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what schools DON'T have female MS grads in white dresses?
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Anonymous
Would you prefer they wear leopard print? |
Anonymous
Leopard print seems kinda *20th* century no? |
Anonymous
I wore black because I wanted it to match with the gown. |
Anonymous
| Used to be like that at St Timothy's . Eventually after a lot of parents complained about the cost and fit of the dresses they moved to graduation gowns like most places. |
Anonymous
| My kids didn’t have a MS graduation (public school in PA). |
Anonymous
| If you knew that class at Norwood, you would know that not every girl in that class is wearing a white dress. And in just about every class in the last few years, one of the “girls” has worn a jacket. Norwood absolutely does not enforce gender norms. You clearly know nothing about the school. There is no gender specific dress code anymore on purpose. It’s a nice tradition, but if a girl wants to wear a jacket, they are free to do so. |
Anonymous
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OP I 100% agree with you.
It’s weird. It’s also one thing if a lot of girls wear white because it’s a cultural tradition, and another thing altogether when the school asks girls to wear white. My kids old school (St Stephen’s St Agnes) does this and it was part of a broader trend of having very rigid ideas about what boys and girls should look like. Lots of private schools don’t do this (Burke, Field, WIS, GDS) or you see it very minimally depending on the class (Sidwell, Maret). Someone can correct me if I’m wrong about any of these but I did look into it because it really is often linked to old-school attitudes about gender. |
Anonymous
Photo seems pretty gender-norm-y to me but you be the judge: https://www.instagram.com/p/DZISUBjjtWB/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA== |
Anonymous
K-12s tend to save it for HS graduation. It's just a color scheme. At our school the girls wear white dresses and the boys wear white pants and blazers. It is the only time most of the boys ever wear white pants. It's just a tradition. I think you may be reading too much into it. |
Anonymous
Why? Because all the children in jackets have short hair? Ever heard the phrase “don’t judge a book by the cover”? Talk to any Norwood family before deciding that the school forces traditional gender norms. |
Anonymous
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I didn’t even realize this was a thing, but my DD’s singing group asks all the girls to wear white dresses for performances. I always just thought it was an easy, conforming professional-looking thing for the photos. I guess you could do school colors but depending on the colors it might be harder to find a dress in that color and the shades might not match. And I don’t think you would want all black for a graduation, it would look like a funeral.
I’d be fine with it as long as girls who don’t like dresses also have the option for white slacks or jackets like the boys if they so wanted. |
Anonymous
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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
Photo seems pretty gender-norm-y to me but you be the judge: https://www.instagram.com/p/DZISUBjjtWB/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA== [/quote] Why? Because all the children in jackets have short hair? Ever heard the phrase “don’t judge a book by the cover”? Talk to any Norwood family before deciding that the school forces traditional gender norms.[/quote] If I had to guess, I would say that this picture speaks to what influential families want more than what the school wants. At any rate, the photo sure suggests a situation where people have to sort into either a boy presentation or a girl presentation on this one day. Again - I’m not saying that the school is forcing that, it may well be social pressure. But the fact that someone with XX chromosomes and a “boy” haircut (quotes are ironic) is wearing the “boy” outfit doesn’t really fix the problem - that kid still had to sort herself into one of two buckets for the photo opp. |
Anonymous
Creepy that I can see these photos on the internet. I hate the lack of privacy these days. |
Anonymous
| The photo is lovely. It’s a graduation photo of a K-8 that costs $50k per year, so it’s likely to be like any other US prep school where girls wear white dresses. Why not ask your friend who posted it, op, and ask their experiences at the school if you have concerns? |
Anonymous
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I didn’t know the white dresses was a thing (not where I grew up and did Catholic K-8, public HS and big college state school), but I’ve seen a lot of it lately at all graduation levels. Maybe the tradition is actually making a comeback?
I don’t necessarily assume the negative. So it symbolizes purity, but did you not wear a white wedding dress? What did you think you were symbolizing with that? Women also wore white during the suffragist movement and now female leaders often wear it. It’s also just an easy color for cohesion. |