Brickbat: The Big Cover-Up

Florida's Bartram Trail High School is offering refunds to anyone who returns a copy of this year's yearbook. Numerous parents and students complained when they saw that at least 80 photos of female students had been digitally altered, typically to cover any exposed cleavage, no matter how minor. No photos of boys appear to have been altered. A spokesman for the St. Johns County School District said the teacher who serves as the yearbook adviser made the alterations to make the students' clothing conform to the district code of conduct, which mandates that girls' shirts and tops "must be modest and not revealing or distracting." This was the second time this year that the school's dress code led to controversy. In March, administrators stood in hallways and called out girls they didn't believe were in compliance with the dress code and had others removed from class.

Comments

[Fist of Etiquette]

No pictures of male students, including one of the swim team in which the boys wore Speedo bathing suits, were digitally altered, according to Ms. O’Keefe and parents who saw the yearbook.

Boys can't be seen as slutty. Duh.

[m4019597]

Males will not walk around with their thighs or chests exposed in schoolrooms.

They assume — correctly and rightfully — that conspicuously slutty displays of skin will get them a beating.

Females seem to lack this bit of intelligence, perhaps because they’re not threatened with enough beatings.

[Adans smith]

Look at mister male privilege here.

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[Dan S.]

Isn't this supposed to be a libertarian site, where we believe in the non-aggression principle? Threatening people with "beatings" is obviously a very direct violation of the NAP.

[Ben of Houston]

Don't feed the trolls, Dan. He's just trying to get a response.

[The Encogitationer]

Actually, not all of us use the NAP acronym. It has lazy and Pacifist connotations. Some of us use Non-Initiation of Force and Fraud (NIFF.)

Those of us who do use this latter descriptor and acronym are called:

The Knights (and Ladies and Lady-Knights) Who Say "NIFF!"

[JFree]

Those who hear them seldom live to tell the tale!

[MatthewSlyfield]

But do they live to tell the left front leg?

[Nemo Aequalis]

Promoters of the NAP are the first ones in need of a beating.

[Rossami]

Read the linked article. Male swim team + speedos.

[m4019597]

The females that were digitally covered up had exposed too much skin in seated yearbook portraits.

Apples, oranges.

[The Encogitationer]

What weird world do you live in where this actually happens?

Bare-chested men or women would certainly get excluded from any store with a policy of "No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service" and they'd certainly get a lot of points and laughs depending on physique, but beatings???

Somebody's got some real hang-ups on the human body. There are professionals for that.

[m4019597]

I wrote “in schoolrooms.”

I didn’t write about stores or a basement or your windowless white panel van down by the river.

Beatings, yes. Maybe you went to a liberal school, but in most you’ll get your beaten if you came to class dressed like a male stripper.

[The Encogitationer]

Depends on how you swing.

[Vernon Depner]

"Boys can't be seen as slutty."

It's the girls, not the boys, who insist on going to school naked. Girls are targeted for dress code enforcement because they comprise nearly all the offenders.

[Jerryskids]

As a plumber, I often inadvertently show a good bit of cleavage and I'm pretty sure nobody wants to see that. It's hard to find long T-shirts that stay tucked in.

[SQRLSY One]

When I do plumbing, I slather LOTS of plumber's putty into my ass-crack. THIS is a "cracker-jacked-up" way to fix the problem!

[sarcasmic]

They sell extra long undershirts.

[The Encogitationer]

I'm not a plumber, nor do I play one on TV. However, in the interest of distinguishing myself from now 2 generations of slack-ass men who sag their pants, I wear both a belt and suspenders...and surprisingly do not look like Larry King ("Hello!")

Despite my sentiments against sagging, I am not one of these "there outta be a law" types who wants to ban sagging.

I figure that sagging keeps the punk-asses from using two hands on their pistol when sticking up a store. And if they do use two hands and their pants fall down and they grab them, that's the moment to bum-rush them (so to speak.) And even if they try to escape, well, they won't get far.

[IceTrey]

Duluth Trading Company Longtail Tshirt.

[Dillinger]

ya I remembered the guy in the cartoons but could not remember the brand name. Madison Avenue fail.

[Longtobefree]

Surely they realize that the supreme court has rued that boys are girls are boys?
This blatant disregard for settled law should lead to the arrest and imprisonment of all the school staff.

[Rich]

cover any exposed cleavage, no matter how minor. No photos of boys appear to have been altered.

