Rant #2,664: Be True To Your School

I am all for cleavage.
 
Look, I am a red-blooded American male, and adoring the female form, I just love cleavage.
 
But there is a time and a place for everything, and a high school yearbook is not the place to be showing much of anything, except for a big smile of relief that you are finally getting out of this place and moving on to college or the work field.
 
Evidently, there is a big stir somewhere in Florida, where some parents are taking their daughters’ high school over the coals because the school photo-shopped 80 of the girls’ yearbook pictures because of its code, which does not allow for too much skin to be shown in these yearbooks.
 
Some of the girls being photoshopped are freshmen, so they might be as young as 14 years of age, up to seniors, who are 18 years of age.
 
The girls are upset, because they feel that the photoshopping has taken away their rights as young women to wear what they want when they want to, even if they are in a school setting.
 
And many parents have backed them, stating that the censorship of the young ladies’ cleavage is body shaming at its worst, and sexist too, because no young men were photoshopped for showing too much of their tops.
 
What these young women do not understand, and what their parents should understand but somehow it has gone over the tops of their heads, is that men and women are built differently, and thus, there has to be two sets of rules for women and men when it comes to what you can show and what you can’t—even if the measures that they are using are probably somewhat antiquated and need some updating.
 
Here is what I wrote on Facebook about this situation:
 
“Nothing wrong with cleavage, but not in a school yearbook.
The pictures I saw aren't that bad, but it proves once again that there is an anatomical difference between men and women, and yes, if modesty is a school rule for yearbooks, then the rule, even if it may be outdated, has to be followed.
The thing that gets me is that the parents cannot understand this. The way you dress in school helps you when you get out of school, and haven't we all seen ladies dressed in some odd choices for work outfits when we have been in the workplace?
Yes, both boys and girls are shown in bathing suits in the same yearbook, but those photos are related to the swim team, and I don't see anybody in anything immodest in those photos.
Again, what I saw wasn't that bad, but rules are rules, and you learn from the rules.
The problem is clearly that there are two sets of rules, one for boys and one for girls ... and sorry, there should be two sets of rules based on the anatomical differences between males and females.”
 
In today’s society, where equality and inclusion are by-words and often mean something very different than what they were intended to mean, it seems that few people want to be told what to do anymore, even if it is for their own good.
 
And that includes 15 year old girls who show a little skin … nothing terrible, but maybe a little too much in a yearbook from a high school in what is probably a very conservative town.
 
And this should actually be a teaching moment.
 
You know, there is a way to dress for success, and you learn that as you grow up and go from a little kid to a teenager to a young adult.
 
And one of the places you learn this is in school.
 
Dressing modestly and not drawing attention to yourself is a virtue, one that you can use later in life when you go off into the real world.
 
And yes, there is a double standard between males and females, and there should be one. There are anatomical differences between males and females, and perhaps it is wrong, but the female breast is what it is, a nutrition source for nurturing children, but it is also thought of as a sex object, and before you dump on men for making this so, ladies, you know that you buy into that too, and often dress the part when it is called for.
 
Sorry, even though these young ladies weren’t hanging out every which way, there is a way to dress and not to dress.
 
I think I might have told this story to you previously, but it bears worth repeating.
 
We did not have direct deposit at my work, so every other week, we all had to run to the bank during lunch time to cash our checks.
 
I went to this particular bank at the time, and there was a woman teller there who I just happened to get this one particular day.
 
The woman was dressed in such an outfit that it is really surprising that the bank didn’t have her cover up.
 
She was a tall girl, and she was big—and I mean huge—in her chest area.
 
Remember yesterday when we spoke about Pam Grier, who was no slouch herself in that department?
 
Well this young lady made Grier, in comparison, look like Olive Oyl.
 
Anyway, I went up to the window, and she had on some type of outfit where her massive cleavage was jutting out almost right in my face, even though I was behind a teller window several feet in front of her.
 
Being tall, her cleavage was pretty much eye level with me, and being the guy that I am, honestly, well, you just couldn’t miss it, and it went beyond the cleavage, because I would estimate that probably at least 75 percent of her unclothed breasts were in clear view of everyone.
 
I cashed my check, and yes, I did think to myself, “Sure, I got a great view, but this girl … honestly, that is not the right way to dress when you are at work, in particular when you are dealing with the public."
 
Again, I am not talking about a “wardrobe malfunction,” I am talking about a “mental dysfunction.”
 
How could this girl not realize that she was dressed inappropriately … or did she care … or was she receiving the desired responses that she wanted from customers?
 
We have all been in situations where co-workers dressed inappropriately, and because of women’s fashions and again, because of anatomy, women should know what they are wearing to work, or to school, but sometimes, they don’t get it.
 
The P.S. to the story is that this teller was, a few weeks later, either fired or reprimanded or removed not because of her dress, but because her cash draw did not balance out right at the end of the day.
 
I know this because the next time I went to the bank, two weeks later, she was there, she was dressed in something more in tune with the setting … and she accused me of being the culprit of her problem, as she claimed that she gave me too much money back, which, by the way, was a lie.
 
She was gone the next time I went in there and I never saw her again.
 
Do I remember this incident because she wrongly accused me of an impropriety or because of her enormous cleavage?
 
Honestly, it is probably a mix of the two, err … I think you know what I mean.
 
So I would tell the girls at that high school in Florida to be slightly more careful in their clothing choices, because there are ways to dress and ways not to dress—
 
And no matter what we are being force fed by people who have no clue what they are talking about, there are differences between males and females.
 
And the differences are often quite attractive … but in the proper time and place.
 
And sorry ladies, life at times is not fair, but get with the program … even if you feel that you are right when you pocket the money that you got back in a refund when you protested by returning your yearbook to the school.
 
When you get older, maybe you will see the wisdom in what the school did, and maybe you should retake biology to find out that there are, in fact, differences between men and women ,,,

And we are all better for those differences.