfortunately, it’s value isn’t recognized (and it’s not cheap to implement). If there was one thing I could wave a magic wand and do, it would be to make required, in every school in every state, that students learn how to play an instrument.
That’s not to say plenty of people go through their lives not learning an instrument and are just fine, but the science really supports it as incredibly beneficial. And that includes the incredible tedium of doing scales.
WaterGirl
@dnfree: I bet Kavanaugh was a brown-nosed, at total suck-up, a regular Eddie Haskel with the teachers. Yes, as I think of the disgusting creature that is Kavanaugh, my nostrils are flaring as though I have just stepped barefoot in puppy shit. Why do you ask/
jacy
@Ella in New Mexico:
The secular private middle school my youngest goes to hits the sweet spot, for those below fifth grade, they have “free dress” and from fifth grade through 8th it’s polo style shirts in any color, and khaki color pants or short or skirts (not a particular khaki, but something pretty neutral in the tan/green/grey spectrum), any closed toe shoes, and any plain jacket or school logo jacket. Then there is free dress on Fridays if kids want to. No fuss, really, and it takes the guesswork out of it for parents and the race to be trendy out of it for kids. I think it gives kids just enough choice at that age. There’s a structure, but it’s neither arbitrary nor onerous.
zhena gogolia
@dnfree:
Yeah, that really shook me. Then his sneer at the Parkland father. Before any sexual-assault accusations were made, I knew he was a bad person.
WaterGirl
@bemused: Nope, green and gold. But the gym suites were indeed hideous, with no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
WaterGirl
@Immanentize: I approve!
Gin & Tonic
@gene108: About shorts for men.
WaterGirl
@Immanentize: IF we could edit, I would change that to “I am WaterGirl,and I approve this message.”
jacy
@Ella in New Mexico:
Also — my youngest HATES fitted pants and jeans because he’s just a little chubby still and has anxiety about it sometimes, so he can wear khaki pants that are kind of like sweats. Makes him much more comfortable. Before, getting fitted pants that never quite fit and forcing him to tuck his shirt in made him really uncomfortable, to the point of tears some days. Really, one of the most important things to do is make kids as comfortable as possible so that they can concentrate and more important stuff.
PIGL
@geg6: I think maybe young women like your niece are more common than in former times.
geg6, I would just like to acknowledge your remarkable and courageous posting the other day. You are one of my favourite commenters; and now I have even more reason to admire and respect you.
JMS
My daughter goes to a rather tolerant liberal private school (we pay for all that tolerance, apparently) and she tells me that the dress code prohibits “wife beaters” for boys, although girls could wear tank tops. My daughter thinks the wife beater thing was a concession because of the other items of clothing that were banned for girls, like bare midriffs. I wanted to know if they actually used the words “wife beater” in the official code, because that’s something we need in a nonviolent Quaker school–reference to domestic violence, especially considering that camo, images of weapons, etc. are officially outlawed on clothes.
I guess I’m kind of a fuddy duddy, but I don’t want to see anybody’s underwear or midriffs in a classroom, male or female, and pajamas should be limited to “pajama days”. And get off my lawn, too while you’re at it. Yes, the idea of having clothing standards at all is totally arbitrary, but for society to function, we mostly agree to something and then most people abide by it. The “something” changes from time to time and is enforced as much by social approval and shaming as rules and laws. That’s just how it is. If something is grossly unreasonable and you have a logical argument, feel free to protest. For example, I am happy going through the rest of my life never wearing pantyhose again.
Nicole
@gene108:
Which is a shame, because little boys like bright colors and shiny things as much as little girls do. Patriarchy is bad for men and boys, too.
celticdragonchick
@TaMara (HFG): Schools were I teach that have dress codes go after boys.
Shirt not tucked in? Violation. No belt? Violation. This is mostly at the jr high level.
Where I have seen girls in high school get tagged for what they are wearing…ahem….it is typically because the clothing really does border on indecent. I remember one very pretty 16 year old who was sent to the office because she was wearing a very short red club dress and matching stiletto heels that honestly had no business being on a 16 year old. She had to call mom and get something else to wear.
