Objectification Found in High School Girls’ Experience With Dress Code Enforcement

Objectification Theory

Objectification theory offers “a framework for understanding the experiential consequences of being female in a culture that sexually objectifies the female body” (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997, p. 173). Females are objectified when attention is called to their bodies by (a) visual inspection (i.e., objectifying gaze or checking out or scanning female bodies) in social encounters, (b) media depictions of such encounters, and (c) media depictions that focus on bodies and body parts (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997). They are also objectified through unsolicited sexualized comments, sexual harassment, and sexual assault (Calogero et al., 2020). As a result of objectification by others, females may self-objectify and take an outsider's view of themselves, when thinking about their bodies (Lindner et al., 2012). Such self-objectification is highly related to habitual body monitoring, appearance anxiety, and body shame (Calogero et al., 2020). Other consequences of self-objectification include personal safety anxiety (i.e., being viewed as a physical object of the male gaze) and disruption to mental flow states, that is, complete immersion in an activity, which can occur when attention is drawn to one's bodily appearance (Calogero et al., 2020).

Objectification theory outlines that as girls’ bodies change during puberty, a girl learns that her body to a certain extent becomes public domain so that it belongs more to others and less to her (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997). Fredrickson and Roberts (1997) explained that the way a girl's body belongs to others is that due to pubertal changes, her new body is gazed at (i.e., she is a target of the objectifying gaze), commented on, and evaluated. The results of a survey conducted by the American Association of University Women supports this notion as it found that almost half of all girls in grades 7 through 12 had been sexually harassed in school; 46% reported harassment consisting of sexual comments, jokes, gestures, or looks (Hill & Kearl, 2011). Hence, objectification theory as a theoretical lens helps to explore how adolescent girls experience the school environment and dress code enforcement as objectifying by focusing attention on their bodies.

Sample and Data Collection

Adopting hermeneutic phenomenology that focuses on identifying and interpreting the participant's experiences (Noon & Hallman, 2018), we conducted personal in-depth interviews with thirteen adolescent girls between 14 and 18 years old. In qualitative research, data are commonly collected from a specific or limited range of settings to consider contextual factors in interpreting findings (Belk et al., 2012). Participants were recruited from four different public high schools that apply the same dress code policy in a school district in the south region of the United States. They were recruited through a snowballing technique regardless of their experiences of being dress-coded. We recruited adolescents who identified as females. In the recruitment process, we obtained both parental permission and adolescent assent for participants who were under 18, and interviews were conducted in a parent's presence for these participants. The description of the participants is found in Table 1; informants’ names are pseudonyms. Interviews were conducted in an offline meeting for one participant and via online face-to-face meetings for 12 participants using virtual conference apps such as Zoom and iPhone FaceTime. No significant difference in the quality of narratives or participants’ openness was found among communication settings. The study procedure included semi-structured interviews, and each interview lasted about 45–60 min. Interviews began with a question that asked participants to describe their outfits for average school days. Also, to address research questions, we asked about meanings they placed on clothing and school and their perception/experience of school dress codes. Although an interview guide was used to draw the fullness of girls’ experiences with school dress codes, interviews were led heavily by emerging dialogues (Belk et al., 2012). The interviews continued until theoretical saturation was achieved.

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Table 1.

Participants.

Participants	Age	Grade	Racial/Ethnic Origin	School
Olivia	17	11th	White/European American	A
Audrey	18	12th	White/European American	A
Beatrice	16	11th	Asian American	A
Jessie	14	9th	Asian American	A
Paige	18	12th	White/European American	A
Meredith	16	10th	White/European American	A
Millie	15	9th	White/European American	B
Tamara	15	9th	Asian American	B
Julia	14	9th	Hispanic/Latina	B
Ellie	18	12th	White/European American	C
Savannah	17	11th	White/European American	C
Taniya	18	12th	Black/African American	D
Camille	18	12th	Black/African American	D

Data Analysis

Researchers used NVivo 12 software to independently identify and categorize codes in each transcript. Then, they collaboratively identified themes and negotiated relationships among themes by deliberating, discussing, and analyzing iteratively between the interview data and each researcher's notes (Lim & Schumann, 2019). Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) guided the analysis of informants’ stories in which we explored how participants made sense of their experience in the personal and social world (Miller et al., 2018; Smith & Osbourne, 2012). IPA focuses on individuals’ perceptions rather than generating an objective narrative through an interpretivist paradigm (Smith & Osbourne, 2012). This approach enables researchers to contextualize and interpret the individuals’ experiences in their cultural and physical environments (Larkin et al., 2006) for a small and relatively homogenous group of participants who have directly experienced the phenomenon of interest (Miller et al., 2018). The first step involved open coding in which all researchers repeatedly read each interview transcript and identified significant statements and events. The second step involved identification of main themes and comparison of these themes with emergent themes from researchers’ notes developed during each interview to ensure that main themes were drawn from the participant's initial narratives. Lastly, we clustered themes based on conceptual similarities.

