Father outraged after kindergarten daughter reportedly told to cover-up summer dress
HOUSTON, Texas — A 5-year-old girl in Houston was told to cover up because her outfit violated her public school’s dress code.
In a blog post for the Houston Press, the girl’s father Jef Rouner wrote that he picked up his daughter from school one day to find her wearing a t-shirt over her spaghetti-strapped rainbow dress and jeans underneath it.
“I’m not surprised to see the dress code shaming come into my house. I have after all been sadly waiting for it since the ultrasound tech said, ‘It’s a girl.’ I didn’t think, though that it would make an appearance when she was five years old,” he said.
Rouner checked out the school’s dress code rules and was frustrated to discover its lack of male-specific guidelines.
“I mean prohibitions against exposing the chest or torso could hypothetically apply to boys except that they don’t. Not really. They don’t sell boys clothes that do that,” he said.
He was especially angered that his daughter was forced to wear jeans under her full-length dress:
“You know what really grills my cheese about it? It’s not even the shirt they made her put on over her top, it’s the pants they made her wear underneath. It’s a full-length dress that she has to hold up to keep from getting wet in uncut grass. She even had a small set of shorts underneath because it was gym day. But because the top part of her dress apparently exposed the immoral sinfulness of her bare shoulders she also had to pull on jeans even though her legs remained completely covered as part of her punishment.”
According to the Huffington Post, Rouner plans to discuss the school’s decision to ban his daughter’s dress at an upcoming parent conference.