http://www.nationalpost.com/home/story.html?id=E7669ACC-CE4B-48EC-B533-015069F38467'Schoolgirl look' makes students uneasy: study Anne Marie Owens
National Post Monday, June 02, 2003
The school uniform, sold to parents and students as a way of simplifying student life and making all students equal, actually complicates the lives of teenage girls, according to a Montreal researcher.
Wearing a uniform to school opens up girls to unwanted sexual attention by men turned on by a "schoolgirl look" and harassment by those who view them as being rich, says a new study, which details the reactions of teenage girls to uniform wearing.
"Generally speaking, these uniforms did more harm than good," said Gillian Shadley, author of "School Uniforms, Eros and Mixed Messages," a paper delivered this weekend at the largest annual gathering of academics in Canada as part of an academic panel on dressing and being dressed. The study, which was the focus of her graduate work at Concordia University, stemmed from interviews with female students at an undisclosed all-girls school in Montreal about how they feel and how others react to them wearing a traditional kilt-style uniform every day.
"The first and most unanimous grievance is that they feel sexually objectified in their uniforms," the study says. "They find that they are continuously judged and scorned by peers and adults when they wear their uniform."
The students also said they felt physically uncomfortable wearing their uniforms, with complaints about such things as their kilts riding up when they run for the bus, and people staring at them as they readjust the skirts. "[The girls] expressed serious feelings of uneasiness when wearing their uniforms, since they had all had experiences of unwanted attention from men," the study says.
The study fits into a relatively new academic focus, dress studies, which examines dress as a way of explaining culture and behaviour.
The school uniform paper was presented alongside papers on the prom dress, the influence of Britney Spears and "little girls in sexy clothes," and the pedagogy of shoes at the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences in Halifax.
aowens@nationalpost.com
© Copyright 2003 National Post
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What exactly is she implying by that? ![[izzat so?]](graemlins/zatso.gif)
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![[no no no]](graemlins/nono.gif)