Trustworthiness of Data Analysis

Based on Lincoln and Guba's guide (1985), we measured credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability to enhance the trustworthiness of our analysis and interpretations in findings. Credibility was assessed through member checks by sharing a summary of findings with the participants to verify the accuracy of our interpretations. To ensure transferability, we recruited participants from different schools, grades, and racial/ethnic backgrounds, set diverse communication channels with which participants felt comfortable, drew excerpts of the narratives from all participants in findings, and used interview notes that recorded nonverbal cues and participants’ reactions. To ensure dependability, a team of researchers from different US regions (i.e., Southeast and Midwest) and diverse personal and cultural backgrounds (e.g., age, ethnicity) constantly documented and discussed the research process and identified themes and interpretations. To establish confirmability, investigator triangulation and data triangulation using different data sources (e.g., participants’ photos and student handbooks) were used (Korstjens & Moser, 2018).

Dressing as a Life Skill

Two subthemes, development of personal styles and self-expression and empowerment, emerged as we analyzed the participants’ accounts of what dress meant to them. These sub-themes demonstrate that middle and high schools are an important stage for adolescents not only to build academic knowledge and skills but also to develop a strong sense of the self through social interactions. The two subthemes reveal the role of dress in this development.

Development of personal styles. Most participants described their clothing choice in middle school as plain. For example, Beatrice wore a pair of jeans and a simple t-shirt almost every day when she was in middle school. She recollected, “I just didn’t feel like I had the resources or didn’t have the guts to do so [dressing cool and fashionable].” When she started trying more stylish clothes in middle school, she took characters from a video game and a book as her style reference. Showing her picture at her friend's birthday party in seventh grade, she recounted, “I was trying to dress up as a character from a video game… and it didn’t work out [laughing].” Similarly, Millie described her middle school appearance as a mess, trying out different styles and clothes to figure out which one fits her the most: “I was figuring out who I am as a person and how do I want to project myself on to other people.” This passage suggests that middle school was an important period in which Millie started her journey to develop her embodied identity through dress (Entwistle, 2000).

While many participants recalled their daily appearance in middle school with embarrassment and/or self-derision, they made elaborate efforts to develop their personal styles as they entered high school. For example, Olivia wanted to change her dress style when she entered high school. She thought that her monotone and dull-looking style had made her look brusque and unapproachable in middle school. Also, the agency of clothing choice changed for Olivia in this course of action.

This narrative demonstrates that in high school Olivia started developing not only her personal style but also skills to be the main decision-maker when clothing shopping.

Dress for self-expression and empowerment. Body and appearance are vital components of social interactions with others (Oliver & Lalik, 2000). For Jessie, clothes are not only something that protects her from the environment helping her stay warm or cool but also help her express who she is. The following discourse illustrates how Jessie uses dress as a tool for impression management particularly when she encounters and competes with strangers in student conferences and science competitions:

Similarly, as Camille started participating in formal school events and a business internship in high school, she learned which clothing was appropriate for those contexts. The following passage exhibits this discernment: “They [ripped jeans and stomach revealing tops] are not appropriate for the occasion [formal events] because not only are you surrounded by people that are in business, [but also] you want to give off the [appropriate] impression.”

Furthermore, our data analysis revealed that dress is an essential tool for self-empowerment for the participants. Beatrice described herself as an artist. She recounted that as an art-oriented person, the visual aspect of things is important to her including her appearance.

This notion was also found in Olivia's narrative:

In impression management, dress conveys the “socially processed body” through which a wearer intentionally presents the self to the social world (Entwistle, 2000, p. 325). In accordance with this theory, our findings demonstrate that the meaning of dress for high school girls is deeply contextualized by the location in which they are situated, and they develop distinct dressing strategies for the location with clear intentionality. Also, we discovered that dress plays a critical role as adolescent girls establish their self-identity and self-esteem.

