The image of the “sexy schoolgirl” is a problem for many British schoolgirls, who actually have to wear uniforms every day: they are repeatedly harassed and harassed, often even as children.
You know it from carnival parties for adults: In addition to the “sexy nurse”, “sexy schoolgirl” is a popular disguise – among women who are usually longer than schoolgirls. What is meant is the classic school uniform, as is customary in many countries around the world: short skirt, white blouse, knee socks. Even Britney Spears once resorted to the look of the cute but also lascivious schoolgirl in her video for “Hit Me Baby, One More Time”. No wonder school uniforms are also part of the standard range in sex shops and can often be found in the wardrobes of porn actresses and strippers.
In Germany, nobody has probably given much thought to this topic. In the UK, however, many children and young people wear school uniforms every day. They are mandatory there, the students have no choice. At the Sandbach school in Manchester, England, this has now caused a heated discussion – as eleventh graders shared experiences they had already had due to the strange sexual connotations of school uniforms. And they found that almost all of them had been molested while wearing the uniform – mostly by adult men, while they themselves were often not even teenagers.
School uniform: British schoolgirls against sexualisation
“I remember riding the bus. The bus driver said to us that we could take off our tights if we wanted to. However, he would have liked the old school uniforms with the shorter skirts better. I was eleven then,” says like Grace. “We were catcalled, sexually harassed, honked at on the way to school,” Hannah recalls. “And we wondered why people think they have the right to sexually harass school children and put them in such horrible situations.” The group of students decided to do something.
They started a petition to ensure that school uniforms should no longer be sold in costume and sex shops and should no longer appear in porn films. In Great Britain, this wish apparently struck a chord: The students from Manchester collected more than 14,000 signatures in a short time. Thus, the government is obliged to comment on it. This usually happens within two weeks – but as we know there is great chaos in the British government at the moment, the students have been waiting a little longer.
They also made it clear that they are by no means concerned with what adults do with mutual consent in their bedrooms – but with how naturally in our society an outfit is marketed and sexualized that countless children in England have to wear every day, what for these children have extremely unpleasant consequences.
What: CBC
