Boylan Catholic High School in Rockford, Illinois has been accused of body-shaming due to its strict prom dress code.
The school created a Prom 2017 Dress Guide for its students, and the rules are atrocious.
The guidelines went into the specifics of what girls could–and, more often, could not–wear to the point where it seemed nearly impossible to find a suitable prom dress.
The school has created special rules for necklines, slits, and overall dress shape. The guidelines state that necklines “must be cut in a modest way without showing cleavage” and that slits can’t be three inches higher than the knee. The guideline also states that dresses cannot be “excessively tight.” Two piece dresses are allowed, but there cannot be more than two inches of space between the top and the bottom.
These dresses would not be allowed because they break the cleavage rule.
These two dresses would not be allowed because (from top to bottom) they break the two piece rule and the slit rule.
These are just a few of the rules that girls are expected to follow. The school has put these guidelines in place to practice modesty, specifically in “adherence to Church teachings.” The guidelines state specifically that these rules are necessary because “traditional interpretations are often at odds with fashion and cultural trends.”
While these rules may simply seem like a bunch of strict, Catholic school enforcements, Boylan has been rightly accused for body shaming by students due to this sentence in their guidelines: “Some girls may wear the same dress, but due to body types, one dress may be acceptable while the other is not.”
The fact that a high school didn’t even think twice before writing that on a public guidelines list is absurd. By implying that a dress only looks acceptable on a certain body type is body shaming, and it is incredibly harmful for girls in high school.
Prom is a high school experience that many girls look forward to, and being strapped to all these rules makes them feel even worse about themselves. If you expect a young girl to spend all of her time measuring and nitpicking at the shape of her dress, don’t you think she’ll start doing the same thing to herself?
Boylan’s school administration may be trying to uphold tenets of modesty it finds to be in accordance with the Catholic church, but it is disregarding body shaming as a serious issue.
Millions of young women are being taught to either hate their bodies or not respect the body they have because of dress codes like the one Boylan presents. Controlling what a young girl can and cannot wear is like controlling what type of body shape she can and cannot have. While Boylan aims to maintain modesty and uphold the principles of the school and of the Church, it doesn’t realize that their dedication to tradition hurts its students. The question Boylan Catholic needs to consider now is, who is more important? The students or their tradition?
Wanting to look and feel great at your high school prom is not just a “trend.” It’s a right all young girls should be given, and Boylan is disrespecting that in the name of tradition and in the name of the Catholic Church. As a high school and an institution for personal growth, Boylan should realize this.