High school under fire for making girls submit homecoming dress photos for approval

A Wisconsin high school got the message loud and clear this year that maybe requiring students to submit pictures of their homecoming dresses before the dance wasn’t such a good idea after all.

The policy, an extension of the school’s dress code, had been in place since 2015 at Pewaukee High School.

But a recent email reminder about the policy for the dance coming up on Oct. 7 kicked up a new brouhaha on Facebook and Twitter.

One Twitter user dubbed the school district the “fashion police.”

Pewaukee Superintendent Mike Cady said the requirement was put in place to keep students from being thrown out of the dance because their clothes broke code, he told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

In a quick check of other school districts in southeastern Wisconsin, the newspaper found Pewaukee’s predance photo requirement to be unusual, if not unique.

The school’s dress code, which prohibits clothing deemed too revealing, is like many others nationwide, though some of those have been challenged in recent years by students and parents who consider them sexist and unfair because they focus mostly on girls’ attire.

“Tops that have spaghetti straps, are backless, and/or that cover only one shoulder,” and “blouses that do not cover the midriff” are all banned at the school, and skirts must “extend below the mid-thigh.”

The code also bans students from wearing low-hanging pants that expose their underwear or behinds.

Feedback on the regulations had been “heavily positive and supportive” from the community, Cady told ABC News. “Really the negative reaction has been external, primarily via social media,” he said.

Discussions on Facebook got heated, with some people blasting the district for being too hands-on while others blamed parents for being too hands-off and not caring about what their daughters wear.

One person wondered why there were so many rules about homecoming dresses, “yet it’s ok for the school athletics department to issue skimpy booty shorts for volleyball. Hypocrisy at it’s finest.”

Rebecca Sheperd, whose daughter is a freshman at the school, told the Journal Sentinel she is a “fan of modesty,” but the photo requirement went a step too far.

“They’re being told we can’t trust you to make a good decision, so we’ll make that decision for you,” Sheperd told the Journal Sentinel. “There should be a better way, though I’m not sure what that would be.”

Some students didn’t like the photo policy, either.

“I think the fact that we have to submit a photo of ourselves wearing it front and back is a little bit creepy to me,” Nicole Stark, 17, a senior at the school, told ABC.

“Honestly, I would much rather get turned away at the door than to have to send a picture of myself wearing a dress.”

Cady said female students forced the issue by pushing the boundaries of the school’s dress code with the dresses they wore to school formals, he told the Journal.

“It’s really out of a sensitivity to our students,” Cady said. “We want (school dances) to be a positive experience. We don’t want anyone to show up and have to be sent home because of a dress-code violation.”

Earlier this year a school district in Osakis, Minn., changed direction when local media reported the discussion school board members had about requiring girls going to prom to submit a predance photo of themselves wearing their chosen dresses.

The backlash was so strong the district backed away from the idea.

Public opinion appears to have swayed school officials in Pewaukee, too.

The school amended the policy last week in a letter to parents, noting that some parents, guardians and students may be “uncomfortable with the submission of a photograph,” according to ABC.

“In these cases, we ask parents/guardians to email (principal) Mr. (Marty) Van Hulle ... to indicate they have reviewed the dress guidelines and will assist us to ensure student attire is compliant,” the letter said, according to ABC.

“The student will then be able to purchase a ticket for the homecoming dance.”

This story was originally published September 25, 2017 at 3:04 PM with the headline "High school under fire for making girls submit homecoming dress photos for approval."