For many parents with teenage daughters, there will be a time when disagreements occur about what some girls might want to wear. Parents' and teens’ ideas of acceptability don’t always align. On Liveline, Cormac Ó hEadhra heard from Bernie, who was concerned that some schoolgirls are not wearing their uniforms as their school intended:
"It probably has always been somewhat of an issue, but I think in recent years it has gone to the complete and utter extreme, where it’s representing something other than just girls wanting to wear their skirts a little shorter, it’s verging on the erotica, if you know what I mean."
Is the pressure growing, Cormac asked, on schoolgirls to make their school skirts shorter and shorter? That’s what it looks like, was Bernie’s conclusion – especially in the south of the country where she is:
"In the Cork area it’s almost reached a frenzy of competitiveness, where they’re actually at the point where you can see their bum cheeks, a lot of them, when they’re walking around."
Bernie is eager to stress that she’s not approaching this subject from a moral standpoint and she’s trying to be objective, but it saddens her that after women fighting for so long for equality and "some kind of status", young girls – children – feel like "they have to objectify themselves in this manner":
"We fought long and hard for equality for girls and women and this doesn’t look anything like equality to me."
As far as Bernie is concerned, school uniforms were supposed to make things easier for kids in school by making everyone wear a version of the same thing, but it hasn’t worked out that way as the uniforms themselves are being altered by the girls who are wearing them:
"The point of having a uniform in the first place and the idea is that equality for everybody and to ease peer pressure, so it’s become the total antithesis to what it’s supposed to be."
What is the purpose of this skirt-hiking? Bernie isn’t sure and she doesn’t know if the girls themselves know:
"I don’t know myself what’s behind it all, I mean, I’m sure they’re not thinking on it as a sexual issue themselves, it just has something that has crept in as sort of a sub-grouping."
Other callers got on the Liveline to tell Cormac how they felt about the issue, one of whom was Lisa, and she wanted to make it clear that she disagreed with Bernie’s take on schoolgirls adjusting their uniforms:
"If grown men or young lads are objectifying or sexualising girls because of a skirt, you know, it’s not about the skirt. It’s about teaching your son and telling your husband or your brother to stop sexualising young girls."
Lisa said that she was trying to understand where Bernie was coming from, but she wasn’t sure why it was a problem if girls didn't like the skirts they had to wear to school:
"There’s a religious connotation to covering up. We all know that. You know, we know the history of this country and we know what the religious connotation is with school uniforms."
Lisa spoke directly to Bernie about her argument on uniforms and how girls are choosing to wear them:
"If you're talking about equality, but you’re oppressing a young girl for the length of her skirt, that does not make sense."
For Bernie though, it’s less about objectification or sexualisation and more about whether or not girls are abiding by their schools’ rules:
"They’re not adhering to certain dress codes because they want to just be able to bend the rules to suit themselves. I mean, there are dress codes in every area of life and one of them is in schools."
The catalyst of the problem as far as Lisa is concerned, is the dress code:
"There’s no problem with boys’ dress code, with the uniform, but because girls have a choice with the skirt, in a lot of schools now with trousers as well, but a skirt I feel personally, that telling a girl you cannot expose the upper part of your leg over your knee, that’s so wrong."
Josephine calls in to say that she’s been watching girls in the park who are scantily clad, which she finds indecent and "disgusting". She says that boys would never be seen in something "so skintight and so skimpy". Josephine says she never would’ve let her own daughter out dressed like that. Lisa counters:
"Another thing you’d never hear is, you’d never hear a mother sitting down, telling her son, 'Maybe don’t wear that out tonight in case you’re raped.’ You won’t hear that either, do you know what I mean? So, I just think that this crap of telling girls, ‘Do not show your legs, do not do this.’ No – teach your sons and your daughters and your husbands and your brothers and everyone in your life the same values. You’ve no right to violate someone with your eyeballs or your hands."
There was much more discussion on the topic, which you can hear by tapping our clicking above.