Oct 7, 2014 3 min read

“Clothes make the man,” is a statement variously attributed to, among others, Homer (not Simpson), William Shakespeare and Moses (Libowitz, my tailor). In its original form, the statement conveys the idea how a man dresses plays a large role in how people perceive him. But as rewritten for the 21st century by some school administrators, the phrase now apparently should be, “Clothes make the man lascivious.”

The latest example of this train of thought comes from North Dakota, where the assistant principal at the aptly named Devil’s Lake High School banned female students from wearing leggings, super-tight skinny jeans called “jeggings” and yoga pants. The rule was put into place, the principal said, because such attire is too distracting to not only male students, but also to male teachers. Make no mistake about it: I’m in favor of school dress codes, even school dress codes gone wrong. Given no guidelines, some kids would no doubt show up wearing Saran Wrap with strategically placed bits of Reynolds Wrap.

My personal memory of a dress code that now seems silly involves my junior high school’s ban on the wearing of nylons with tennis shoes, as if dress shoes somehow canceled out the irresistible, lust-causing sight of a 15-year-old girl’s ankle. The same administrators apparently thought that a glimpse of a cheerleader’s color-coordinated panties under her mid-thigh-length pleated skirt as it rose to her waist during a spin inspired in boys only the irresistible desire to score more points on the gridiron or basketball court. Short-sighted, indeed.

But no matter how you look at it, the action at Devil’s Lake (and in many other school districts across America), fails in one key way: it places responsibility – and blame – on females only.

To illustrate the point behind the legwear ban, the Devil’s Lake administrator screened two clips from the film “Pretty Woman,” in which Julia Roberts, portraying a prostitute, wears tight-fitting legwear. It’s a theorem for the modern age:

Prostitutes wear tight-fitting legwear.

Your daughter wears tight-fitting legwear.

Your daughter is a prostitute.

Pity the poor male Homo sapiens: discoverer of fire and conqueror of land, sea and air, still he cannot control himself when confronted with the sight of a female of the species wearing tight or revealing clothing.

Here’s another old saying: What a load of crap.

Thinking such as this has its origins in the belief that Adam was doing just fine until Eve force-fed him the apple. It’s the same kind of flawed reasoning that says a woman who is raped while wearing a short skirt “asked for it,” or that a woman abused by her male partner must have done something to provoke him. Worse, it’s the kind of skewed reasoning that allows men to avoid taking responsibility for their own actions by neatly shifting the blame to someone society is more comfortable condemning.

“She made me do it.” Falls trippingly on the tongue, does it not?

Adam thought so.