Photo: TikTok
The eyelets were too big, apparently.
By Isaac Serna-Diez — Last updated on Nov 01, 2023
Dress codes supposedly exist in order to maintain a level of professionalism and conduct on school grounds, but are often seen as misogynistic and outdated restrictions that quickly go too far. A teenage student at Edison Preparatory School in Tulsa, Oklahoma, demonstrated this in a TikTok revealing the dress code penalties she received and the outfits that caused them.
The teenage girl's dress-coded outfits were fairly conservative.
For most of the outfits, Elise Cork (@eliseecork) wore jeans or long pants that covered the entirety of her legs and her shirts never even showed skin. Most people in the comments agreed that the outfits shouldn’t have been dress-coded at all, begging the question: what do they allow you to wear?
“I would wear half of these to church how do you get dress coded in these,” someone wrote in the replies.
“The way they impeded your access to an EDUCATION for eyelets that were ‘too big’ I’m OUT,” another user wrote, referring to a couple of the shirts she wore.
The comments were all in agreement that the only outfit that maybe made sense was the very first one Cork wore — which she didn’t even wear to school and were her pajamas.
Many people also pointed out that one of her outfits looked strikingly close to something that the Scooby-Doo character Velma Dinkley wears. The girl explained that during her school’s spirit week, there was a “Duo Day,” so she dressed up as Velma and her friend dressed up as Daphne Blake.
“HOW DID YOU GET DRESS CODED WHILE DRESSED AS VELMA DINKLEY?!?!?” one person asked, considering the character is typically regarded as one of the more reserved and quiet characters among the group.
Cork posted a follow-up video explaining how each outfit broke the school’s dress code.
The arguments for most of the outfits felt like a stretch, ranging from eyelets that were too big to necklines that cut too deep.
“The v-neck was too V, like too long, and the shirt was too sheer, apparently,” she said of another shirt.
She claimed they told her that one of the shirts was too short even though it didn’t even show any skin the way crop tops normally do.
“Apparently there was too much lace on this shirt and that was inappropriate, I’m sorry. I don’t know,” she said of a shirt that covered her entire torso.
She continued on, listing the reasons that she had been written up in school until she landed on the Velma outfit.
“My school’s spirit week. It’s a known rule we never dress code. Kids will show up to school shirtless, in full swimsuits, full body paint, stuff like that,” she explained. “She dress-coded me for the skirt being too short, but actually when I went to the office, they laughed at me.”
“What the heck are you talking about? We’re not going to dress code you during spirit week,” they told her.
To offer some more clarifications, Cork said that the school was not a private school and was in fact public and that it was the same female teacher every single time. In response, many people shared the same revelation, saying “Nah girl you’re just being targeted. My school has a pretty strict dress code but all of this would’ve been fine.”
“Whoever is dress coding u just straight up doesn’t want u at that school,” wrote another.
Teachers chimed in and defended Cork, adding that it wasn’t fair for her to be treated this way.
“I’m a middle school teacher, and I want to recognize on behalf of educators that WHAT STUDENTS WEAR TO SCHOOL WIDELY DOES NOT MATTER,” one teacher shared.
Cork added that she no longer attends the school in question, which updated its dress code in August 2023. The updated dress code appears to meet the ACLU's guidelines, which aim to prevent discrimination and sexism in the classroom.
Isaac Serna-Diez is an Assistant Editor who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics. Keep up with his rants about current events on his Twitter.