During the several years we’re in school, young women and girls are often held to strict dress codes to ensure our chosen attire is at a “suitable” length or fit—so as not to distract male peers or teachers. Apparently, the constant clothing policing doesn’t stop once you graduate high school. In fact, for a woman in Tennessee, it can even happen in the comfort of your own apartment complex when you go to relax at the on-site pool.
Tori Jenkins and her fiancé Tyler Newman were recently kicked out of their apartment complex’s public pool because Jenkins’ one-piece swimsuit was deemed inappropriate by other residents, Self reports. The couple had only been in the pool area for a few minutes before they were publicly told to leave because her suit was “too revealing” for the teenage boys who might see her. Um, excuse me?
Her fiancé took to Facebook to share what had happened in a post that now has over 30,000 shares, clearly expressing his outrage over the situation. He wrote, “Today my fiancée was faced with either changing her bathing suit, covering up with shorts, or leaving the pool that we paid a $300 fee to maintain on top of a monthly rent of nearly $1000. Tori was accused of wearing a ‘thong bathing suit’ and told there were complaints about the way she was dressed after roughly 3 minutes of us arriving there.”
After the initial request for Jenkins to leave the pool, she went to the leasing office to discuss the issue with one of the apartment complex’s staff members, where she was then body-shamed and inappropriately sexualized by the woman she spoke to. The woman allegedly made shocking comments about Jenkins’ body and swimsuit choice, including saying that a “normal bathing suit covers your entire butt,” and that “her body, because it’s built more curvy than others is ‘too inappropriate’ for children to be around,” according to her fiancé’s Facebook post.
Regardless of whether some of the residents questioned if their teenage sons would be “excited” by the sight of Jenkins’ one-piece suit, she never should have been told to leave the pool that she literally pays for every single month with her apartment fees. As Jenkins wrote in her own Facebook post, “no man or woman has the right to make me feel uncomfortable in my own skin. No right to police me or any other human.” The over-sexualization and judgments made against women and what they choose to wear is astonishing and, quite frankly, something that shouldn’t even be an issue anymore in today’s world.
“Today my fiancée was told that she is less important than how men feel around her,” her fiancé continued to write. “That Tori is less important than a man’s urges to be sexual towards her. I think she’s the most beautiful woman in the world, but I also respect her. I would never make her or any other woman feel less than what she’s worth because of her outfit or her looks. This is how rape culture continues to grow.” Well said, Tyler. I only wish more people shared this mindset