WHEN I LEAVE A BAD AUDITION
Thank you for your consideration… FUUUUUUU-
WHEN PEOPLE MISPRONOUNCE COMPOSERS’ NAMES
(by simplysuzanne)
If I hear “pen-der- eck-y” one more time…
On dress-code enforcement and victim-blaming
I can understand some dress regulations at school (like not allowing a kid to wear a “God Hates Fags” t-shirt), although I actually favor letting kids wear pretty much whatever they want, no matter how offensive or “distracting.” Part of being an adult is moving through a diverse world where distracting and offensive things happen (and hello, you are in New York City, which is basically the universe-wide locus of distracting, offensive and bizarre things), and part of becoming an adult is figuring out how to do that. Yes, a young woman in a short skirt and a tube top might be “distracting” for a fifteen-year-old straight male, but that straight male is going to have to learn how to move through a world in which women will wear clothing in public that he finds attractive or arousing. When I was a fifteen-year-old straight female, I was on the school swim team, and let me tell you how distracting boys in drag-shorts can be for a hormone-addled girl. But you know, I dealt with it, and didn’t demand that all of the male swim team members put on sweatsuits. And as an adult, I do not kick over hot dude cyclists because they’re riding with their shirts off, or mean-mug beautiful men at the gym for being beautiful and sweaty and in the same room as me. Adulthood! Learning that your sexual desires are yours and kinda fun and not the “fault” of the person you find desirable! Realizing that the world is full of attractive people and you need to figure out a way to recognize that and still get things done! ADULTHOOD!
Beyond the treatment of young men as uncontrollable animals and the treatment of young women as rape-bait, the Stuy dress code enforcers also appear to fall into a common problem with dress codes generally — defining an “appropriate” body. As the students quoted in the Times article implied, some of them technically met the dress code but were still told they were “inappropriate,” not because of what they were wearing, but because of how it looked on them. I don’t know what those students look like, but I’m going to guess it comes down to boobs and butts. Flesh is what’s often considered “inappropriate” — B-cup boobs in a turtleneck are fine, but double-Ds are not; straight hips in a pencil skirt are fine, but curvy ones are not. It’s the body that’s being policed, not the clothes.
(Students at Stuyvesant Take Issue With Dress Code at Feministe)