I really do want a stricter policy on sagging pants against boys, since it is not uniformly enforced. Probably not gonna happen, though.
bemused
@zhena gogolia:
And then he went on to talk with enthusiasm about being a dad, his daughters and coaching their teams. I couldn’t help but think of him refusing to shake the hand of the dad who lost his daughter to gun violence. Made my stomach turn.
Dorothy A. Winsor
If my son’s school had a dress code, I never knew it. I taught an 8:00 class, so his dad got him off to school in the morning. The only dress incident I recall was picking him up from kindergarten and finding him wearing a V-necked sweater backwards. On the plus side, his teacher knew he dressed himself. When my husband got home, I asked why he let the kid go to school that way, and he said, “What way?” So it’s possible we were a little oblivious about the issue.
raven
When I left hs in the Chicago burbs in 66 the girls would be made to kneel in the hall and, if their skirt didn’t tough the floor they go sent home. When I came home on leave 1.5 years later everyone wore what the wanted and they had a STUDENT smoking lounge!
jacy
@C Stars:
Kid #4 is a boundary-pusher. And he went to a relatively strict Catholic school, so there were lots of detentions for clothing violations (socks, belt, hair touching eyebrows or collar, jacket wrong color). The worst was that if a teacher didn’t like you for whatever reason, they could hound you to death on violations. So certain kids would be constantly picked on my staff for the smallest deviation ( and it was usually kids who were gender-fluid, non-religious, or somehow or other not exactly the same as the favored kids). It could get toxic for kids really fast. His best friend is a bisexual girl who quit after freshman year and got a private tutor because the atmosphere was just crushing her. She thrived with a tutor, and graduated a year ahead of her class, even learning to be fluent in Russian and publishing a book. That school would have killed her.
celticdragonchick
@raven: We still had student smoking areas in California high schools when I graduated in 1985
Nicole
@JMS: Does the school separate into “boys rules” and “girls rules”? Because I could see a case for a general dress code, specifying for all students, no bare midriffs, no butt cheeks on display, whatever. Yes, many of the things would end up applying to women’s fashion more than men’s, but that’s an opening for a discussion about the generally sexist way clothing is designed.
I swear, what makes me nuts is the teeny tiny shorts for girls and the super long ones for boys. It’s just weird. Back in my day, when there was no New Coke, shorts were the same length for all kids.
Though I don’t care if kids come to school in pajamas. I remember my middle school also had a brief fad where girls wore boys’ boxer shorts over top of their pants (not leggings, pants). It was underwear on display, but as it was worn over jeans, I think administrators thought it was weird, but decided to let it go. I guess they figured the embarrassment of the photos years later would be punishment enough.
jc
Nike is counting on the kids really needing this year’s cool shoes that they see their friends wearing. Isn’t the reason to have a dress code so clothes makers don’t cause distracting fashion competitions in schools.
bemused
@JMS:
I just try to ignore the really bad clothes choices a some teens make except to think things like, if that boy had to run for his life, how could he with his pants hanging below his butt and he’s stepping on the bottom of his pants legs? Remember when jeans/pants style of very, very low waists came out. A friend who owns a hair style place told me she had a hard time not staring at one teen girl who came in and her pants waist was so low, she saw pubic hair.
Juice Box
@gene108: This is what I was gong to say. Men don’t get criticized for wearing a catsuit to the French open because they all dress alike anyway. Can you imagine the reaction if a man walked out onto the court dressed that way? The audience would laugh. Society already dictates conformity in male clothing. I thought the catsuit was fine, but then I thought about what would happen if its equivalent appeared on a man.
jacy
@celticdragonchick:
Oh, gosh, yes. I forgot about that. I graduated in ’82 and there was a smoking section outside the cafeteria. Why, it was practically the Wild West!
afanasia
@rikyrah: I wore one. In retrospect, it was a great policy. I still gravitate toward grey blazers and pleated skirts, but that’s my problem.
raven
@celticdragonchick: Dang!
