'I No Longer Wear Skirts': The Teenage Girls Fighting The Sexualisation Of School Uniforms

“If you’re sexualising school uniform, you’re sexualising a child.”

Parents editor at HuffPost UK

When I was 14, I’d walk home from the bus stop in my school uniform and be leered at or wolf-whistled by men going past in their cars.

On one occasion someone (bizarrely) threw a muffin at me – probably because I dared to face forward and not give them attention when they catcalled me.

Fast forward two decades and sadly, not much has changed.

Girls are still being sexualised when wearing their school uniforms, despite the fact any person with a brain knows that the presence of this uniform means they are children.

Fed up of witnessing what they say is the “sexualisation of children through the inappropriate use of school uniform”, a group of teen girls are now petitioning to get school uniforms banned completely from porn.

The students in years 9 to 11, from The Cooper School in Bicester, have penned an open letter to the prime minister Andy Burnham asking him to support their cause.

One 15-year-old pupil, Rose, spoke of how her behaviour has changed due to the sexualisation of uniform and she no longer wears school skirts. Meanwhile Aylin, who is also 15, pointed out that a school uniform is “deeply symbolic of what it means to be a child”.

“If you’re sexualising school uniform, you’re sexualising a child,” she added.

Their teacher, Kristan O’Flynn, deputy head of Sixth........

© HuffPost