Hm. I had an issue in the Troop where a couple of times the kids wore booze-related T-shirts. In one case, mom and son wore matching Jack Daniels’ T-shirts. After consulting with other Troop leaders, we put out a notice that Scouts should not wear clothing advertising something they could not legally either possess or use.

Leaders in other units that I talked to all thought this was a good idea. We didn’t particularly think it was appropriate that a kid should show up wearing a liquor advertisement to camp. Now, in one of the two cases I know for a fact that it wasn’t a case of finances. I can’t answer for the other.

topics like this shouldn’t be taken lightly, let alone advertised as culture and style to vulnerable teens who’ll accept anything that makes them “cool.”

plus, if a girl is wearing such a shirt on a bus, with riders who vary from the elderly to young kids, how is the shirt appropriate? A child would read it and wonder what a cunt is or learn that it’s okay and accepted to wear vulgar shirts like that.

sure, there are a lot more important issues to be recognized and focused on but its the little things like this that sometimes amounts

that’s the fact that YOU missed

1) there were t-shirts that poked light-heartedly degraded males too; and

2) their products were NOT marketed to teens.

thats the joke you missed.

My dad owned a bar, and got lots of t-shirts from the liquor store for buying in quantity. Since the Reagan Revolution devastated the economy in Pittsburgh, the bar wasn’t making as much money, and I often wore the freebie liquor shirts to school. Nobody cared.

Nowadays, they’d treat me as if I’d shot the principal. How dare you wear liquor shirts to school!

What’s also ridiculous is the pants controversy - 20 years ago, it was school authorities worrying about too-tight pants; 5 years ago, too-loose pants; now, too-low pants.

But, as long as you don’t have uniforms i think restrictive dress codes like the one quoted above are stupid because it just gives the teens a focus to rebel against. When I was a kid and this was in the 80s, “half shirts” (the ones that show the midriff were called that back then) were sort of in for a while and the small rural high school tried to start a new policy against them - the next day the majority of the kids wore them just becuase there was this new policy.

But the girls still had to take the slacks off once they entered the school building! Usually they just wore their skirts over their slacks and pulled their slacks off in the hallways. Seemed pretty stupid to me then, never mind now.

Of course, this was at a time when, at a 400 student high school, the number of teachers’ cars in the parking lot outnumbered the students’ cars, and the vast majority of kids who were driving age took the school bus to school because they didn’t have their own cars. Now most juniors and seniors in my kids’ area who are driving age get a car to drive to school, and the school has a huge parking problem because it is over 100 years old and is still on the original site. It’s expanded since then (~3,500 students now), but there’s very little parking space on campus and the off-campus parking immediately around the school is restricted to residents. So a kid who drives and doesn’t win the parking lot lottery usually has to walk a few blocks from his or her car to the school.

10-4 on that. I was listing those for historical interest, not to say that this should be the rule now. I think that requiring girls to wear skirts is unnecessary.

“but i’m confused about the ‘underwear appropriate for your gender’ rule. (and i’m assuming that ‘gender’ really means ’sex’ here, unless the rules for femmy boys are different than the ones for butchy boys.) is the rule only stating that girls have to wear bras? that seems like a weird rule to me. or does it mean that boys can only wear cotton boxers, not g-strings with rhinestones from victoria’s secret? what if someone wants to go without any? this rule seems meaningless at best and invasive at worst. if it really means ‘girls have to wear bras so their nipples don’t show,’ they should say so. and demand a certain thickness of bra, because hard nipples are visible through most non-heavily-padded bras. then we can ask why it’s ok for boys’ nipples to show.”

I haven’t discussed the rules with the administration, but I presume that boys have to wear both a shirt and an undershirt, as well as for girls to wear bras. What happens if some girl wears a bra that does not keep her nipples from showing is unknown to me. I also have no idea how they would tell in 90% of the cases if someone, male or female, is “going commando”, but perhaps that’s the point; the situation is only an issue if you can tell. Again, I’m posting this to illustrate the solution that a local school is putting in to deal with the problem of kids wearing inappropriate clothing to school. I don’t know how well the rules are actually working, or how they are being implemented.

I have to say, I really wouldn’t have thought to extract “you must wear underwear” from “you must wear underwear appropriate to your gender.” Why not just amend the dress code to “you must wear underwear”? Although enforcement would certainly be a problem, I suppose.

As far as profane shirts, skimpy clothing, boxers pulled way up above one’s pants, etc., I think there’s an argument for keeping all that out of schools. It’s distracting, to teachers and to other students. Outside of school, though - well, there’s no right to ride the bus without seeing offensive clothing.

I think RonF’s argument that parents need to be more involved in supervising their children, while a pretty good idea in most situations, isn’t such a good one when talking about teenagers’ clothing choices. (11 and 12 year-old preteens, yes, certainly.) Clothes can be an outward expression of identity, especially for teenagers, who are in the process of developing their own identities. Taking away the choice can make them feel like their identities are under attack. The resultant situation will not be a fun one for anybody. I certainly saw this scenario play out more than once in high school. Encouraging a kid to make a reasonable clothing choice is not the same as making the choice for him or her, and, I suspect, will work better. Or draw some absolute limits but allow leeway within those limits.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051106/us_nm/retail_abercrombiefitch_dc

“Abercrombie & Fitch to pull tees after “girl-cott”"

So, now that the ‘cott is over, does that mean it’s okay to wear the t-shirts?

I didn’t mean to imply that teens’ interest in sex was any less when I was in school than it is now. That hasn’t changed, and isn’t going to. But there’s no need for the schools to allow it to be emphasized as much as it is now in the way that the kids dress. Letting kids walk around with bare midriffs and lowcut jeans and see-though tops (boys or girls) does nothing to further the educational mission of schools and does a lot to detract from it.

I dont like those T-shirt slogans though. I dislike them enough that I am certain that if I had a teenager at home, they would want to wear them just because I dont like them. I am not sure how I would handle such a situation but, since I dont have kids, I dont spend too much time worrying about it. Good luck to those of you raising kids in this culture.

3) Underwear should not be visible either outside of or though outer clothing. [...]
5) Underwear appropriate to your gender must be worn.

It seems to me that there’s a contradiction here.