This 16-year-old girl got in trouble at school because her outfit was ‘distracting’ male teachers

Kate Wilson, a 16-year-old student at Honesdale High School in Pennsylvania, was reprimanded by school administrators on Monday and told to change her outfit because her leggings were reportedly making teachers feel "uncomfortable." She wrote about this experience on Facebook, and her post received over 2,100 likes and 3,200 shares at the time of this article.

In the photos that Wilson attached to the Facebook post, she can be seen wearing a baggy long-sleeve collared shirt that goes past her hips, a pair of black leggings, and sneakers — "not something I would call the epitome of promiscuity," she wrote on Facebook.

Wilson told babe she was pulled out of her first period class and called down to the vice principal's office

She said the school's vice principal reprimanded her for violating the dress code and told her to change her pants. Wilson told babe that she was taken aback by the dress code violation.

"This outfit was something I'd worn before and I'd seen many girls in my school wear," she told us. "I also knew that in my old school, in the same district, leggings were permitted if the shirt you were wearing covered your butt."

Surprised, Wilson said she asked her vice principal why her clothes were considered inappropriate.

"I was told that my pants were making the teachers uncomfortable and my vice principal made a point of how distracting it was to see me walk up stairs," she told us. "He used a hand motion to convey this, as he obviously couldn't find a nice way of saying, 'Our teachers are staring at your ass.' He motioned as if he were grabbing an ass, which only heightened my own discomfort."

According to Wilson, she responded to her vice principal by saying that it was inappropriate for her adult teachers to be looking at her in that way. She then called her mother, who lives 40 minutes away from school, and asked her to bring a different pair of pants to school. However, Wilson said she felt so upset — "I was crying and felt ill at the comments that were made" — that she ended up leaving school early to go home with her mom instead.

We've emailed and called the school requesting comment, but have yet to hear back.

Wilson said that she's speaking out about the dress code because it perpetuates rape culture and institutionalized sexism

According to Wilson, her entire day at school was disrupted. She missed the end of her first period class, and estimates that even if her mother had simply dropped off the pants, she still would have missed four entire periods of her day.

Fortunately, Wilson said that she is receiving support from her friends, family, as well as the other students at Honesdale High School. "Our entire student body agrees that we have an antiquated dress code and it's fairly sexist," she told us.

Wilson said that dress code infractions happen "constantly" for female students at her school. Once, she said a female student told her that she was pulled out of class and told by the vice president that leggings were not right for her body type and that he would "rather see her wearing a skirt.

"I am sick of schools and other settings perpetuating rape culture and institutionalized sexism through the protection of men in power, and the degradation of victims," Wilson told us. "By telling the victim of a potential assault that she is the problem, you are perpetuating the notion that the female body is a thing for men to use, and therefore, you are perpetuating rape culture."

We will update this story as more information becomes available

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