Photo: TikTok
Mama handled it perfectly!
By Taylor Haynes — Written on Nov 12, 2022
The implications of dress codes in schools have been a place ripe for controversy and debate in recent years with more and more women speaking up about the unequal enforcement of these old-fashioned rules.
Now, one mom on TikTok is making sure her daughter knows not to let dress code rules stand in the way of her right to an education.
In a video shared on TikTok, a mom records her 1st-grader speaking about getting dress coded.
The mom, Harlie, records herself listening to her young daughter recall how her teacher stopped her from having lunch because of what she was wearing.
“The teachers said my straps were inappropriate,” said the 7-year-old tells her mom.
Harlie asked her daughter again, to make sure she got the story correctly, “So, they kicked you out at lunch?” and “Did you get to finish your lunch?” to which her daughter replied no.
She told Harlie that she didn’t get to eat all of her Cheetos because they sent her to the nurse's office.
“She’s always on calls and stuff, so I missed half…” continued the daughter. The video then cut to Harlie breaking down the situation to her daughter.
“Here’s the thing, you are 7, right?” to which the daughter replied yes.
“What grade are you in?” she asked.
Her daughter said she was in first grade, then Harlie proceeded to tell her that she “gets to choose what goes on [her] body”.
Many people have agreed in the past that dress codes are negatively biased towards girls, with some teens in a viral TikTok even testing the theory.
Harlie told her daughter that next time a teacher wants to send her to the nurse for her clothing, call her instead.
“And if you get sent home from a dress code, we’re gonna go out to eat or something,” Harlie's lips and voice were shaky a little bit in the video, but her conviction was clear.
“You can wear whatever you think is cute,” she continued. “And if we break dress code, I will come pick you up, cause it’s your body and I will deal with the rest of the repercussions”.
Harlie was gifting her daughter with the lesson of agency.
“When you’re a grown-up, no one’s gonna care,” said Harlie.
Harlie then emphasized the point by picking up her tank top strap and letting her daughter know that is what she wore to work that day.
“I will make sure that you are being respected, and if somebody tries to tell you what you are doing is inappropriate you don’t let them do that,” she continued.
“That’s not their job to talk to you like that”.
Harlie ended the video with a smile towards the young girl. It was a beautiful thing to see a mother impart an important lesson to her daughter.
She shared a follow-up video explaining her interaction with her daughter's school.
Harlie headed into her daughter's school to confront staff members about what happened. She took accountability for dressing her daughter in something that is against school rules — even if those rules are somewhat archaic.
“My problem isn’t the dress code, it’s how you guys chose to enforce it,” she says.
“They tried to tell me that she was lying about being pulled out of lunch, then another teacher says she was pulled out of lunch and then they were trying to lie about how long she was out of lunch and then they blamed her for walking too slow.”
“I believe my child,” she insists. She says she asked the school to call her if anything similar happens again, requesting that they do not shame her child
“If a teacher is too distracted by a 7-year-old’s shoulder to continue teaching then I do not want her in that classroom.”
“If your solution is to starve her and shame her in front of her friends, I’m going to have to come pick her up because I’m not raising a good student, I’m not raising a good worker, I’m raising a good person.”
Taylor Haynes is a writer based in Chicago. She writes for Entertainment & News at YourTango. You can find her on Instagram here.