By: GRATIATPosted on

FLOWER MOUND, TEXAS — Never doubt the power of one voice to spark change. Marcus High School dress code student Cat Moring didn’t like what she saw in a video explaining the district’s dress code: Against the soundtrack of M.I.A.’s “Bad Girls,” the camera pans the bare legs of shorts-wearing high school girls, who are sent to a room for “dress code violators” and told to repeat over and over, “I will not wear athletic shorts.”

Horrified, Moring expressed her outrage on Twitter, where the video was retweeted more than 1,800 times and received more than 5,700 likes and hundreds of comments.

“Today my school was shown this video,” Moring tweeted. “So sad how ONLY girls are shown as the violators. I understand why my school has a dress code, but what about the boys who wear shorts, or show their shoulders?

“It’s 2018,” she wrote. “Why are we still over-sexualizing teen girls?”

Those commenting gave Moring kudos for having the courage to speak out.

“I think of myself at your age in a public hs, and I never would have had the guts to call it out, and likely would have been annoyed by the girl who did,” Elizabeth Hartigan replied to Moring in a tweet. “Which is half the point, I think. This should appall everyone, any age, gender, ethnicity.”

Added Noreen Farrell, the executive director of Equal Rights Advocates: “Cat — you are amazing for calling this out. You are absolutely right! As a legal organization that enforces Title IX and fights the stereotyping fueling this video, we cheer you!”

Twitter user Christi Geraci-Beca, a mother, said she is surprised the school district would sanction the video and outraged that it showed only girls. “Once again, singling out and demeaning girls instead of focusing on the real issues of mutual respect for both sexes,” she wrote.

The backlash was so severe that Will Skelton, the principal of the high school in Flower Mound, said in a statement of apology that the school blew a new approach to explaining the school dress code.

“I’m a firm believer that when you make a mistake, you own it, you apologize, and you make it right,” Skelton wrote in a statement.

“Yesterday we showed a dress code video that featured only female dress code violations, and was accompanied by a poor song choice,” he wrote. “Construction in and around the campus prevented us from holding student orientation, which is typically accompanied by a fashion show that demonstrates what to wear, and what not to wear. We believed a video would be a good way to replace the fashion show, but this video absolutely missed the mark.”

Twitter user DameGrundy used satire to make a point in a series of tweets that reworded Skelton’s statement, tweeting:

“We humbly apologize for the dress code video. We now realize that we are at fault for focusing on women’s bodies, when we should have been focusing on their minds. We will cease with this sexist behavior.”

In another tweet, DameGrundy wrote: “We hereforth commit to treating the young women here like the full fledged humans they are. We accept responsibility for their most recent objectification.”

Finally, DameGrundy tweeted: “We realize this is detrimental to how they may grow to see themselves as well as how it may alter the young men’s perceptions.”

Moring tweeted later about her respect for Skelton and his swift response, saying that he was “fully understanding of where the offended female student body was coming from.”

The problem isn’t unique to Marcus High School but exists at schools across the nation, she wrote.

“If we work on better educating both students and adults about how necessary it is to include diversity in all media put out by the school, along with the reality of the continuing existence of our rape culture, we can ensure that problems like this never happen again.”

Lead photo via Shutterstock / media_digital

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