Experiencing a Sexually Objectifying Environment

Four sub-themes in this section indicate that girls experience a sexually objectifying environment through dress code enforcement at school: humiliation as a method of enforcement, body size discrimination, gender-biased enforcement, and ignorance of girls’ physical comfort. These four sub-themes reveal that arbitrary and disparate methods of dress code enforcement which focus attention on girls’ bodies create a sexually objectifying environment in which they experience self-objectification, body shame, personal safety anxiety, and a feeling of powerlessness. These sub-themes emerged in the participants’ narratives consistently, whether they had experienced the objectifying way of dress code enforcement directly (i.e., by being dress-coded) or indirectly (i.e., by watching other girls being dress-coded).

Humiliation as a method of enforcement. In middle school, Millie was dress-coded for a small rip in a pair of jeans above her knee, and school staff made her put a piece of duct tape underneath to cover her skin. “They [school staff] told me… it would be distracting to others, and it's not very suited for school.” Since this occurrence, Millie has become vigilant about her school outfits to comply with the school dress code and actively sought the approval of her parents and friends for the appropriateness of her clothing choice for school. Camille was another participant who experienced having her pants duct-taped because of a small hole found in her jeans. Camille expressed how this experience adversely affected her sense of self:

Camille's narrative demonstrates her feeling of shame (i.e., embarrassment) as a result of a humiliating method of dress code enforcement (i.e., duct tape). According to Lewis (1971), shame is expressed in "mortification, embarrassment, humiliation, chagrin, feeling ridiculous, and shyness" (p. 29). Our findings demonstrate that schools’ enforcement methods induce humiliation by drawing attention to girls’ bodily appearance, increasing girls’ body shame and feelings of powerlessness. For both Millie and Camille, the consequence of being dress-coded (i.e., duct tape application) is objectifying because it draws attention to their bodies.

Body size discrimination. Perceived arbitrary methods of dress code enforcement were commonly found in our data regardless of which school the participants attended. Jessie wore leggings without covering her bottom and shorts above mid-thigh length to school. She knew that she broke dress codes but was never called out.

Audrey who attended the same school as Jessie recollected quite different experiences. Audrey, who reported that her lower body is bigger than other girls, liked to wear leggings to school because of her track practice after school. However, she was dress-coded by a teacher for wearing leggings without a long shirt to cover her bottom.

Audrey's narrative was a complete contrast to Jessie's. This account suggests that the school ignores different body types among girls and does not apply the rule equally to every student. Another example was found in Taniya's narrative. Being 5’7” tall, she described her body as an “X-Large size.” She shared her experience of being dress-coded for her shorts and a tank top with narrow straps. She was told to put on a jacket or serve in-school suspension. She narrated,

Taniya further explained that “looking worse” means looking inappropriate. That is, people think that the same shorts reveal more body parts for a girl with a large body frame like Taniya. The accounts of Audrey, Jessie, and Taniya show that schools’ dress code enforcement draws girls’ attention to their physical appearance and often targets girls who are relatively large and/or have prominent female body features.

Gender-biased enforcement. While the previous subtheme, body size discrimination, exhibits within-gender inequality, this subtheme depicts the participants’ repugnance towards gender inequality that is manifested in schools’ dress code enforcement. Researchers reviewed the student handbooks in participants’ schools for triangulation purposes and found that they do not outline gender-specific rules. Yet all participants expressed resentment of schools’ gender-biased enforcement of the dress code and noted that dress codes are implemented to regulate mainly girls to control boys’ behavior. For instance, Audrey was told by a teacher that girls were not allowed to wear a tank top or a top with narrow straps because they could distract boys, but the same rule was not applied to boys. Audrey used emphatic terms such as “sexist” and “bullcrap” to express her aversion towards school dress code enforcement.

Likewise, Meredith expressed her frustration over the gender-unequal treatment in dress code enforcement: “it's really unfair and it's biased towards girls because they [teachers] just expect girls to cover up more.” The accounts of Audrey and Meredith demonstrate that double standards in policing dress are perceived as unfair and sexist.

Additionally, we found that schools’ gender-biased dress code enforcement reinforces the normalization of boys’ sexist comments, remarks, and behaviors in school. Meredith shared that observing boys catcalling and scanning girls’ bodies in school hallways (i.e., objectifying them) made her uncomfortable. In this regard, Beatrice asserted that her school's method of dress code enforcement that targets mostly girls reinforces “the objectification and sexualization of girls” implicitly.

Beatrice contended that her school's method of dress code enforcement creates a disempowering and unsafe space for girls because of the potential for objectification. Beatrice also reported that such a sexually objectifying atmosphere manifested in a sex education class in which a speaker used a metaphor of “a clean untouched candy bar for your future spouse” for girls’ virginity and said, “girls, don’t wear booty shorts… you’re going to get raped.” She narrated, “he was saying like, ‘girls, it's your fault [if you are raped because you wear booty shorts].’ I hated that. It made me feel unsafe.” Meredith also reported a similar sex education experience in which a speaker emphasized girls’ virginity by using a metaphor of “unused tissue.” Both of these comments are objectifying by calling attention to girls’ bodies and treating them as an object of men's sexual desire.

