How many of you out there used to do cartwheels when you were kids? I certainly did (with varying degrees of success but unvarying degrees of fun). Maybe some of you are still occasionally flying across space, arms and legs akimbo, in which case, yay for you!
As we have discussed at great length on this blog, physical activities often feel more comfortable with the right gear and clothing. For playing around outside, jumping and leaping, cartwheeling and handstanding, reason and experience dictate shorts, sweats, or leggings along with tops, preferably not too baggy (so as not to interfere with movement or vision). Makes sense, right?
Not according to a public charter school in North Carolina whose dress code required female students to wear skirts to school and prohibited them from wearing pants or shorts.
Oh, I forgot to add that the actual quote by the charter school founder (reported by one of the plaintiff’s mothers) was “Well, to promote chivalry, because every girl is a fragile vessel.”
Hmmm. Just to confirm that I’m not the only person stupefied by this anwer, I googled “fragile vessel” to see what he could’ve been referring to.
Google clearly has no more idea than I do. None of the images offered up were of girls, either in pants or skirts.
Seriously, though: the messages that dress codes send can have a profound effect on our identity and our behavior, says ACLU Women’s Rights Project Director Ria Tabacco Mar. In an interview with my favorite comedian/activist/dad of three girls, W. Kamau Bell, she says:
Dress codes, unfortunately, can often be the site where we are teaching students what it means to be appropriate, what it means to be a girl, what it means to be a boy, that those things, those parts of ourselves are relevant to how we learn.
And what do our children learn when they are subjected to extreme sexist and racist dress codes? Here’s Tabacco Mar’s answer:
Our children are listening. This is what kills me. We’re talking about young children. With our skirts case, when we started, our youngest client was going into kindergarten. She was five years old. She’s in high school now. She wears pants. Spoiler, they all wear pants. We won. That’s the good news. But even at five, she knew. She picked up on the message. So nobody was using the word “chivalry” to a five-year-old. Probably she didn’t know what that word meant. But she knew that the message was that boys and girls are different. The boys are better. The boys can move freely in the classroom. The boys can sit crisscross applesauce and girls have to sit with their legs to the side. The boys can do cartwheels at recess and girls have to stand on the sideline chatting.
…People often said, “What’s the big deal about skirts? Did you really have to sue them over it?” Well, if the skirts are not a big deal, then why didn’t they change the dress code when we asked them to? Because it is a big deal. It’s communicating really important messages about what it means to be a student — what it means to be a boy, what it means to be a girl — and it’s teaching us that those things are relevant in ways that they, frankly, should not be.
Bell’s interview with Tabacco Mar includes discussion of other dress code cases, many of which send racist, sexist, anti-trans, homophobic and xenophobic messages. You can read or listen to it here. There’s a lot to digest, and the issues they discuss reveal a bigger picture of injustice.
To focus back on a small part of that picture: the main message I want to send kids is that it can be GREAT to be one. One of the big advantages of being a kid is the license to explore the world using the abilities and senses their bodies have. Not all of us do cartwheels. But denying kids the chance to flip around because they’re stuck wearing a dress is, well, just silly.
Speaking of silly (this time in a good way): if you would like a tutorial on assisted cartwheels, and in fact a double cartwheel, look no further than below.
Readers, I wish you comfortable clothing and some leisure time to explore the world, your bodies, and fun with both. Let us know if you have cartwheel or other fun movement stories to share.