Corner Stone
@Juice Box: Did you miss the Andre Agassi years?
But WTS, I won’t go too far into gene’s original comment except to say that I think it missed the main point of what TaMara’s is getting at.
dnfree
@raven: Things that seemed unchangeable certainly changed fast, didn’t they? I graduated from college in 1967 and they still had all the rules about girls’ hours, bed check, etc. We detested them and thought they were unfair, but didn’t expect they would ever change. And then suddenly…..hours were gone and there were co-ed dorms. It’s like the Hemingway quote about bankruptcy, except that there wasn’t even a gradual part.
“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.
“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”
celticdragonchick
@jacy:
Stoner Hill was the smoking zone at Yucaipa High School in 1981. Everybody knew the kids were rolling joints. Nobody cared.
Amir Khalid
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I’ve seen a few university stickers on the back windows of cars here in Malaysia, but only ever of American universities. Never a university in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, or India, the other countries that are also popular student destinations.
Barbara
@japa21:
Almost always directed at girls and applied disproportionately to discipline girls of color. This op-ed in the Washington Post provides some real insight into the issue — and the one heartening thing in the story is the three girls who coordinated their outfits, and when the black student was told to go to the principal’s office, she summoned the other two who had not been and confronted the administration. This being Fairfax County, the administrators recognized that it was a problem.
Source
A Ghost To Most
I’d like to throw out a vociferous bravo to the D leadership, for handling this situation very well, so far.
Back to dress codes.
Amir Khalid
@Corner Stone:
Andre with hair, or Andre bald? I remember him when his hair was longer and blonder than Steffi Graf’s.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
More like the people male and female who wrote these rules humped everything that moved back in the day and now trying compensate for for their own lack of self control by by imposing these rules on the kids, thus convincing the kids that all these social rules are driven by pure hypocrisy and the only wrong is being caught, set women up to be abused.
Barbara
@gvg:
I would not let my daughters wear shirts that had words on them once it became a “fad” for those words to include provocative statements like, “What are you staring at?” It’s outrageous that girls are groomed to become sexual objects as soon as they make it to third grade.
Sloane Ranger
@Leto: You live/lived in Northamptonshire? Where abouts? I live in Wellingborough. I’ve seen the girls in Upper School here wearing trousers so it may be a decision the school makes. Of course all the schools in the County are now Academies. Dog bless our wonderful (bankrupt) County Council!
C Stars
@jacy: Yeah, I think my parents saw that it was a bit of a scam with the weirdly picky uniform violations and summer detentions, etc. and so they were fine with me switching to public (and also they are both teachers so they realized that the pedagogy at the private Catholic was actually sub-par, contra their expectations). But if I had to stay it would have been brutal. (I should add that there were also some really wonderful, intelligent and caring nuns there, but they were definitely a minority.)
I’m glad your kid’s friend got to leave and is thriving.
I’m sure that there are some great private Catholic schools out there, but my experience was that at the public schools I transferred to, kids were put in charge of everything (yearbook, drama and musical productions, etc) and so we really put our hearts into these interesting, challenging, years-long projects. Whereas at the private school, the teachers and administrators did all that stuff while the kids sat around comparing how much money their parents had and snorting coke in the bathrooms.
stinger
@Gin & Tonic: Old episodes of Magnum, P.I. practically make me blush. Don’t bend over, Mr. Selleck!!
Corner Stone
@A Ghost To Most: IMO, I would temper that a little. I agree the D leadership is now saying the right things, and look like they are pushing for the right things. But this all kind of started outside of their sphere of influence. We’ll never know what DiFi was going to ultimately do with Ford’s letter, as the name leakage put that into play. Without that leak all we’re talking about is how many Red State D Senators are going to cross over and vote for Kavvy.
Mnemosyne
@TaMara (HFG):
I’m going to guess that your niece is “developing early,” shall we say, and the school administrators are freaked out that a 12-year-old has visible boobs. Girls with larger boobs get more punishment for not following the dress codes because they can’t hide the fact that they have breasts. Ask me how I know. ?