[Insert Chuck Schumer joke]

[Brandybuck]

Florida-man, Florida-man!
Does whatever a Florida can!

[Brandybuck]

Also, what about my Moob Cleavage? Will I have to cover that up?

[The Encogitationer]

Not if you don't mind pointing, laughing, and sometimes wretching on the ground.

[The Encogitationer]

I wonder if Anthropologists and museums of human history now have this specimen in their texts and exhibits?

[Earth Skeptic]

Forget about exposed cleavage. I hope all those yearbook photos had students wearing masks.

[mad.casual]

Numerous parents and students complained when they saw that at least 80 photos of female students had been digitally altered, typically to cover any exposed cleavage, no matter how minor.

Parents calling the school because their kids weren't showing enough cleavage in yearbook photos? They're probably the same ones who would flip their lid if they'd discovered kids were sexting.

Assholes on both sides.

NB: I'm a bit jaded about this issue atm, I recently attended an 8th grade (so you'd have to flunk a couple times to be even 16) recognition/graduation (i.e. a formal occasion, not a dance or extracurricular event) where a good number of the girls were wearing stripper uniforms. And not the poor kids either. Get out of your Dad's '21 Mercedes Benz and make Wal-Mart look classy.

[Kevin Smith]

The picture at the top of the NYT article is actually one of the better photoshop jobs, most of the other pics are just awful hack jobs that look like a 10 year old did them in MS Paint

[mad.casual]

Again, assholes on both sides. Those with absolutely botched photoshopped images have every right to complain. At the same time, whatever flannel shirt girl was wearing she deserves to get called out for it, especially in yearbook photos. Really, the school should've been better prepared or just less abjectly retarded and cropped or even shot all the originals from the collar up.

[Dillinger]

>>administrators stood in hallways and called out girls they didn't believe were in compliance

pervs. go administrate.

[TangoDelta]

The biggest problem with the dress code is this bit;
The principals or designees will determine the appropriateness of attire.
Essentially creating an 'appropriate attire czar' who is free to make any call they want meaning the rest of the dress code is functionally meaningless.

[markm23]

My question is how so many students got to the yearbook photo session in "inappropriate" attire. Were the administrators _consistently_ enforcing this dress code otherwise? This is difficult; teenagers will push the limits of any rules, and a dress code that many American suburbanite parents won't either think excessively strict, or so slack as to allow nearly pornographic outfits, is bound to leave lots of room for interpretation. To avoid that, I think you either need a specified uniform, or perhaps ask an Amish community to write your standards. (My preferred approach: no dress code. Inform the kids that you won't judge their clothing, but will call the cops to apply the indecent exposure law if it seems appropriate.)

I suspect that the administrators were ducking confrontations over clothing that pushed the limits of their vague code until they realized that the school was about to publish photographic evidence of their laxness. Then, instead of confronting girls and rescheduling the shoot, they chose to demonstrate their incompetence with Photo Shop...

To do his job well, a high-school principal should have the wisdom of Solomon and the courage of Horatio - but they're generally quite lacking in both areas. Education majors (college students seeking a teaching certificate) are a mixed bag, including both smart kids and the least intelligent kids to have a chance of scraping through an easy major to a college degree. But school administration majors appear to have all come from the absolute bottom of the barrel. And when they seek Masters degrees or PHDs, they just compound the problem of being educated beyond their intelligence.

[Cthulunotmyfriend]

A high school principal is like a captain of a huge ship, and many fall short of the ideal. I agree they need the wisdom of Solomon and the courage of Horatio, but few have either, and ironically, how many high school graduates this year would get either reference, let alone both? I have known and worked with a few great principals, but the mediocre way outnumber the few, and the terrible are as common as the great. I don’t see this trend changing. Obviously the schools decision to alter “inappropriate” photos is stupid in hindsight, but it should have been obviously a bad plan before they even started. Better pay might attract better talent to leadership roles in education, but I think pre-requisites are more of a barrier and more of the problem. The prerequisites do not help make people better at that job, but do make the club more exclusive than if they were optional, and so reward whomever embraces the lates educational fad. If you want to be the boss, you don’t need to learn to be a leader, but instead to go that way, get your Ed degree and admin credential, make friends in the district where you work and do favors, join the club, and wait your turn to be in charge. And if it doesn’t work out, blame the students, the parents, and the teachers. It doesn’t make sense. If it was a business, or even a regulated utility, public education in America would collapse like a house of cards.