At one British school, little girls shall henceforth not wear skirts or blouses, lest eyes be drawn to that which lies beneath.
Some of the older girls were beginning to wear extremely short skirts," said Mr [School headmaster David] Doubtfire. "It was becoming difficult, especially when it came to them sitting down in the school hall. It was very unladylike. "We would ask them to make their skirts longer, but they would just roll them up again when we turned away."
It's all part of Britain's peculiar variation of the "sexualized children" folk-panic, which sounds reasonable until you realize that it's really about creepy grown-ups sitting there mentally measuring pubescent knee-to-hem distances all day, every day. Enforced modesty — and look at that word, "ladylike"! — is less about protecting potential victims, and more a matter of the adult enforcer's own sexual anxieties.