Corner Stone
@Amir Khalid: There is no bald Andre, only hair Andre. He was like the Sampson of the tennis court.
C Stars
Oh Jesus, just read that Trump said this in front of the UN General Assembly (like they care!!!):
How can the GOP voters who actually have a couple of brain cells to rub together not live in a perpetual state of cringe-dom?
celticdragonchick
Really have to admit…I wince every time a see one of my students wearing Simply Southern merchandise.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1&ei=WWuqW6T3D8z2zgL9orKYDw&q=simply+southern+ss+logo&oq=simply+southern+ss+&gs_l=psy-ab.1.0.0.6575.9477..11509…0.0..0.205.1364.8j2j2……0….1..gws-wiz…….0i71j33i21j0i13j0i13i30j0i8i13i30j0i22i30j0i22i10i30.rbDDl8yRo-c
That fucking SS logo is wrong. I don’t say anything, but no way in hell would I ever have one of my kids wear something with an SS symbol on it.
stinger
@stinger: My point is that what seems shockingly short now, I hardly noticed at the time — short shorts were worn by both men and women. So much of what is acceptable or not is based on the culture of the moment.
NotMax
@Tokyokie
So old can remember when no one could wear jeans to school, male or female. Or as they were still called then, dungarees.
First thing when arriving home was to change from school clothes to play clothes. Or else catch hell.
@gene108
One can still, albeit with some effort (and luck), find mid-thigh shorts. As I wear shorts every day of the year, do stock up on them periodically. Hate, hate, hate cargo shorts.
Decent corduroy shorts, though, have seemingly gone the way of the dodo. The only ones around these days are so cheaply made and flimsy they may as well be marketed as disposable.
SiubhanDuinne, Badass Jackal
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I don’t see it nearly as often as I used to.
Still laugh it the recollection of one set of carefully-applied decal letters which spelled out:
COLLORADO COLEGE
C Stars
@Barbara: WOW. at the top of the article you linked to:
Correction: An earlier version of this story said that black girls are twice as likely as all other students to get suspended in schools across the country. They are five times as likely as white girls to get suspended in schools across the country.
Baud
@A Ghost To Most: Heretic!
@C Stars: Forty percent of the country hates Dems above all else. Trump represents them. That’s all they care about.
C Stars
@NotMax: So have you heard about this startup that’s producing made-to-order corduroy pillows?
It’s really making headlines.
TenguPhule
I assume there will be forthcoming post on Donald Trump’s attempt to incite WW III at the UN today.
TenguPhule
@C Stars:
I see your problem right there.
Mnemosyne
@schrodingers_cat:
Cello is not actually unique. If they want unique, he needs to learn the bassoon. That’s how you get a music scholarship.
My friend’s daughter started on the violin, then she went to the viola, then the cello, and now she plays a double bass that’s taller than she is (and she’s a pretty tall kid). But it was all her decision.
sheila in nc
@raven: Same experience here. When I graduated from jr high/9th grade in May 1969, it was after three years of knee-length skirts, no pants (the school eventually let us wear culottes if the garment looked like a pleated skirt.) Moved on to high school that September, and the only rules were, “You can’t wear a bathing suit, and you have to have something on your feet.”
TenguPhule
@James E Powell:
That’s not exactly true. There is no unified political will to take the necessary measures right now. But the Republicans seem bound and determined to reach that critical mass of really ugly emotion necessary to get there.
NotMax
@dnfree
Famous interaction (ostensibly from the 40s or 50s) from a college I attended involved a Dean of Women being petitioned to extend to a full hour the rule that males could visit females in their dorm rooms for no more than a half hour.
Students: “What could they do in an hour that they couldn’t do in a half hour?”
Dean: “They could do it twice.”
raven
@sheila in nc: I remember you from those crazy days. . .
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
Here’s an scene from Trump’s UN performance:
Trump begins his UN speech by saying his administration has accomplished more than “almost any administration in the history of our country.” There is some laughter in the hall. “So true,” he says. The laughter gets louder. “Didn’t expect that reaction,” Trump says.
