Nipples: everyone has them, so why discriminate? There’s no reason why women should hide what men can flaunt, and even less reason why one high school student had to bandage hers.
Above photo courtesy of Maria Eklind
By Emily Wunderlich
My former high school made national headlines this week when the administration asked a student to put Band-Aids over her nipples because she wasn’t wearing a bra.
Lizzy Martinez, 17, chose comfort over conformity when she decided not to wear a bra under a long-sleeve Calvin Klein T-shirt March 2.
That was when Violeta Velazquez, a dean at Braden River High School, called Martinez into her office to address the “distraction.”
At first, Velazquez asked Martinez to put on a shirt under her long-sleeve shirt to “constrict” Martinez’s breasts, according to the Bradenton Herald.
When the second shirt wasn’t enough, Martinez was referred to the nurse’s office, where she was given four bandages — two for each nipple.
Humiliating dress code enforcement is nothing new for Manatee County.
On the night of my senior homecoming, I was almost barred from entry because one of the assistant principals thought my dress was too short. Even though I had tried the dress on three times to make sure it met minimum length requirements, she still pulled me from the line and made me do the old hands-to-your-sides test as my classmates looked on.
That same night, a student with special needs was turned away for not wearing a tie.
I’ve seen girls get dress coded for wearing ripped jeans, even when the rips were patched up. My best friend missed class because a rip above the knee was considered too distracting to her peers.
But this isn’t about how selectively the dress code is enforced, or even about the arbitrary nature of it.
This is about a deeper, societal fear of women taking ownership of their bodies.
It is 2018. We should not be telling women they have to wear bras. There is no scientific evidence to support the claim that bras are good for women’s health. In fact, a study done at the University of Franche-Comte suggests that wearing a bra actually weakens the muscles in the chest.
Nothing about a woman’s nipples should be considered distracting. The nipple’s appearance is the same for men and women. The only difference is that one is hypersexualized and the other is normalized.
School administrators don’t lose their shit when a man’s nipples get hard, so why should it be different for a woman?
One could argue that the issue lies not with the female nipple, but what is attached to it.
Even still, that argument has no logical foundation. If a woman’s breasts are showing, the nipples get censored, even though they are exactly the same for both sexes.
Instagram’s community guidelines provide a perfect example of the double standard. While the photo-sharing site prohibits sharing “sexual intercourse, genitals and close-ups of fully-nude buttocks,” it also “includes some photos of the female nipples,” but there is no mention of censoring male nipples.
There is nothing inherently sexual about a woman’s breasts. People are quick to get offended when they see a woman breastfeeding her child in public but won’t bat an eye at the borderline-pornographic advertisements that run rampant in today’s media.
When the media has more control over the perception of women in society than women themselves, it contributes to our society’s tendency to objectify women and view them as sexual beings rather than human beings.
These perceptions lead to the public humiliation of high school girls being forced to bandage their nipples — the symptom of a larger cultural problem that we need to stop ignoring.
The bottom line is, if you tell female students to cover their nipples, you need to do the same for males.
Beautifully written. I could not agree more.
Amazingly written and thought out! Wish I could like it multiple times