Avon author writes about harmful effects of school dress codes
Carrie Firestone of Avon has two daughters, ages 16 and 14.
Like most moms, she got in the habit of tuning out their conversations, to focus on her own thoughts. Then one day she heard a bit of conversation that drew her in.
“She was sharing her friend’s story. She was saying, ‘Why is that guy always looking at her chest? Why is he always complaining about what they were wearing?’” Firestone said. “I remembered conversations I heard in the minivan and thought, I should have been listening more.”
Out of that conversation, followed by extensive research, Firestone has written “Dress Coded” (GP Putnam & Sons., 303 pp., $17.99). The middle-grade novel hits store shelves on July 7.
“Dress Coded” is about a subject teen girls know by heart: School dress codes are harshly enforced against girls and rarely if ever against boys.
Girls’ self-esteem and school performance are affected and family budgets strained. The practice promotes body shaming, slut shaming, period shaming and even racism, Firestone said and plants the seeds of rape culture, in which girls are blamed for boys’ reactions to their clothes.
The book tells the story of Molly Frost, whose friend starts her period in a pair of white pants. The girl ties her sweatshirt around her waist to hide the stain, exposing her tank top. Their middle school’s dress-code enforcer, a man, embarrasses the girl by telling her the tank top is inappropriate and orders her to put her sweatshirt back on. The girl refuses and is punished.
Molly sets out to defend her