Aug 6, 2017 4 min read

I was thinking of changing the mug shot that accompanies this column to something a little more interesting. My first instinct was to go with the picture I originally wanted when I started writing here in 1989. That is, a high-angle view of me passed out over a typewriter, an empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s lying just beyond my outstretched right arm. For some reason, the publishers rejected that idea.

So I decided last week to revert to the 1960s high-school yearbook device of turning my back to the camera while looking over my bare shoulders, gazing wistfully into space as if envisioning all the wonderful things that were going to happen after I got thrown out of college.

But then I read the sad tale of Grace Goble, and I thought better of it.

Goble, a rising senior at Maine South High School, near Chicago, had her senior yearbook portrait nixed because in it, she was wearing an off-the-shoulder yellow sweater. The photo studio that took the picture in June later emailed Goble to say her attire “was not allowed” and she’d have to redo the photo.

Puzzled, Goble emailed administrators to protest and also filed a petition with Change.org seeking to have the school’s dress code changed. “I have spent a good majority of my life wondering why exactly women’s shoulders are so offensive,” Goble, 17, wrote. The petition received more than 2,000 signatures in a matter of hours.

Maine’s school dress code outlines appropriate attire, including a stipulation students must wear “opaque clothing that covers them from shoulder to approximately mid-thigh.” However, Maine Principal Ben Collins called Goble to assure her school administrators had not banned the photo and a retake would not be necessary. A decision that is clearly head and shoulders above the photo studio’s.

I understand the need for dress codes not only in schools, but in places of business or anywhere that a sense of professionalism and decorum should be maintained. Problem is, clothing styles, and the definition of decorum, change frequently.

As anyone who attended public schools in the ’50s and ’60s should remember, dress codes of that era seemed to have been based on administrators’ cursory reading of “The Scarlett Letter.” Although bare female legs could give rise to male fantasies, girls were not permitted to wear pants. Because … well, just because. Girls could wear a cantilevered bra, but they were not permitted to wear a blouse or dress through which the bra could be seen. Too provocative, despite the fact imagination is perhaps the most powerful aphrodisiac. Curiously, it was common practice in that era to allow female students to have their yearbook pictures taken while wearing a “drape” that exposed their bare shoulders. Somewhere in the ensuing 50 years, bare female shoulders apparently became taboo in yearbooks – unless you were Wonder Woman graduating from Paradise Island High.

In her petition, Goble wrote: “It is ridiculous that young women aren’t allowed to wear the clothing that they wish to wear simply because it could possibly distract someone. Shaming women for wearing the things that make them feel comfortable and happy in their bodies is horribly sexist, and leads many girls to grow up believing that if another individual cannot control their actions around women, that the woman was at fault.”

She’s right. Once again, women are forced to shoulder the blame for MIESC – Male Inability to Exercise Self-Control.

Look, any male over the age of 10 who can be distracted by the sight of bare female shoulders apparently has recently escaped from a religious cult bunker or has never seen reruns of “Hee Haw.” Distracted? Put that horse back in the barn, cowboy!

But I’ll take no chances. No bare shoulders for me.

I don’t want to distract women from their Cheerios.