I want to give a shout out to the Jim Thorpe Area School Board and its administrators for its decision to back the elimination of a dress code.

While many districts still enforce dress codes to some degree, many were relaxed last year because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dress codes in schools began in earnest in the 1950s and ’60s when schools were on a mission to curb juvenile delinquency. Administrators and boards of education thought that regulating the type of clothing worn would serve a useful purpose in setting boundaries for students.

So, let’s put away those rulers that measure whether dresses are close enough to the knees. I am not naïve enough to believe that the cat-and-mouse game of dress code violations will ever completely go away, but at least Jim Thorpe has made a move in that direction.

By the way, don’t think that it’s “anything goes” time at the Jim Thorpe district. There will still be rules and regulations to make sure that both boys and girls don’t go off the deep end in their quest for self-expression.

Not surprisingly, most high school students view dress codes as “stupid” and “overly confining.” Most educators and parents welcome them as a significant help in setting the tone for the educational experience.

Many students complain that their schools champion and encourage them to speak up and express themselves, but when they do so through the clothing they choose to wear, a double-standard comes into play.

The decade-old dress code in the Jim Thorpe district mandated that students wear tucked in, solid-colored polo shirts, dress shirts, blouses, sweaters, turtlenecks, with suit coats or fleeces allowed. Pants had to be khaki, navy blue or black, no funky chartreuses or psychedelic colors.

I have always maintained that dress codes disproportionately are aimed at girls. In the process of trying to make them appear to be less-appealing to testosterone-infused male teenagers, what these codes unintentionally do is call attention to and objectify girls’ bodies.

Most of the dress codes use gendered language, such as “girls must not wear spaghetti straps or show cleavage.” Palmerton’s dress code even defines the word. “Showing cleavage (defined as the separation between a woman’s breasts per the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language) is prohibited.”

The reasoning is that this will distract boys and keep them from focusing on the learning process. This ideology indicates that the reaction of male peers is a girl’s fault, suggesting that males cannot control themselves when they look at the way that females are dressed.

To my way of thinking, this reasoning is a type of victim-blaming by putting the spotlight on young girls’ bodies rather than on educational objectives where it belongs. A so-called “offender” is being dehumanized and objectified and her intelligence is not being taken into account. And this doesn’t even begin to address the important issue of body-shaming.

When schools send girls home because their shorts were a couple of inches from meeting the dress-code requirement, it sends the wrong message.

“It’s outrageous that girls are losing critical class time simply for what they are wearing,” said National Women’s Law Center Fellow Kayla Patrick. “This sends a disturbing message to all students: What a girl looks like is more important than what she learns and thinks. No girl should ever have to forfeit her education because her shirt is the wrong color or she has a hole in her jeans,” Patrick said.

Despite the “other-era” argument, I always like to compare today’s school experiences with mine. Yeah, yeh, I know: I’m an old fogey, and times have changed, but we had a dress code of sort, too. It was called “common sense.”

The first line of defense was my mother. I would not get out of the house if I was not wearing proper school attire. I sheepishly admit that I did not have a pair of jeans until I went to college. My mother thought that wearing jeans to school made me “underdressed.”

Most of the hassling among my classmates resulted from their hairstyles - long hair and sideburns. My friends and I sported crew cuts, but several of my more free-spirited classmates wore sideburns that emulated singer Elvis Presley or actor James Dean. This would rile up some teachers and administrators, but no one was ever sent home. They would merely make snide remarks, which my classmates routinely ignored.

A high school senior writing in Scholastic magazine said that most students want to feel safe and comfortable in their schools “Yet, dress codes establish an environment laced in sexism and racism,” she said. “As a female, I do not feel equal to my male counterparts, because the attention is placed on the way I look and not the way I think.”

By Bruce Frassinelli | tneditor@tnonline.com

The foregoing opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editorial Board or Times News LLC.