One of the private schools near me has a uniform, one which is largely generic and pretty much the same for boys and girls. Both wear white button-down shirts, both wear v-necked sweaters and both wear ties. However now the girls are complaining at having to wear ties. They're not unhappy at everyine wearing ties, they appear not to dislike the ties themselves. They are unhappy that they as girls have to wear ties.
Long-time listeners will know that I support uniforms, and I do not mean dress codes. I also have no problem with generic uniforms, or boy and girl uniforms. But I am old enough to remember specific uniform fights over going from gender-specific to gender-neutral, and one of those was over the matter of ties.
In the old days, typically girls had no shirt closure or they had some string thing or a bow of some kind. In the first situation, leering complaints were common. In the second, students found that they were tricky to tie, annoying, got caught in things like bunsen burners, or were deemed frilly and demeaning. In both, the argument was that there was no need for different neckwear, and that if there were indeed to be ties, then it should be one tie fits all.
A victory for civil rights. Of course the argument is now apparently that ties are discriminatory, chauvinistic, patriarchical or worse.
Why are we here in the US so bad at learning from history, and so good at turning back the clock? As someone once said, those who do not learn form history are doomed to repeat it. Today it's a tie. Tomorrow, get thee to a nunnery perhaps.
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