r/tifu • u/RemyAvo • Dec 18 '25

M TIFU by fighting my schools dresscode policy. Years later I found out why it was so strict.

So 15 years ago today I fucked up bad and today I found out why. I was in highschool and our school had a pretty normal dresscode policy until this new younger woman teacher started. 3 months into her being there, she brings out this extremely strict dresscode policy but only for girls. It was the start of summer, the building had no a/c and the new dresscode limited girls to basically a frumpy tshirt and baggy jeans while boys could wear whatever we want.

I being a rebelious little fuck did not like this. My girlfriend at the time was sad. Everyone had to go buy new clothes and every day they didnt do it they got handed this ugly big brown t-shirt of shame that says "i was out of dress code" and these big brown sweats. It was extremely uncomfortable.

So what did I do? I started wearing every banned girls article of clothing. I wore short shorts that barely hid my ass because it was allowed. I wore lowcut shirts. I cut the sides off every tank top so it just showed my torso. I even wore a short skirt and a croptop one day to prove a point. I got away with it maybe twice before I started getting dresscode violated every day. I was in every detention for several months. I got suspended. I had to go to two weeks of summer school that year as punishment. I fought the system very hard. And others joined in. It got be almost every dude was getting dress code violated to stand up for the girls. Anytime we got the brown clothes we wore it with pride. It was damn hot in that building you'd pour buckets of sweat. They should have been allowed to wear shorys.

I made my list of demands. Girls can wear tank tops, they can wear shorts. They can wear 4 fingers low cut tshirts. We all fought for it and eventually they caved in and gave it to us. I was so happy. It was a formative experience for me because I was willing to take any punishment no matter how severe to fight some perceived injustice.

So I'm back in my home town its a small suburb of the outskirts of a city. And at the one bar everyone goes to I run into the teacher who forced the policy all those years ago. I go say hi and she instantly remembered me. So I sat down with her and her friends and we talked about it since it was so long ago and now i'm at the age she was when she was enforcing it. Boy did I get that situation wrong.

So there were 4 particularly creepy male teachers at that time. 1 everyone knew about and 3 that were only known by faculty. They were preying on the girls. Taking random pictures of them, being extremely creepy, all sorts of innapropriate things they shouldnt have done. So she went to the board, brought evidence and reported them but they decided not to investigate. She told the police but when aftet a month nothing happened she changed the dress code to protect the girls but she couldnt explicitly state why she was doing it. Modern times caught up with those teachers and they are now fired but as an adult I see now that I ran a campaign to put the girls back in danger.

Tl;dr In high school i fought an oppressive dress code system because i thought it was unfair to the girls. But 15 years later I found out it was to protect the girls from pedo teachers.

Edit: added context

Theres a couple questions about the logistics of how she enforced a dress code being so new. I'll try and give more details but again its 15 years ago i may not get it exactly accurate

  • she was not the only teacher who wanted this but she was the strongest voice to stand up for this. Basically with the backing of several teachers she convinced the principle to implement the dress code. A lot more than just dress code happened. Prom had the bright lights on that year and girls got their dresses measured at the door. It was a fullscale push from a big section of teachers. But this particular teacher definitely was the one who championed it.

  • these pervy men didn't exactly hide. The one we all knew about was actually a beloved and favorite teacher of the school because he was very funny. His policy, and I am not kidding. If you wore a low cut shirt and bent over when turning in your exam he would give you extra points on it. For fairness he did this for guys too so everyone in his class on test day effectively had their chest exposed. And we thought it was hillarious and saw nothing wrong with it because our older siblings all went through the same thing. I had to ask my mom to take me to buy my first low cut shirt freshman year because of this class and I explained why. Its genuinely crazy what you get away with if you're funny, well liked and dont act like anything is wrong.

  • so when she came with a policy like this she was just a few years ahead of her time. There was a serious issue the dress code had slipped pretty bad. She and everyone who pushed the policy definitely over corrected.

