1.
Israelis aren't quite strict with their dress code. They don't wear suits (unless they have to A. meet with Americans or B. look Ministerial). They don't put on ties. They like their sandals when it’s hot outside. They like their necklines exposed.
There are rarely strict dress codes at work places, and only loose codes in other places, schools included. Yes – many schools have a mandatory school shirt, and some general instructions for students on what they can and can't wear. But these are often interpreted in ways that make a mockery out of any rule aimed at promoting prudence.
By the way, based on my experience with four kids at four different schools, teachers are often not much better than their students when it comes to proper dressing.
2.
Well – when we say that we need to define “propriety”. And that is exactly the issue under debate in Israel in recent days, all because of a protest by high school girls against rules that – they claim – are “unequal”. A group of high-schoolers sent a letter to the Minister of Education Naftali Bennett, “expressing their dismay over not being allowed to wear shorts while their male classmates were allowed to”.
The girls are factually right: in many schools boys are allowed to wear clothing that girls aren't allowed to wear. The opposite is also true, no boy would be welcomed with a skirt at most schools.
The question is: should there be equality in dress codes for boys and girls at schools, and what should this dress code be?
Clearly, the girls have one view (equality and no restrictions for all), and some of the school principals have a different view (no equality, restrictions). One student was apparently appalled when her principal told her that “there is a difference between girls and boys and what is respectable for boys is not respectable for girls”.
3.
Three schools of thought were evident in the debate that engulfed Israel about this urgent matter (it is urgent because summer is here and students want to be as free of clothes as possible, and because the school year is almost over, and in 3-4 weeks the debate will no longer have any meaning).
A. Let them wear what they want – in the case of many girls, short-shorts – because it is “their body”, their “right to decide” and because boys are allowed to make such decisions for themselves (the equality argument).
B. Make it equal, but stricter. Namely, let boys and girls wear pants (or skirts for girls) of the same length – some say “long”, some say “knee long”. That is the equal but conservative approach.
C. Girls and boys are not the same. It is reasonable to make different rules for them, and is unreasonable to let girls – teenage beauties – hang around schools in short-shorts that make it harder for their peers and their teachers concentrate on the thing that school is for (study).
4.
Proponents of approach A believe that the ban on shorts is “chauvinistic” and/or “outdated” and/or “blame the victim mentality” (“These girls, some as young as 14, are refusing to accept the notion that rape and sexual harassment are linked to what a woman wears”).
Proponents of approach B want “equality”, but don't want girls to wear short-shorts. They claim to be the “pragmatic” school of thought.
Proponents of approach C believe that the girls are “young”, “naïve” (or even “dumbly naive”) to think that what a girl wears doesn't affect the way a girl is treated by boys (be it peers or teachers).
5.
In Israel, all debates are debates about religion and politics, and most opinions are linked to religious and political camps. In Israel, every battle is one between the evil forces of Licentiousness to the evil forces of suppression. Hence:
The leader of leftist-secular Meretz believes that it is no less than “inconceivable” that the dress code “should discriminate between the two sexes and impose restrictions on the girls that don’t apply to the boys”.
Leaders of the religious camp blame everything on the materialistic, “celebrity-infatuated”, or “promiscuous” secular culture. One religious commentator wrote that this debate proves “the need to separate the sexes” at schools from an early age.
6.
It will not take long for liberals in Israel to use this story as yet another proof that Israel is becoming a dark place ruled by clerical norms – “like Iran”, as some students argued.
It will not take long for conservative and religious Israelis to use this story as yet another proof that Israel is going down the drain – for lack of proper, decent, values.
Don't believe either.
