Push to change attitudes and dress codes
Student campaigns against school’s ‘oppressive’ policy, challenging dialogue on sex
Andy Villanueva stood on the counter of the newsstand in Chester subway station and declared “we want to address the slut shaming that happens in schools by teachers.” A dozen people stood around, listening. “There should be no dress codes.” Given the other protests erupting over sex and morality in public schools across the city right now, this seemed a refreshing change of perspective. Plus, a disco ball rotated by Villanueva’s head and a zine called “You Don’t Have to F*** People Over To Survive,” was for sale at her feet. What kind of subway newsstand was this?
“The Toronto District School Board does not have a single dress code. Schools create their own and teachers appropriate the rules at their own discretion,” Villanueva, 19, explained later.
That discretion, she said, tends to focus on girls. It reinforces damaging stereotypes.
“The implementation of dress codes is oppressive — sexist, racist and transphobic,” she said.
Before your eyes flutter to the back of their sockets, let me read you parts of the former dress code at Villanueva’s alma mater, Central Technical School. It called for students to wear “clothing appropriate for a learning environment.”
Here’s what it deemed appropriate: “Top meets bottom, reasonable length shorts and skirts, underwear hidden” and high cut tops that didn’t expose “too much bosom.” That’s right, bosom.
It also nixxed “gang-related clothing, including bandannas” and “clothing with inappropriate language and/or visuals.” Otherwise, the entire code seemed bent over young women’s bodies.
The favourite weapon of vicious teenage girls is the label “slut.” Villanueva makes a good point: Should schools echo or shield against that?
“Teachers shouldn’t be telling students ‘You should be embarrassed,’ and ‘What kind of attention are you trying to get?’ ” said Villanueva. “The worst part is teachers actually think they are protecting young girls by saying these things.”
One friend didn’t report a male student groping her, Villanueva said. “She said ‘I was breaking the dress code.’ She’d internalized the lesson that she was asking for it.”
Villanueva calls her protest “Project Slut.” She started it guerrillastyle four years ago, taping up homemade posters around her school and dropping surveys into teachers’ mailboxes. A wise guidance counsellor pointed her to the Grade 12 social justice course and the principal brilliantly called the school board’s gender-based violence prevention office to help Villanueva and her classmates with their campaign.
The result: Last year, the school changed its dress code. English and drama teacher Geoff Kavanagh read the new one to me over the phone: “I will maintain the standard of dress that is required for a safe and healthy learning environment. I agree to wear the required subjectspecific clothing in tech, phys-ed, co-op, science and art classrooms.” That last bit relates to safety (i.e. not lighting your hair on fire), not morality.
Was the school overrun by girls in bikinis? “Absolutely not,” he said.
Students pretty much wore the same thing they had before. What did change was their language in the halls. “I did notice conversations about equity and bodies a lot . . . Students would say ‘It’s inappropriate for you to be talking about me in that way to other boys and girls,’ ” said Kavanagh.
Could you ask for a better sex-ed education?
In response to this and last spring’s “crop top” day, the Toronto District School Board is drafting a new dress code resource for principals. It will suggest schools “incorporate student voice better” and “get away from language like short skirts and spaghetti tops,” said TDSB spokesman Ryan Bird.
That’s not enough for Villanueva. Now a second-year arts student at York University, she’s launched a petition to scrap dress codes across the board. During her campaign, she learned other students feel unjustly targeted too — black boys who are told to remove their hats more than their white friends, and transgender students . . . Her feminist cause has become humanist.
As for the newsstand, it’s the creation of performance artist Jess Dobkin. She secured a yearlong lease and opened last May. It’s the first time the space had sold anything in eight years. Handing me a list of upcoming events, she explained apologetically that newspapers are dying.
“We are revisioning what news tells us — how we get our news, how we give our news,” she said, “and how information is shared.”
Everything old is new again. I’ll leave you with one thought: A century ago, North Americans were scandalized by the site of women wearing loose pants called bloomers.