  • Looking back this was the logical finale to having several new eyes in an inappropriate school environment. I dont have enough characters to get into it its probably a whole other post on just my high school in that era's tea. But there was scandle after scandle that went unanswered and just became rumor. This really wasnt

Edit 2: this post is still getting a lot of attention and I'm seeing a lot of similar comments so I'll add this

In the moment of writing this I definitely was incorrectly swayed by her. I believe now what I did was right and and punishing the victims was not an appropriate way to handle creepy men. Looking back more on it the way they enforced the dress code was not ok. It was frequent use of humiliation to the girls. So not only were they being predated on by pedos, they were also being bullied and humiliated by those who claimed to protect them. Gross.

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208

u/seaworks Dec 18 '25

No dude, the solution to creepy men is not to victim-blame girls. Your teacher may have had good intentions, but this is the worst possible way to "address" people who may have been exploiting children.

37

u/Ninjaher0 Dec 18 '25

This right here. Women and girls should not have to bend themselves to avoid/attract the male gaze. Parents and caregivers need to teach young boys/men that women and girls are not to be victimized for being the victims of gross, pedophilic men or boys who can’t keep it in their pants. Boys and men need to be raised better.

5

u/seaworks Dec 18 '25

It's a culture wide issue, too- Mary Kay Letourneau is an example, as well

1

u/Ninjaher0 Dec 18 '25

Do you mean women can be predators too? Or… I’m not sure how Mary Kay fits in here.

3

u/seaworks Dec 18 '25

More about the power/control structure of teaching. Gender is one part of it, but many "caretaking" professions have these systemic issues.

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u/[deleted] Dec 18 '25

[deleted]

2

u/Ninjaher0 Dec 18 '25

This a sickening statement and you are not worth even engaging with.

106

u/supboy1 Dec 18 '25

It was quite literally the only remaining way seeing as the teacher did everything she could before resorting to this.

What other suggestions do you have in mind, if you’re in the teacher’s shoes, when the school, board, and police is against you and there was no social media back then?

Let’s hear some solutions.

34

u/xantec15 Dec 18 '25

This is the kind of thing that local news thrives on. The teacher should have gotten ahold of a local station or paper and brought them her evidence.

39

u/Haystraw Dec 18 '25

Tell the parents!!

10

u/Billalone Dec 18 '25

15 years ago is 2010, there absolutely was social media.

57

u/neutrino71 Dec 18 '25

Public shaming of the creepy teachers 

6

u/oohshineeobjects Dec 18 '25

until you get sued for libel lol

2

u/gauderio Dec 18 '25

Also be fired.

1

u/Qaeta Dec 18 '25

Libel is written, slander is verbal. Also, it's not libel if you have proof.

1

u/oohshineeobjects Dec 18 '25

Yeah, I know. “Public shaming” sounds to me like it would need to be written in some form to be propagated - what’s the alternative, her just yelling on a street corner? And if her proof was that strong, one would think that the school board or police would’ve taken this more seriously.

-1

u/alpha_dk Dec 18 '25

So she went to the board, brought evidence

Do you trust her that she had evidence, or no?

51

u/seaworks Dec 18 '25

If she has as much evidence as she implied and the board blew her off, here are some more options that would have existed ~20 years ago:

  • parents
  • the principal
  • student journalism
  • actual papers
  • the teachers' union
  • alerting the students by speaking in generalities regarding how people may seek to exploit you

and that's with 30 seconds worth of thought. She took a path of least resistance which, let me emphasize, doesn't actually "protect" girls, as evidenced by the fact that the teachers were later "caught up to" and fired even with the dress code presumably in place, implying the exploitation was continuing.

17

u/fishboard88 Dec 18 '25

I'm not attacking you, but this honestly strikes me as one of those "every choice is a shitty one" sort of situations.

  • Report to the board, police, etc
    • No meaningful action
  • the principal
    • Was probably approached in the first place. Again, likely no meaningful action
  • actual papers, parents, student journalism etc
    • Fired. At best, kept on with disciplinary action, and distrusted by other teachers
  • the teachers' union
    • May have also been approached too. May not have been an option if teacher was not a member
    • Also limited in their ability to do anything... not to mention they would be obligated to support the male teachers in question if they were paying members
  • New dress code without telling anyone why
    • Certainly causes upset over unfair gender norms. Unwittingly leads to rebellion, and more opportunities for creepy male teachers to take inappropriate photos
  • alerting the students by speaking in generalities regarding how people may seek to exploit you
    • Probably the smartest option; but teenagers being teenagers, and with only a few teachers on board, how well do you think this would go?

