“I remember we were on a public bus. And the bus driver told us it was okay to take off our tights if we wanted to. He said he preferred it when we wore the old school uniform and our skirts were shorter. I was 11,” said Alice, now an 11th grader. “When I was walking home in my school uniform one time, I had a guy in his thirties come up to me and say he was going to rape me as he walked past. It was just horrible,” said Hannah, also in Year 11. . Hannah and Alice – whose names have been changed and their ages left out at the request of their school – are members of the feminism group at Sandbach High School, located south of Manchester.
The petition has received a response from the UK government
The group is calling on the UK government to ban school uniforms from being sold in clothing and sex shops and worn in pornography. “When we were going to and from school, on public transport and wearing our school uniforms, we were teased, sexually harassed, honked at,” Alice said. “And we kind of wondered why and why do people feel so entitled to sexually harass students and make us feel so uncomfortable.” The group’s request it has now gathered more than 13,400 signatures, meaning it has surpassed the requirement to receive a government response. However, amid the chaos of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s resignation and the total reshuffle of the Conservative Party, no response has come within the usual 14 days. Alice, left, and Hannah, right, discuss their experiences of harassment. (Victoria Mann/CBC) They have also written to members of parliament, but so far have only received public support from the local school councillor, James Barber. The feminism group was founded by teacher Sarah Maile in 2012. Each year, Maile encourages her students to choose a women’s rights issue to focus on, ranging from human trafficking to female genital mutilation. But this year the team’s focus is especially close to home. “I’ve had people come up to me and ask me pointed questions about virginity, and when I said no, they called me a bitch,” said Emma, a Grade 9 student in Sandbach.
Harassment decreases as they age out of uniform: students
A 2018 online survey by campaign group Plan International UK more than 1,000 girls and women aged 14 to 21 claimed that over a third of girls have been sexually harassed in public while wearing a school uniform. The vast majority of schools in the UK require pupils to wear uniform by the age of 16. As an older student, Hannah no longer wears a uniform and says she has seen “a reduction in harassment” since she started wearing her own clothes to school. Hannah’s experience repeats itself survey by Plan International UK which found that “girls felt that the school uniform made them a particular target”. Kate Stephenson, researcher and author of A Cultural History of School Uniform, says uniforms have been around in Britain since the 16th century for reasons ranging from providing warm clothing for orphans to distinguishing status at public schools such as Eton College. Modern uniforms have been around since the 19th century and are meant to give students from different backgrounds a sense of equality. “It’s about making sure everyone looks the same and kind of removing those items that show some kids have more money than others,” Stephenson said.
Banning actual uniforms is a liability casualty, students say
Campaigners from Sandbach High School say they have been repeatedly asked whether removing uniforms entirely from schools could improve the situation. Students say the line of thinking is to blame the victim. “I think it’s really worth mentioning that we’re kids and we’re telling you that we feel insecure and uncomfortable because we’re being so actively sexualized through these costumes,” Alice said. Maile adds that the intention behind targeting sex shops isn’t to tell consenting adults what they can and can’t do in the bedroom, but to highlight the inappropriate way the costumes are marketed. Members of the feminism class hold signs with slogans including ‘Girls are not sexy’ and ‘School uniforms are for boys’. (Victoria Mann/CBC) “It’s the very specific language applied to these costumes, ‘sexy schoolgirl underwear’ — like, the very fact that that’s the product description,” Maile said. But Keith Miller, from London sex shop Love-Init, does not believe sex shops or their customers are to blame for the harassment. “I think that depends on the individual,” Miller said. “I don’t think stopping the sale of these in stores is going to stop the comments. If someone wants to talk to a schoolgirl that way, they will.” According to Stephenson, the culture of sexualising school uniforms began with St Trinian’s comics in the 1940s and 50s. Cartoonist Ronald Searle drew the older students in a “fancier school uniform,” he said, and these characters used their sexuality to their advantage. “Looking at it now, some 70 years later, we can see problems with it,” Stephenson said. “But at the time, she was rewriting femininity; she was creating new standards.” Stephenson believes that nowadays, adults usually wear school uniforms as costumes to relive a difficult phase in their lives and replace bad memories with positive ones.
“It’s definitely a sexualization of teenagers”
Most adults see sex-shop uniforms as completely different from the real ones worn by students, she said. “I think if you talked to most people, they would be horrified by the idea that it was sexual [the] real school uniform,” Stephenson said. “The problem is that, especially with things like pornography, it sexualizes teenagers.” The students’ campaign comes amid numerous calls from advocacy groups to criminalize street harassment in the UK One of these groups, Our Streets Now, was created as a result of harassment experienced by one of its co-founders, Gemma Tutton. She was 14 when she and her sister Maya formed the group. Gemma had been sexually harassed in public since she was in primary school. In March 2021, the grassroots campaign group joined Plan International UK to draft a model bill and encourage the government to criminalize public sexual harassment. Sarah Maile leads a feminism group meeting. (Victoria Mann/CBC) While Britain’s Home Secretary Priti Patel initially appeared to agree to a new law being passed in 2021, the government’s independent adviser on the matter, Nimko Ali, has since suggested that her efforts to get the law passed had met with “pushback” and hinted that Johnson had not fully endorsed it. Campaigners from Sandbach High School say that even if the school uniform ban does not pass, they are happy to spark a debate about children’s sexuality. “When we wear [a uniform]we’re just trying to get access to education — and that’s our fundamental human right,” Hannah said. “So to be abused while doing that is horrible.”
