Why Girls Can’t Win – How school expectations unfairly affect girls.

No false eyelashes.

Natural make-up only.

No long/fake nails.

No outrageous hair colours.

No fake tan.

Policed skirt length.

Research from PACEY (Professional Association of Childcare and Early Years) suggests that young people begin to become aware of their body image from the age 3-4, with 71% of childcare professionals believing that children are becoming anxious about their body image at a younger age. This anxiety continues into adolescence with a survey by the Mental Health Foundation reporting that body anxiety disproportionately effects girls, with 46% of girls saying that their body image caused them worry, compared to 25% of boys.

Patriarchal expectations of women have long affected our mental health and attitudes towards our bodies. Let alone costing us a lot of money. Expectations to be thin, have no cellulite, perfect hair, not age, remove any other hair that isn’t on our head and dress ‘sexy’ to attract male attention has led to increased rates of eating disorders and cases of body dysmorphia amongst women and girls. This is a societal problem that most of the time feels too big to overcome. But what of our schools?

Most school uniform policies state expectations such as: No false nails, no false eyelashes, natural make up only or no make up at all, knee length skirts. All incredibly reasonable in context. But the problem is society and social media are sending our teenage girls one message: You need to wear make-up, fake eyelashes, fake nails etc. in order to be attractive and/or compete with other girls and then when girls come to school with these things and we pull them out of lessons to tell them to take them off, or worse, send them home to take them off this results in lost learning time. This puts our teenage girls in a ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ limbo, where they feel shame for their decisions about how they look. A vicious cycle linked to their self-worth.

How are young women supposed to navigate the very confusing and contradictory messages that they receive from birth? As Soma Sara writes in her book ‘Everyone’s Invited’, ‘Appearing desirable and beautiful is a good thing, a source of power and validation we are told. But equally there are messages of shame and victim-blaming around the body; imploring us to cover up, change our clothes, to compress, restrict, and suppress ourselves, become invisible. To be both Madonna and whore all at once.’

How do we fix the problem?

• Be aware of the language that you use when speaking to female pupils about their appearance – recognise any internalized misogyny.
• Include girls in any decisions about skirts, make up, hair etc. (ask their opinions and listen)
• Don’t remove girls from lessons to talk to them about what they are wearing, do this at break time, lunch time, before or after school.
• Don’t shame girls for the length of their skirts.
• Don’t make sarcastic comments about anything to do with a teenage girl’s appearance.
• If you are going to ask girls to remove what the school rules consider to be ‘excessive’ makeup – provide the products they need to do this in school.