Annie Concannon does not know why she was dress-coded. (Photo: Twitter/ConcannonAnnie)
High school student Annie Concannon was dress-coded last week, and she has no idea why.
She shared a photo of her outfit on Twitter to prove her innocence and is asking her followers to help in shaming the school. “I got dress coded for this outfit. Turpin high school. Twitter do your thing,” she wrote in the caption.
Concannon was wearing an old baggy sorority T-shirt and loose-fitting high-waisted jeans. Sure, the top was cropped, but her jeans were high enough so that no skin was showing.
The 17-year-old Turpin High School attendee tells Yahoo Lifestyle that the outfit didn’t break the dress code — “Don’t show the three Bs: Boobs, Butt, Belly Button.” Yet, it garnered so much attention, she may as well have been breaking all of those rules.
“I went into first period with no comments on my outfit, but in homeroom my teacher made a comment in front of my whole class stating my outfit was inappropriate,” she recalls. The craziest part is that she’s worn this outfit to school before yet has never had any problems. “I questioned her comment because I’ve worn that outfit in the past and it seemed completely reasonable to me. She then pulled me out into the hallway stating that I should know better because I’m a senior and that I should not be making her the bad guy in this situation.”
According to Concannon, her teacher labeled the shirt “provocative.”
“I was told to go down to the principal’s office and find a new shirt to put on over mine.” But Concannon rebelled. “I disregarded her comment and went to my second-period class without changing. I was really frustrated because my outfit wasn’t breaking our dress code.”
The Cincinnati, Ohio, resident was in the clear until third period. “As I went to third period, my teacher approached me and told me that I needed a jacket put on immediately,” Concannon shares. “She then explained to me that she received an email from the homeroom teacher that was sent to the entire staff that I needed to be wearing a jacket in every period.” This is when Concannon broke down. “At this point I started crying because I was so frustrated by the situation. I have never been dress-coded before, and I felt the staff of my school put a target on my back.”
The senior never expected this to happen. “People don’t often get dress-coded at my school, and I liked to think that they were pretty reasonable about it.” Well, it’s safe to say she no longer feels that way. “I was just really frustrated with how I was treated, and that the dress code at my school is completely one-sided against the female gender. There are almost no rules in place for the boys at my school, but the girls are completely oversexualized.” Unfortunately, this is common.
When student Eleanor Fitzwilliams’s senior photo was labeled inappropriate because it showed her bralette, she brought down the school on Twitter for its sexist yearbook regulations. And the tweet went viral. “Because you can see part of my bralette, it was deemed ‘inappropriate,’” she wrote. She contrasted her fully clothed picture with a photo of the boys’ swim team, shirtless and in Speedos, which is allegedly set to print in the yearbook. The school required Fitzwilliams to submit a different photo, she tweeted. The compare-and-contrast photos sparked a debate online about why certain rules in schools apply only to female students.
While boys are given a hall pass when it comes to appropriate school clothing, that doesn’t mean they agree with it. When many female students from San Benito High School were dress-coded for wearing off-the-shoulder shirts, their classmates — including several male students who wished to express solidarity with their female peers — decided to protest the enforcement of the no-off-the-shoulder-shirt rule by wearing exactly that.
“I plan on wearing my outfit again because I believe it causes no harm,” Concannon declares. “I will wear what I’m comfortable in.”