Evanston, Ill., School Bans Leggings. Students Protest for the Right to Wear Them.
Middle-school girls in Evanston, Ill., are picketing for the right to wear leggings. Sophie Hasty, 13, told the Evanston Review that teachers at Haven Middle School informed female students this month that leggings are “too distracting to boys” to be fit for the classroom. Hasty, along with 500 students who’ve signed a petition contesting the rule, counter that the only thing leggings are responsible for is the supreme comfort of those who wear them. Last week, student protesters reported to class clad in leggings or yoga pants, holding signs like, “Are my pants lowering your test scores?”
The girls’ cause is about much more than the right to bear L’eggs. By emphasizing the disruptive consequences of leggings, administrators are attempting to fix boys’ juvenile behavior by placing an unfair burden on the girls who are supposedly distracting them. (As Hasty put it: “Not being able to wear leggings because it’s ‘too distracting for boys’ is giving us the impression we should be guilty for what guys do.”) The result is that the school is actually preventing these girls from focusing on their schoolwork by asking them to pay more attention to their own bodies.
More: Evanston, Ill., School Bans Leggings. Students Protest for the Right to Wear Them.