We’re getting really sick and tired of the way dress code violations are being hastily enforced on young women. Not a month goes by without a new complaint going viral on social media. This is going from ridiculous to downright scary.

Yet here we go again: According to Seventeen, a coach told 44 cheerleaders at Timpview High School last week that “someone complained that their uniforms were distracting a boy in their school, and their mother had emailed a school staffer.” You can guess what happened next: the coach totally overreacted, going so far as to tell the girls that they could not wear their cheerleading uniforms to school.

What the heck?

“I kind of felt like it’s the school almost supporting a rape culture,” cheerleader JoAnna Johnson told Fox 13 Salt Lake City.
An anonymous cheerleader also told People:

“It’s giving this boy power that when he grows up and does something to a girl, he can blame it on her skirt being too short. Why should this boy have control over what we wear?”
Why indeed? Totally SMH.

The school, meanwhile, is quickly backtracking the request.

Spokesperson Caleb Price told People:

“It’s a misunderstanding between the cheerleading advisor and a member of the school administration who gave her a message about the boy’s concerns. The school was never going to say you can’t wear your uniforms or dress in a certain way.”
Uh-huh. Sure. Regardless of the veracity of that statement, we think it’s pretty lame that a parent of a teenage boy would complain about the cheerleaders rather than telling the boy to learn how to control his urges. Take some responsibility.

As Nicole Wood, sister of one of the cheerleaders, wrote on the Mormon Stories Podcast Facebook page:

They are sexualizing a school uniform and I think it’s just disgusting – they are objectifying these girls. I feel like this obsession with female modesty is just feeding into the rape culture that is far too prevalent in the area.”
Exactly. Young boys need to learn to take some responsibility and learn to control themselves, instead of forcing some strict standard on young girls, inevitably causing the girls to feel body shamed and the boys to feel as if they can react without impunity. This needs to stop NOW.