BREAKING: Openly gay youth permitted into the Boy Scouts, gay adults still banned
Great NEWS!
http://Let's Reinvent the 'Don't Be a Slut' School Dress Code →
The classroom is not the beach, young lady. But it’s not a convent, either. So why are administrators and busybody parents so fascinated with teenage girls’ boobs, butts and thighs? We’re sick of adults imposing arbitrary moral standards on female students’ attire for fear they’ll “distract” their fellow classmates. The dress code itself isn’t necessarily the problem; it’s the reasoning behind it.
“Generation Fabulous” blogger Vivienne Wagner/most embarrassing mom of the week recently attended* her 8th grade son’s “Academic Awards Ceremony” (Fancy!) and was so shocked to find “exceptionally bright and disciplined” girls pursuing “hoochie-ism” that she took photos of said teen hoochies and titled them “examples of why I’m glad I don’t have daughters.”
SEXPAND
“Now it should be clearly stated that these must all be absolutely exceptionalyoung women,” she stressed. “Academic awards, after academic awards, after academic awards were claimed by these girls.” Which means…what? That a 14-year-old’s value doesn’t have anything to do with how many inches of thigh she’s showing at graduation?
SEXPAND
Lindy once reminded us that the definition of modesty is historically related to“womanly propriety.” (Blergh.) It’s a gendered term that implies certain behavior is appropriate for virtuous women and certain behavior (tube tops) is not. “The idea that society can tell you how much of your body to reveal or hide implies that your body does not belong to you,” Lindy wrote. Exactly. Parents like Wagner — or, way worse, school administrators — who impose rules mandating how much skin girls are allowed to show based on their personal beliefs regarding good girls vs. slutty mcsluts imply that women are responsible for covering themselves up so as not to tempt men (or, you know, general ruin).
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Here are some recent school dress code controversies:
A New Jersey school prohibited girls from wearing strapless dresses to a dance; as a compromise, board members said they would allow single-strap gowns and clear spaghetti straps.Reason? Some parents said they were told that strapless dresses would be too “distracting” for boys.
A Northern California middle school banned girls from wearing tight pants.Reason? They distract boys.
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Middle School Bans Tight Pants Because They ‘Distract the Boys’
Instead of teaching students to respect each other, a misguided middle school in northern California is telling its girls to no longer wear pants… Read…
A Minnesota high school went one step further and banned girls from wearing tight pants with short tops. Reason?The look can “be highly distracting for other students.”
A Cincinnati high school asked two girls to leave prom for being “inappropriately dressed.” Reason?Appropriate dresses “can have no curvature of the breasts showing.” Too bad for adolescent girls who’ve progressed beyond training bra status!
Of course, not all school administrators who set dress codes are puritanical Scrooges who secretly jerk off to the skimpy tank tops they confiscate on the regular. Teen girls are systematically hypersexualized and objectified and some teachers (we hope) don’t want them to play into that and think they have to wear tight clothes to be admired. But if the purpose is not to hypersexualize or objectify, maybe don’t take photos of their headless bodies, or set arbitrary rules that seem geared towards making teachers feel comfortable rather than ensuring the well-being of teenage girls.
This is pretty basic stuff: teaching teenagers that girls shouldn’t wear certain clothes if they don’t want to distract or tempt boys is just like telling women to avoid dressing like sluts if they want to be raped.
Sexist middle/high school dress codes hold girls responsible for having girly bodyparts. But what does a nonsexist dress code look like? Certain attire isn’t appropriate for school — just like you wouldn’t wear a crop top to court (unless you’re in the Bling Ring) or workout gear to a wedding — but “appropriate” can’t mean “antithesis of whore.” I’m honestly not sure. Any teachers/know-it-alls (we kid, we kid) in the house want to share their thoughts?
*That link is care of my BFF Google cache; Wagner took the original post down a few hours after posting. Maybe the parents of her sons’ classmates weren’t super pleased that she was shit-talking their kids on the internet?
Mississippi Could Soon Jail Women for Stillbirths, Miscarriages →
The state’s manslaughter laws weren’t supposed to apply to women who lose pregnancies. Prosecutors don’t seem to care.
BREAKING: WARNING - GRAPHIC - Attack In England Results In Beheading | Mediaite →
Several are reportedly dead in a violent attack in London, according to breaking reports. A UK solider and two civilians are dead following what is being described as a terrorist attack.
Today Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit educational organization behind Sesame Street, announced a multi-year partnership with Teaching Strategies, the educational company that publishes The Creative Curriculum and Teaching Strategies GOLD.
Learn more at http://sesameworkshop.org/school
Children of addicted parents more likely to be depressed as adults
Children of parents who were addicted to drugs or alcohol are more likely to be depressed in adulthood, according to a new study by University of Toronto researchers.
“These findings underscore the intergenerational consequences of drug and alcohol addiction and reinforce the need to develop interventions that support healthy childhood development,” said the study’s lead author, Esme Fuller-Thomson, professor and Sandra Rotman Endowed Chair in the University of Toronto’s Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work and the Department of Family and Community Medicine.
In a paper published online in the journal Psychiatry Research this month, investigators examined the association between parental addictions and adult depression in a representative sample of 6,268 adults, drawn from the 2005 Canadian Community Health Survey.
Of these respondents, 312 had a major depressive episode within the year preceding the survey and 877 reported that while they were under the age of 18 and still living at home that at least one parent who drank or used drugs “so often that it caused problems for the family.”
Results indicate that individuals whose parents were addicted to drugs or alcohol are more likely to develop depression than their peers. After adjusting for age, sex and race, parental addictions were associated with more than twice the odds of adult depression, says Fuller-Thomson.
“Even after adjusting for factors ranging from childhood maltreatment and parental unemployment to adult health behaviours including smoking and alcohol consumption, we found that parental addictions were associated with 69 per cent higher odds of depression in adulthood,” explains Fuller-Thomson. The study was co-authored with four graduate students at the University of Toronto: Robyn Katz, Vi Phan, Jessica Liddycoat and Sarah Brennenstuhl.
This study could not determine the cause of the relationship between parental addictions and adult depression. Co-author Robyn Katz, suggests that “It is possible that the prolonged and inescapable strain of parental addictions may permanently alter the way these children’s bodies react to stress throughout their life.
“One important avenue for future research is to investigate potential dysfunctions in cortisol production – the hormone that prepares us for ‘fight or flight’ – which may influence the later development of depression.”
“As an important first step, children who experience toxic stress at home can be greatly helped by the stable involvement of caring adults, including grandparents, teachers, coaches, neighbours and social workers,” said Fuller-Thomson. “Although more research is needed to determine if access to a responsive and loving adult decreases the likelihood of adult depression among children exposed to parental addictions, we do know that these caring relationships promote healthy development and buffer stress.”
