Why did father let girl go to school like this?
( And sometimes from their parents )
YOU wouldn’t need to be an A grade pupil to predict what would happen when Chenise Benson walked into school looking like this.
Staff took one look at the 14-year-old’s exotic hair braids and refused to let her through the gates. She was reduced to tears and phoned her father to pick her up from George Pindar School in Scarborough, North Yorkshire.
Now furious Darren Benson, 39, has branded the school ‘racist’ for banning his daughter’s hairstyle, for which she saved up £140 to look like her favourite singer Beyonce. He said it had allowed her friend of ‘Jamaican heritage’ to have the same style hair with a red stripe
But his protests haven’t washed with school bosses or the general public – who branded Chenise’s hairstyle ‘ridiculous’ and Mr Benson ‘idiotic’ online.
No one from the school was available for comment but its website states: ‘Please note we do not allow extreme, unnatural hairstyles or colouring.’
DuriNG the half-term holiday, Chenise Benson had white braid-style extensions wound into her hair. The 14-yearold schoolgirl from Scarborough is a fan of the singer Beyonce, who has a similar ‘box-braids’ style.
Chenise clearly loves her waist-length extensions, which make her look like a fabulous squid washed up on an intergalactic beach, after the electric storm of the century.
But don’t laugh. Teenagers do all sorts of crazy, experimental things with their appearances. it is one way of finding out who you are and what tribe is worthy of your membership.
i recall getting a huge bubble perm in homage to Barbra Streisand’s rather spectacular version in the Seventies film A Star is Born.
Yes, a terrible mistake. i had to wander around Dundee looking like a sad gonk with a ginger pom-pom head until the darned thing grew out. And i didn’t discover who i was, only that i wasn’t a diva with a three octave range who gets to snog Kris Kristofferson.
however, Chenise’s acrylic explosion of Beyonce-dom is much more spectacular than my Barbra corkscrew calamity. it is very, how can i put this, out there.
Many parents would not allow a teenage daughter to leave the house looking like that. i certainly wouldn’t want my daughter to sport such an outlandish hairstyle, even on halloween and even if i had one (a daughter).
however, what matters most is that Chenise was thrilled, her family were pleased and her father was delighted his darling girl stumped up the £140 cost of the extensions with her pocket money.
So everyone was happy — until Chenise went back to school.
Teachers at the George Pindar School in Scarborough took one look at the mane of flowing, snowy braids and promptly sent Chenise home for breaking school rules with her inappropriate appearance.
AT ThiS point, one might have imagined her family would say fair enough. The last thing we want is for our girl to be the focus of so much attention. So let’s get it sorted, let’s get her hair cut so she can get on with the lovely free education that this country provides and for which we are so grateful — snip, snip, thud, thud.
But not a bit of it. Dad Darren Benson was furious!
Not only did he make it clear that he intended to get his money’s worth out of the hairstyle (‘it lasts for a year, so it is staying in’), he has also accused the school of ‘double standards’ because a friend of his daughter’s is of Jamaican descent and is allowed to wear dreadlocks. Which would be laughable were it not so risible.
Furthermore, Mr Benson could find nothing specific in the school rule books which banned the hairstyle from the playground. he added: ‘i’ve read the policy regarding haircuts — and i can’t see what rule she has broken.’
No, agreed. Perhaps there was not a particular subclause that outlaws starstruck Yorkshire schoolgirls from weaving three kilos of white fake hair through their own in a bid to look like a black American superstar.
Yet surely common sense would have suggested that this was never going to be acceptable? Most employers would balk at Chenise’s braids, unless they happened to be theatrical agents hiring extras for a teenage warrior scene in Game Of Thrones.
As the argument rumbles on, you have to wonder what kind of example this kind of belligerent parenting sets.
it is never good for children to think that everyone else is wrong and they are right, while rules are only to be obeyed if they suit your lifestyle.
School uniforms and school rules are set to maintain standards and to teach children life lessons for the future. This includes the understanding that the rules apply to you, and that you are not special, not exempt and not deserving of preferential treatment.
if you want to distinguish yourself and stand out from the crowd, you do so by working hard — not by looking like Beyonce or, God forbid, Barbra Streisand.
Sometimes teenage girls need saving from themselves. And sometimes their parents have to help them instead of indulging them.