Overall, this theme illustrates that schools’ gender-biased dress code enforcement and gendered discourse in sex education create a sexually objectifying environment that treats girls’ bodies as sexual objects and threatens their body autonomy. This finding supports the notion that personal safety anxiety arises when a woman experiences sexual objectification in daily life because the experience intensifies her perceived sense that she might become a victim of sexual harassment (Calogero et al., 2020; Szymanski et al., 2011).

Ignorance of girls’ physical comfort. Our data analysis reveals two distinct meanings of schools for adolescent girls: education and social interactions. While some participants such as Audrey and Julia described a school as a place in which they can expand their knowledge, Jessie emphasized that the social aspect of a school is equal to or even more important than learning academic knowledge and skills. In the same vein, Millie used the term an escape to describe her feeling about going to school wherein she can meet her friends and feel comfortable being herself. Also, the participants prioritized comfort in the selection of their daily outfits for school because they spend a significant amount of time in school daily. They also emphasized the function of dress for physical comfort in many school activities. For example, Audrey wore a tank top to feel comfortable when she attended outdoor band practices. However, she was called out for violating the dress code because her tank top showed her shoulders:

In general, the accounts of our participants show that schools’ dress codes focus more on how students’ bodies look than how they feel in dress (e.g., comfort) as they conduct school activities. Another example is found in Paige's narrative. Paige, a 6-feet tall school athlete, was dress-coded three times in high school for wearing a tank top, a pair of athletic shorts, and leggings. Paige was told that she was dress-coded because her bodily appearance in those outfits distracted boys. She argued that girls’ dress is regulated to prevent boys’ distractions, and dress codes ignore girls’ physical comfort: “…if girls are wearing crop tops that show their entire stomach, that's different than a girl wearing like athletic shorts.” In the same vein, Millie narrated,

In this regard, Olivia stated that dress codes are outdated and do not consider changes in fashion and culture by which people have become more accustomed to women's skin exposure.

This finding illustrates that schools restrict girls’ dress to regulate boys’ behavior. Our participants showed frustration because the basis for the school's dress code and its enforcement appears uninformed by clear guidelines and reasoning. Being applied unfairly between girls and boys, such enforcement renders girls more susceptible to how their body is viewed by others than how their bodies feel, which leads to self-objectification (Tiggemann & Andrew, 2012).

Coping With the Sexually Objectifying Environment

In general, women experience more stressful sexist stressors than men in their everyday lives (Klonoff et al., 2000). Scholars argue that women show both inactive (i.e., regulating emotions evoked by the stressor) and active coping responses (i.e., attempting to change the stressor) when they encounter discrimination (Carver et al., 1989). Two sub-themes in this study, mocking authority and engagement in collective action, reflect these two different coping responses as high school girls experience the sexually objectifying environment at school through dress code enforcement.

Mocking authority. As aforementioned, girls have a negative attitude towards the school dress code because schools enforce it without providing a clear rationale. Being told that girls’ dress distracts boys, our participants unanimously argued that being a distraction for boys cannot be a valid reason for regulating girls’ dress. Paige who was dress-coded a few times for wearing athletic apparel contended that dress code enforcement was conducted with no rational basis and/or was unfairly applied so that she did not take it seriously.

Like Paige, Olivia, 5’6” tall, has long arms that reach below halfway down her thighs. One day, she was dress-coded for wearing a pair of shorts that violated the fingertip rule. She narrated, “well, people who dress like that on a daily basis, never really get punished for it because that's how they’ve always been dressed… I felt like, it was unfair. I felt frustrated, but because of that, I also didn’t really take it seriously. I was like, okay, this is kind of ridiculous, so I didn’t really listen.” Consequently, Olivia lost respect for school authority figures. Such disrespect for authority was well portrayed in girls’ accounts of, so-called, “shoulder jokes.”:

As girls’ accounts illustrate, they ignore teachers’ rules/requests as they perceive them as unreasonable. This result is supported by findings that (a) adolescents’ discipline and cooperative behaviors at school depend greatly on their perception of teachers’ trustworthiness (Gregory & Ripski, 2008) and (b) students challenge teachers’ authority and ignore/resist teachers’ rules and requests consciously and deliberately (Sheets, 1996).