Jill
My 14 year old goddaughter goes through the same thing. And has the same response. “oh look I’m a girl and I have boobs (her word), what a shock. If she is talking to a boy and she notices he is staring at her boobs she says “excuse me, look here, pointing to her face, my head is talking to you, not my boobs. They are demanding that boys learn to control their own bodies rather than girls having to hide theirs. Her class got the school to revise the dress code to include leggings, which were previously banned.
They are not apologetic about their bodies and seem less self-conscious than my generation was. They’re not particularly embarrassed about menstruating, or having any of the accompanying side effects, which was a mortifying experience when I was in middle school, not something you owned up to in mixed company.
It is heartening to see this generation of girls fighting back and changing the social norms!
Baud
I see Michael Moore is trying to fuck us over just before the midterms with his new movie.
schrodingers_cat
@Mnemosyne: Carnatic (south Indian classical) music on cello is pretty unique, or so I am told. Vishwa Mohan Bhatt modified the guitar to play Hindustani (north Indian) classical music. They are trying to attempt something like that. He does sing well. Carnatic Cello was so so in my opinion but then I am not a trained musician and not a natural fan of instrumental music of any genre. I need words to latch on to.
Marcopolo
Probably soon to be a dead thread but I thought it could use some more upbeat news:
TenguPhule
@C Stars:
i thought they were making pillows.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@TenguPhule:
I’m afraid of what you mean by “neccessary measures”
NotMax
@ C Stars
Ba-DUM-bum.
:)
TenguPhule
@Baud:
How bad is the film?
TenguPhule
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
You should be more afraid of what our circumstances will be like that “necessary measures” seems like the best possible option.
Baud
@TenguPhule:
Haven’t seen it. Just heard it includes another “Bernie should’ve won!/Both parties are the same”. FWIW.
TenguPhule
@Baud:
Moore’s films don’t have the drawing power they once did. Thank rising ticket prices for small favors.
dnfree
@NotMax: Maybe apocryphal, because in the early 1960s men couldn’t visit women in their dorm rooms at all, except for I think one special “open house” day a year. And then (this is not apocryphal), the door to the room had to be open, there were RAs and staff patrolling up and down the hall, and “three feet had to be on the floor.”
Roger Moore
@schrodingers_cat:
Yeah, cello is about the third or fourth most popular instrument for parents who want to force their child to learn music, rather than the first or second. If they really wanted to be different, they’d choose oboe or bassoon. The less popular instruments also have the advantage that there’s less competition for spots in the all-state orchestra, which looks really good on college applications.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: I hated his hacktastic movie about W and I was no W fan. I have no idea what the purity left sees in that guy.
Baud
@TenguPhule: Good. He should start making movies with Dinesh D’Souza.
Kelly
@NotMax:
LLBean has what you’re looking for
The Thin Black Duke
@Baud: Not enough people watched it to make a difference. It’s the lowest-grossing film of Moore’s career.
TenguPhule
@Roger Moore:
I remember those used to be called the spittoons back in band practice days.
NotMax
@dnfree
Progressive, liberal (and co-ed) campus from the day it first opened in the mid-19th century. So possibly not apocryphal. A wonderful story nonetheless.
C Stars
@TenguPhule: I know, I know. But sadly for my state of mind, I believe there actually are smart Republicans out there who are nevertheless willing to destroy the world in order to keep the Precious in its nassty little pocketsess.
Roger Moore
@C Stars:
They want to keep their kids away from objectionable Others. For working and middle class families, those are usually minorities. For the ultra-wealthy, it’s anyone who isn’t similarly wealthy, no matter what their skin color. For religious zealots, it’s anyone who doesn’t share their particular religion and might contaminate their poor child’s mind with contrary opinions.
