Another day, another WTF news story from America’s messiest bitch- Florida. Parents and students in St. Johns, Florida were outraged when the Bartram Trail High School yearbook featured masses of heavily edited photos, based on archaic, misogynistic dress code rules.
While most teens look forward to seeing their yearbooks, students at this particular high school were in for a shock to see the absolutely piss-poor editing job that was done on their photos to hide their juicy sin-bits, such as chests and shoulders (gasp!). According to CNN, about 80 young women had their photos edited to hold up the standards of archaic dress codes that state girls’ shirts “must cover the entire shoulder and they must be modest and not revealing or distracting.”
This isn’t the first dress code bullshittery to make the news, and it certainly won’t be the last. Apparently as a society we give less fucks about allowing kids (yes these are underage children) to just BE than we do about saving the poor souls that may be distracted by their Jezebel shoulder-baring ways!
Apparently, the female yearbook coordinator decided to alter the photos based on the school’s dress code that emphasizes modesty. However, the outrage is coming from a place of recognizing that this is a bigger systematic issue that specifically targets young girls. There’s a big fucking problem with sexualizing young girls and treating them as “distractions” for the poor boys (eyeroll).
Aside from the shit message this sends for girls coping with the body image and identity struggles that come up at this age, the BBC noted that the poor editing job has posed a new challenge as some of the kids have turned the photos into memes to share on Snapchat.
The school district is looking into the situation, given the amount of attention it’s gotten. That being said, there are parents who supported the edits and the batshit discriminatory dress codes they were based upon. This is why we can’t have nice things, I guess.
It’s important to note that photos of boys were not altered, even the ones showing a lot of skin for sports and whatnot. But we probably could see that coming, right?