Engagement in collective action. Audrey felt the school's dress codes kept girls from reaching their potential and engaging in self-expression to the fullest degree. She claimed that her school's dress code enforcement endorsed rampant sexist ideology in our society:

Sharing their experience with a sexually objectifying environment at school, all participants claimed the need for changes in the method of dress code enforcement and overall school culture. Changes in a school's culture can allow girls to feel more comfortable in their learning environment, which can be established by educating boys and administration about girls’ right to bodily autonomy and personal safety (Piran, 2001). Beatrice recollected how student club activities drove a cultural change in her school. In her club for gender equality, students created a series of events to promote awareness of women's empowerment, diminish the sexualization of girls, normalize women in positions of power, and recognize women as changemakers in society:

Beatrice's narrative shows the importance of organizational culture as it can prevent female objectification when women are valued for their characteristics and performance instead of their physical appearance (Daniels & Wartena, 2011). In brief, this finding illustrates girls’ voices for non-discriminatory education and dress code enforcement, which they believe will encourage respect for one another and help students choose not to focus on and/or judge others by appearance. Figure 1 presents outcomes of an objectifying environment that high school girls experience through dress code enforcement.

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Figure 1.

Outcomes of objectification in school dress code enforcement.

Implications

The findings of this study provide a useful aid for educators and policymakers. First, our findings entail the importance of cultural changes in which students respect and are responsible for not only their bodies but also others’. An objectifying culture is prevalent in Western culture in which women are assessed more by their physical appearance than performance. Examples include making female candidates’ appearance the main issue in the US presidential election (Heflick & Goldenberg, 2011), sexualizing female athletes (Daniels & Wartena, 2011; Gurung & Chrouser, 2007), and making career judgments for female STEM faculty in universities based on appearance (Banchefsky et al., 2016). Our findings demonstrate that schools’ dress code enforcement also promotes such an objectifying culture for adolescent girls. As Daniels and Wartena (2011) demonstrated, the tendency to objectify can be alleviated by shifting a viewer's focus. In their study, adolescent boys evaluated female athletes in body-revealing sportswear more positively by focusing on their performance when the photos were taken in an athletic context (e.g., swimming competition), but their evaluation focused more on bodily appearance when the boys viewed photos of female athletes posed for photoshoots in a magazine. This finding suggests that schools cultivate a healthy environment in which women are judged based on achievements and competency rather than appearance (Gurung & Chrouser, 2007).

Additionally, it is noteworthy that the school's unfair and gender-biased enforcement of dress codes generates a disrespectful attitude towards school authority and the school dress code among girls. To resolve this issue, we recommend that schools develop and present clearly written dress codes with unbiased reasoning. Also, we suggest that schools present dress codes with an equity statement (National Women; Law Center, 2018) and train teachers and administrators to use a clearly defined protocol consistently instead of treating girls’ bodies and dress as distracting objects. Schools might show respect for students’ rights by involving them in responsible decision-making regarding dress code enforcement. For example, in an Indiana school, students objected to dress code enforcement and helped put guidelines in place to avoid humiliation in dress code enforcement (Cox, 2017).

Also, it is recommended that schools develop a curriculum that facilitates proper training in dress and appearance management to help students develop important life skills for impression management in diverse contexts (Freeburg & Arnett, 2010). In this way, schools show their respect for adolescents’ freedom of choice and guide them to learn appropriate dress behavior (Grandpre et al., 2003). Taken together, we suggest that educators and policymakers consider the educational aspect of dress as a tool to develop self-management through dress (Craik, 2003), instead of focusing heavily on preventing dress-related behavioral problems (Holloman et al., 1996). Also, schools are encouraged to collect and analyze data on dress code enforcement to examine potential bias issues.

Limitations

Our work has limitations. This study focused on the experiences of cisgender girls in a region where whites account for the majority of residents. Therefore, the findings of this study might not reflect additional issues such as race, ethnicity, and sexuality that could impact girls from different socioeconomic backgrounds. For instance, research shows black and white adolescent girls place different levels of emphasis on physical appearance to determine their sense of self and personal value (Gordon, 2008), and inequalities in school dress codes are found to be more prevalent among black students (Morris, 2005). Also, the impact of the dress code on the LGBTQ student community deserves scholastic investigations because of the unique experience of body image within this marginalized group (Edwards & Marshall, 2020). Szymanski et al. (2011) contended that internalized sexual objectification can vary depending on a person's sexuality, race, and disability. Therefore, we recommend that further research be undertaken to elucidate adolescents’ experience with appearance regulations in school among ethnic and sexual minorities.