FWIW, many parents consciously or unconsciously associate the racial and ethnic makeup of a school with its academic standards. They like to talk a lot about how academics are everything, but in practice they prefer to have their kids segregated with others of the same race. Tven if the segregated school has objectively worse academic performance, parents behave as if, and even claim outright, that it’s academically superior.
jacy
@Baud:
The only thing I saw was a headline quoting Moore as saying something along the lines of “Trump is really an evil genius!” I’m sorry, anybody who calls Trump any kind of a genius, evil or otherwise, is not worth listening to.
geg6
@Baud:
Meh. I heard the box office on it sucked. Mr. Rogers and RBG killed in their opening weekend. Moore’s newest bombed, based on what I read here on the tubes.
Roger Moore
@Nicole:
I would say something similar about school uniforms. Have a list of permitted clothing items, but don’t specify who is supposed to wear what. Yes, girls will mostly wear “girls” clothes and boys will mostly wear “boys” clothes, but if anyone wants to cross-dress or mix-and-match, that should be up to them.
NotMax
@geg6
Blech Panther.
;)
Aleta
Central Planning
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
One of my kids would just grab a shirt and put it on. Half the time it would be inside-out. Since it was early morning, we would say “Just so you know, your shirt is inside out.” He never took it off to switch it around, and we never cared.
None of my kids seem to care about what other people think of their looks, and the boys don’t really care what they look like (as far as I can tell). My daughter has a little more self-awareness in that respect.
Origuy
I remember in junior high school, around 1969 or 70, that we had an extremely cold spell. The dress code at the time did not allow girls to wear trousers. It had to be dresses. If the dress was too short, they were given an ugly blue wrap to wear over it. Some of the girls wore dresses on the cold days, including one whose father worked for the local newspaper. Of course, they were sent to the principal’s office. The next issue of the paper had an editorial about the dress code. It was changed within days to allow girls to wear long pants.
MagdaInBlack
I’m thinking about all the things women/girls cant do because: boys
The places we arent supposed to go, because: boys
Things we arent supposed to do, because: boys
Clothes we arent supposed to wear, because: boys
These “boys” sure are snowflakes, and I think maybe “girls” just arent the problem here.
Aleta
@Aleta:
From Andrea Constand’s written pre-sentencing statement to the judge, which she asked to be kept private until today after sentencing.
dnfree
@NotMax: Coed campus is one thing (so was mine). Coed dorms, and floors of dorms, was entirely another!
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@SFAW: I know he and his supporters live in a bubble, but even so, I’m puzzled whenever they talk about “accomplishments”. He wakes up, tweets on the toilet, watches Fox, goes to bed. Golfs. How in the name of Holy Cthulhu do you find anything in that cycle to call an “accomplishment” that you can even pretend to be proud of?
Leto
@Sloane Ranger: Late reply but we lived near Brackley/Bicester. About 10-15 mins from Silverstone, down the road from Aylesbury. Maybe it was specific to his school, Kingham Hill, but I did see a lot of the little kids in the local schools still dressing like that. Our military base didn’t have a school system past 5th grade, so kids went to the local schools. High school aged students went to Kingham. I just looked up Wellingborough and it looks like you were maybe 45 mins from us, as the crow flies. We were neighbors!!! Let me know if you’re ever near Brackley as there’s a great tea room there I can recommend :)
PenAndKey
As someone who grew up damn near dirt poor I’ll give these a shot. No, not a one, probably.
I get that people think uniforms are an equilizing force that can remove distractions and “level the playing field”, but all you need to do is ask any poor kid forced to shop for a uniform at Goodwill exactly how equal their wardrobe is to the brand new high end clothes the rich kids wear to know this is nothing but a pipe dream. A pipedream that serves double-duty as a way to punish non-conforming, but a pipedream all the same.
It’s not even like we can claim school uniforms are a way to “teach what the real/working world is like”. I run a lab filled with people that can wear whatever they want as long as it’s safe and ppe appropriate. Why? Because I have a hell of a lot better to do with my time than police how thick their spaghetti straps are.
