This Dress Code Poster Was Actually On The Walls Of A High School In 2016

Dress code poster suggests girls and their skimpy clothes are to blame when boys don’t do well in school

In yet another edition of “Is This Seriously Happening In 2016?” we have a beyond offensive and disgusting poster found hanging in a high school library illustrating the fallout when a girl wears *gasp* slightly revealing clothing. The cartoon puts blame squarely on the shoulders of girls when it comes to the failures of boys.

And there’s nothing remotely funny about it.

The poster concerned school dress codes and according to ABC 15 News, was displayed in the library at Desert Ridge High School in Mesa, Arizona. Behold its total ridiculousness for yourself.

Several students took issue with the sign but it was senior Alissa Adams that wrote the note at the bottom saying, “So it’s the girls fault, right? #feminism” and brought the poster to the librarian’s attention. Of course, the librarian promptly brushed her off. Luckily, once administrators at the school caught wind of it, the poster was taken down. Adams says, “We have girls with self-image issues and this sign definitely did not help. Guys thinking only that they are thought of as animals and that they are not seen higher than that when we have some of the top students in the state.”

The cartoon follows a supposed series of events stemming from a girl wearing a presumably skimpy outfit with the goal of looking “cute.” The panels read: “So you think you come to school looking pretty cute…but what the boys see is meat, and it’s distracting. So they make lousy grades, but you end up with one of them anyway because he thought you looked HOT! And then he ends up under-employed because he learned nothing in school. So you get to support him…..forever…..”

Hold up, have to go extinguish the flames shooting out the sides of my face real quick.

Ok, I’m back. Now, I won’t argue the need for a dress code in the first place — as long as it treats girls and boys equally and doesn’t shame anyone, it’s acceptable for a school to have a code of conduct when it comes to attire. After all, most workplaces have them and one day, our kids will have jobs. Well, if this cartoon is accurate, our daughters will have jobs. Our sons will be too busy adjusting their boners and drooling all over their desks to be able to succeed in life because their slutty classmates revealed a little shoulder or midriff.

Give me a fucking break.

The dress code itself isn’t the issue this time; it’s the fact that this “joke” isn’t really a joke at all in the eyes of many. Plenty of school administrators and parents firmly believe the onus is on girls to keep boys from being “tempted” so they stay on the straight and narrow and succeed in life. Because we all know that teen boys are only a sliver of boob away from falling off their path in life. Whatever.

Heaven forbid we teach boys from the start that girls are in no way responsible for the way they themselves act. They should be raised knowing that even if a girl walks by them in hot pants and nipple tassels she’s not theirs to touch, ogle or treat like “meat,” as this terrible poster so helpfully calls them. Maybe instead of making girls responsible for the thoughts and actions of boys, we should make everyone responsible for themselves.

As long as people still find cartoons like this funny or in any way true, we will have boys and men blaming women for their own rape or sexual assault. This poster may seem relatively innocent, but there’s no question that it feeds into that “she was asking for it” mentally that so often accompanies stories of women being raped and attacked by men.

When we allow boys to believe that a girl wearing a certain kind of outfit can turn them into “wolves” with no self-control, we have a very big problem on our hands. And if it’s the schools that are supposed to educate our children perpetuating this victim-blaming garbage, it’s even bigger.

Thankfully, the students knew how wrong this was and took matters into their own hands. Hopefully, that means we are raising a smarter generation who understands that they’re in charge of their own actions. No matter what anyone is wearing.