Students at Elite New York High School Bare Skin for 'Slutty Wednesday' in Dress Code Protest
Challenging a dress code that prohibits "shoulders, undergarments, midriffs and lower backs" from being exposed, some 100 students at Manhattan's prestigious Stuyvesant High School shed their clothes for a day of protest dubbed "Slutty Wednesday."
"I hope so, I think so," responded one student when asked if the demonstration was successful. "I don't know we'll see."
In addition to banning bare arms and midriffs, the policy also requires that "the length of shorts, dresses and skirts...extend below the fingertips with the arms straight at your side." Another no-go: Shirts with offensive illustrations.
"Some things are a distraction," Principal Stanley Teitel told the student newspaper before the dress code was introduced last September. "And we don't need to distract students from what is supposed to be going on here, which is learning."
Freshman Lucy Greider agreed with the principal in part, but arrived at a different conclusion.
"We work our asses off here, and school is about learning," she told the New York Post. "Clothing is not important."