C Stars
@Central Planning: We usually let the kids put on whichever clothes, whichever way they want. But this morning before putting on his pants my five-year-old was walking around with his briefs on backwards. He pushed back a little when I asked him to fix it, but the thought of the massive, 6-hour long wedgie the little guy would have to endure made me stick to my guns.
@Roger Moore: Yes, sadly, that seems to be the case. Although one of my only friends when I was at the Catholic school was an observant Jewish girl (and Pink Floyd megafan) whose parents had also been hoodwinked into thinking the education was better just because it was hella expensive. After I left, she stayed on and gave the school three more glorious years of grief. She was really active with B’nai B’rith and particularly relished debating the cranky old Republican priest who taught religion.
C Stars
@MagdaInBlack: You have probably heard of Lakoff’s hierarchy. Your comment reminded me of it.
The Conservative Moral Hierarchy:
• God above Man
• Man above Nature
• The Disciplined (Strong) above the Undisciplined (Weak)
• The Rich above the Poor
• Employers above Employees
• Adults above Children
• Western culture above other cultures
• America above other countries
• Men above Women
• Whites above Nonwhites
• Christians above non-Christians
• Straights above Gays
https://georgelakoff.com/2016/07/23/understanding-trump-2/
Mnemosyne
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
Trump’s “accomplishment” is that he was born rich. That’s all his supporters care about, because that’s what makes him automatically better than everyone else.
Aleta
The need to break a child who won’t conform. I just flashed back to a boy in 5th grade. After unseen punishment, he’d make a show of walking back to his desk with attitude, get us to laugh. (I remember his older bros; pretty sure it was a survival technique he’d learned.) From then on, the male teacher was just out to break him. This was a much worse thing for us kids to experience than any smartass remarks during math.
This story makes me happy.
MagdaInBlack
@C Stars:
I have and now I have to dig out Mr Lakoff again
J R in WV
@celticdragonchick:
Any school that allows that is run by Nazis – old school, kill the Jews Nazis, not just modern racist fascists, Nazis. Simply Southern is obviously a Nazi organization attempting to normalize fascist symbols in daily life.
Despicable — both any schools allowing that worn by students AND the manufacturers of that filth. Not to mention the shameful kids being at least partly blissfully unaware of recent history symbolized by that filth. Thanks for the complex link, worked like a charm to show me what you meant and were talking about, I’ve never heard of those monsters, a bit of education there!
Miss Bianca
@TaMara (HFG): Well, in my high school, both boys and girls were subject to a dress code. I am not sure how vigorously the boys were policed – me, I only remember some ridiculous thing about “wide-wale” corduroys being okay, but the other kind (“narrow-wale”? Is that even a phrase?), like Levis, being for some reason verboten, and that was the only thing I remember getting busted over.
But yeah, point taken.
jonas
@rikyrah: The word chutzpah has no meaning any more. Graham and his colleagues conveniently forget that two years ago, they took the “traditional confirmation process,” shredded it into fine little pieces, rolled it up in a giant spliff made from $100 dollar bills donated by the Kochs, lit it, took a big drag, and blew the smoke in Democrats faces and walked away laughing maniacally.
daryljfontaine
@WaterGirl:
SuperFly TNT/The Guns of the Navarone
Hatred with the white-hot intensity with of a thousand suns
Fury
Rage
Anger
and then above that, Code Infrared: Preternatural Murderous Calm
D
daryljfontaine
There’s an extra “with” in there, and of course we have no Edit button. You get the idea.
D
WaterGirl
@daryljfontaine: Maybe this is it. Now all that’s needed is the color coding.
GHUA
When I was a teenager I was distracted by jeans, cordourys, basketball shorts, slacks, wrestling uniforms, it really didn’t matter. OK maybe a little. It’s a good thing sagging wasn’t a thing back then or I might have learned .1% less.
When sagging was a thing, both girls and boys were told to be less sexy so it didn’t come across as sexist as it does now.
HS girls at some schools in the Bay Area are pushing back against dress codes. I think they’ll win on principle in not too long. The boys won’t complain. Everyone will learn approximately as much as they did before. Or maybe a little less.
God help us all.