My youngest daughter just started Middle School.  She’s the youngest of three so I’ve done this bit before, but it gets a little harder each time.  This go around, it was clothing that was the issue.  My youngest, we’ll call her “Little” for this story, has a sensory issue and only certain types of clothing don’t bother her.  She gets itchy and irritable and that’s not good for school.  The main point of this being, she wears “leggings” a lot.

That is against school policy.

Uh oh.  She can get in trouble for wearing the only clothes she’s comfortable in.  The claim for the rule is that it shows off her butt.  Well, not her’s.  She’s 11.  She doesn’t have one.  However, someone at her school might have one and it would make the boys uncomfortable.  Damn you, horomones!  But there is a workaround in that she could wear them but only if she wore a long shirt that covered her butt.  So, she now has a bunch of long shirts.  The reason I bring this up, is because of the first Parent Conference.

Last night, as I’m writing this, I have no idea when you’re reading it, my wife and I went to the School-wide Parent Conference.  One of her teachers was, to put it mildly, hot.  She had a pretty face.  A fantastic figure.  And her dress was rather stunning and showed off her attributes quite nicely.  My daughter in leggings is going to be cute and may someday turn heads in other classes, but this woman was turning the father’s heads, now.

My wife turned to me during the lecture and said, “I don’t think we need to worry about what Little wears to school anymore.”  I looked around the room at the fathers.  The one’s there by themselves were openly gawking while her lecture on fractions went in one ear, probably bounced around a bit, and came right out the other.  All their thought process had likely migrated a bit south, as would the thought processes of just about any student she had.  A perfect hormonal storm caused by a woman who can’t help that she’s attractive. 

We never had this issue growing up.  Everyone wore whatever they want.  If Nancy or Becky wore their cheerleader outfits or miniskirts to school, they did.  Now, Nancy and Becky were the first two young women I remember having a crush on.  Did they look hot in their uniforms?  Yes.  Did I fantasize about doing what hormonal teenage boys want to do with hot girls?  Yes.  Did I?  No.  Why?  Partly, because I’m a nerd and they rarely noticed I was ever there. 

But mainly, and this is my point, we, as hormonally raging boys, were taught, by our parents, to just deal with it.  We were taught to control impulses.  How hot they were was irrelevant.  This was a parental lesson and not one the school had to enforce with a dress code.  It’s not the school’s job to teach them morals, which don’t have to be Christian to make the same point.  Women should be treated with respect.  What students were taught was to make sure you focus on the reason you’re in school.  You can look, because you have eyes and they’re right there, but you can’t touch.  And no talking!  People are studying.