I still wonder why the dress I wore to school one day over a year ago was deemed “inappropriate.”

It was black, knee length — spattered with white flowers. There was an oversized bow on the back that covered my bra straps and the great majority of my skin but, God forbid, a sliver of my flesh was exposed in my mid-back area.

I was happy with how I looked that day, was which a rarity in those days.

I saw my teacher look me up and down as she walked past me in my desk. The class was silent. She glared at me, and said, “Do you have something to cover that?”

I said, “No, I only have a winter coat.” She ordered me to go to the office of discipline. I was surprised, offended, and humiliated. My steps never seemed so loud as I walked out of the classroom. I felt the eyes of the other students pressed against my bow-covered back. My eyes pooled with tears as I walked down the empty hallways.

I didn’t feel sad — I was humiliated by my teacher’s clear attempt to shame me in front of thirty other kids. I received a demerit — my first demerit — and I was told to put one of the old gym shirts from the lost and found over my dress.

I denied the offer. Instead, I threw my bulky winter coat over my shoulders and returned to class. I did not speak a word for the rest of that period.

The interesting part of this story is not that I wore the dress to school. It’s the fact that the next time I wore that dress, it was at my great grandma’s funeral. This time when I was looked up and down, it was followed with comments from my extended family (usually accompanied with a tight hug that lasted a bit too long for my level of comfort) somewhere along the lines of “How pretty!” “You’ve grown up so much!” and “That dress is adorable!”  My highly conservative great aunt simply said how beautiful I looked.

Why is it that it is perfectly acceptable to wear a dress to a church for a funeral but shameful to wear it at school? The only thing that is different is one is full of churchgoers and the other is full of hormonal teenagers.

What is the point of telling this extended anecdote? I was made to feel ashamed for a sliver of my back showing because others may be “offended” or “distracted.” It was demeaning and humiliating.

Several stories just like mine have surfaced in the past year or so. Time Magazine’s Laura Bates speaks of several of these instances in her editorial, “How school dress codes shame girls and perpetuate rape culture.” She referenced a movement known as “The Everyday Sexism” project. One female teenage participant of this project shared her high school’s justification for the dress code: “Girls can’t dress ‘provocatively’ because it could distract and excite the boys.”

Another similar entry:

“1. There are male teachers and male sixth formers (seniors). 2. Teachers feel uncomfortable around bras, etc. 3. Don’t want the boys to target you or intimidate you.”  

First of all, if the school is concerned about boys “targeting” or “intimidating” the girls, the solution is not in making girls cover up and feel ashamed of their bodies, it is in raising boys to know it is never OK to target a girl for her clothing. This issue goes far beyond a pair of shorts or tank top, though. Dress codes simply spread the poison of bigger issues such as sexism, male dominance, and rape culture, into the teenage world.

Bates writes, “When a girl is taken out of class on a hot day for wearing a strappy top, because she is ‘distracting’ her male classmates, his education is prioritized over hers. When a school takes the decision to police female students’ bodies while turning a blind eye to boys’ behavior, it sets up a lifelong assumption that sexual violence is inevitable and victims are partially responsible” — but it does not have to be this way.

It starts with teaching young women that “respecting yourself” is not covering up and feeling ashamed, it is being comfortable in your own skin. Progress can be made by redefining the solution to rape culture in high schools, which means not punishing the girl in a pair of shorts, but reprimanding the boy that made a nasty comment about her bottom to his friend regarding the shorts and redefining what it means for a girl to “respect herself.”

It is unfortunate that anyone has to be punished at all. The root of the issue is at how the world has worked from the very beginning. The schema that men are superior to women and women are around to have babies and please men (which began centuries ago) remains relatively similar today. It’s time to break that schema.

Beyond the dress code, sexism and the sexualizing of women is the cause of far more harsh injustices. The fact of the matter is sharing a “harmless” joke relating to sexual assault does not make the issue any less “real.” A story from everydayfeminism.com sums up “rape culture” as “cultural practices that excuse or otherwise tolerate sexual violence … more often than not, it’s situations in which sexual assault, rape, and general violence are ignored, trivialized, normalized, or made into jokes.” I know personally, a day in high school is a day full of crude, sexist jokes that should not excuse sexualizing or threatening women physically or emotionally.

In 2013, two high school football players, Trent Mays, 17, and Ma’lik Richmond, 16, pleaded guilty to raping a 16-year-old girl at a party. Their sentences epitomize the excusing of sexual assault due to outside factors. CNN’s Poppy Harlow, who was present at the hearing, shared it had been “incredibly difficult” to watch “as these two young men — who had such promising futures, star football players, very good students — literally watched as they believed their lives fell apart.”

Am I the only one that finds it horrifying that this woman is sympathizing with the boys that traumatized and destroyed someone else’s life? Where’s the comment regarding how they caused that teenage girl’s life to fall apart? Imagine the physical and emotional trauma that young woman will have to deal with for the rest of her life. Oh, and as for those boys? They’re out of juvie and back playing football. Their promising football careers were not destroyed after all. As for the girl? Nothing can ever reverse or fix being raped.

 There is still hope for all of us dwelling in the angst of teenagehood. This is my slight contribution in the effort to support young women facing oppression. Sexism is a real thing. Rape culture is a real thing. Sexual assault is a real thing…. and quite frankly, it is scary. This is for every girl that has ever been scared to walk on the street at night, been told to “cover up,” or heard “she was asking for it,” “that outfit will distract the boys,” “she said no, but I can tell she wanted it,” “keep your mouth shut,”  or “you are just a girl, you can’t do that.” Be conscious of the effects of your words and actions. Use them for good and change will come.