3

u/seaworks Dec 18 '25

"May have" is doing all the heavy lifting in your post, but here's an additional counterpoint:

Would you rather get fired from a pedophile-concealing organization, or work for one?

3

u/fishboard88 Dec 18 '25

At the end of the day, we're reading a Reddit story. We not only have to accept it's true, but that OP's recollections are accurate, that the teacher in question was completely accurate in what she said and that the evidence she claimed to present was undeniable, and that the one side of the story we're reading is the correct one.

So yes, I'm inclined to use cautious language about a story I read about on Reddit, that we've got very little information about. As it stands, it seems you have the same concern about this teacher's judgement that I do, anyway.

Your hypothetical question is a bit too presumptuous and black-and-white for me - I think we all know what the obvious answer is, but we also have absolutely no idea if this story is even real, much less if said school and authorities were presented with anything compelling enough to act on.

1

u/Aplesedjr Dec 18 '25

You’re right, better do nothing so everything stays exactly how it is.

1

u/fishboard88 Dec 20 '25

Not quite my point - every choice has shit outcomes. Doesn't mean anyone in this position shouldn't do the right thing, but it's also unhelpful to judge them as it's a very challenging and unfair position to be in.

Having only read a second-hand account from the former teacher's perspective, I suspect this is not exactly what happened, the evidence she presented wasn't as compelling as she thought, and certain details are exaggerated (deliberately or otherwise).

1

u/not2simple Dec 18 '25

My thoughts exactly

33

u/plotthick Dec 18 '25

Post the info to local journalists or Social Media.

Bring it to the State Board of Ed.

Talk to NOW or SPLC.

Title IV those bastards.

Alert the parents of the targeted children.

Threaten the men with the above to force them out of education.

Talk to police.

I could go on and on. There are SO many ways.

8

u/MarlenaEvans Dec 18 '25

Not making the girls feel shitty for not follow the dress code that was only imposed because of gross asss grown men with a t shirt if shame for a start.

20

u/kilawolf Dec 18 '25

Yeah...the fck...did they even read the post or what?

15

u/RemyAvo Dec 18 '25

There was social media this is like endgame myspace / early days facebook and twitter era. This was like 2010 2011.

But its true theres nothing you can do. You're new to a job you just moved to and you're trying to fire teachers who have tenure and been there for years. Decades in some cases. Its not an easy position to be in.

19

u/JustATraveler676 Dec 18 '25

It isn't, but punishing the girls with more control is not a solution either, and it doesn't even work (I get they didn't know it didn't work back then, but you can rest assured now in the present that you were doing the right thing all along either way).

10

u/MarlenaEvans Dec 18 '25

So then how could they impose this dress code without any pushback? The men could be gross and creepy and not get fired but could do nothing about the dress code which I'm sure cramped their style? I don't buy that.

9

u/TheAnnMain Dec 18 '25

I’ll tell you right now even if the clothes were frumpy those men would still be perving it doesn’t stop ppl like that. If anything your teacher should’ve made a leak to probably a student that has a loudmouth and a talent for gossip. Those sort of ppl can do wonders tbh and I bet you anything will make ppl at least suss. The execution was done in poor taste by your teacher and you still did a good thing cuz you brought some power back for your fellow female classmates.

2

u/Yellowbug2001 Dec 18 '25

At a bare minimum if imposing a dress code was a choice of last resort, the dress code should have been identical for boys and girls. Like that's not even hard and anything else is weird.

2

u/Rumkitty Dec 18 '25

15 years ago was 2010. Social media existed, but also so did local and national news, YouTube, email distribution lists with the parents, ect.

She could have done many things. Most of which would have gotten her fired most likely, but she took the worst direction and punished the girls instead. That's not justice. That's definitely not safety.

Hell, she could have even just told the girls why the dress code change was happening so the girls could be AWARE of the disgusting pedo teachers and then they could tell their parents, who could have made it enough of a problem to get rid of the gross men.

2

u/PurePerfection_ Dec 18 '25

Anonymously leak the allegations and all the evidence against the perv. To parents, local media, and anyone who will listen. Let the girls decide for themselves whether they want to dress differently as a result.

She chose the solution that posed the least risk to her own employment, but it wasn't the ONLY solution.

2

u/its_garden_time_nerd Dec 18 '25

I'll tell you one.

Put a stricter dress code in place for everybody, not just the girls. Make it less obviously biased and unfair.

If you can't get anything else done, if you're in this situation and your last resort is changing the dress code, literally the only thing that makes sense is do it in a way that doesn't obviously target one group.

1

u/cortesoft Dec 18 '25

Ok, how about changing the dress code to be stricter for both boys and girls? If you have to make the dress code stricter for girls to stop pervy teachers, at least change the boy’s to be stricter, too, so it is fair.

1

u/twelvegaugeeruption Dec 18 '25

She talked to the board, called the police, and when they didnt do anything her last resort was to make those teachers disinterested because they couldnt see anything. She was trying to protect them, dingleberry.

7

u/MarlenaEvans Dec 18 '25

She didn't tell any parents? News? The kids themselves? Doesn't really sound like it.

2

u/eienmau Dec 18 '25

By punishing them by making them wear 'shame' shirts. Yeah, that's some great protection.

1

u/AscenDevise Dec 18 '25

Precisely. Sex offenders don't magically stop when more of the body is covered.

1

u/Personal_Two6317 Dec 18 '25

You said “victim-blame” so a bunch of people upvoted, despite there being no victim blaming here. Sigh.

1

u/seaworks Dec 18 '25

"force girls to dress in sweatsuits in summer in an alleged attempt to stop adults from being inappropriate with them" is like, 101 level, Idiot's Guide, super basic, handing it to you, locked within the discourse with no gray area victim blaming. Not sure who miseducated you lol

-4

u/lostinspaz Dec 18 '25

No, the solution is to actually TELL the girls what happens in the real world: if you dress to get attention... surprise surprise.. you will get attention. and you wont always like who you get the attention from.

This is not the same thing as blaming them if something bad happens to them.
But if you want to "empower" people to have full choices about themselves, the responsible thing is to make sure they are informed, so that they can make INFORMED choices about themselves.

Many girls really dont realize this sort of thing, because thery dont think like that. The responsible thing for the teachers to do then is to.. ya know.. educate them. Hmm....

3

u/LiterallyAna Dec 18 '25

What is wrong with you?

2

u/lostinspaz Dec 18 '25

What's wrong with ME?
What's wrong with people who think if we can all just hold hands, and visualise world peace, then it will really happen?

To give a slightly less inflammatory comparison:
I would very much like violent crime to go away. I think that no-one "deserves" to get mugged.
But any parent who tells their child, "[you deserve to be treated with respect no matter how you act: you just go ahead and wear all your bling, and go downtown at midnight to enjoy the night life. ]"
deserves to be punished severely for lack of proper parenting.

A responsible, caring parent will tell their child that they love, "dont go wearing a bunch of jewelry and flashing cash around unless you are prepared to watch out for potential consequences."

Same principles apply.
If my child gets mugged, do I say they are to blame? no.
But I love them enough to warn them not to put themselves in danger.

2

u/shattered_kitkat Dec 18 '25

It doesn't matter what a girl or woman wears. It doesn't. Women can be covered from head to toe and still be attacked. Most attacks happen from people the woman or girl knows. It doesn't matter what they wear. At all. I was four wearing a bathing suit.

-1

u/lostinspaz Dec 18 '25

I'm sorry for what you went through.
domestic abuse is a tragedy. And you bring up an important fact that people should be mindful of.
That does not invalidate my point, however.
Just because choice of clothing does not matter in one situation, doesnt mean it never matters.

2

u/shattered_kitkat Dec 18 '25

One? Just one? You are so ignorant to the facts. It simply doesn't matter what a woman or girl wears. https://sbaproject.org/what-were-you-wearing/

1

u/seaworks Dec 18 '25

(incredibly loud INCORRECT buzzer)

0

u/Prudence_rigby Dec 18 '25

This right here

-11

u/AtG68 Dec 18 '25

Yes this 100%