Teen Shamed for Her Outfit Has the Last Laugh

After a student was sent home from school for a dress code violation, her response to administrators is going viral online.

A teenager in Lawton, Okla., who goes by the name Rose Lynn on Facebook, was sent home from school earlier this month because school officials deemed her outfit inappropriate, she says. Rose wore black leggings, a T-shirt and long cardigan, and boots (pictured above, far left), and she says her outfit was singled out because of her body type. “Today I was sent home from class, after being in school for two hours, for my outfit,” Rose wrote in a Facebook post. “Because I’m developed [more] than the average girl my age, I am required to go home and change. Yet, if I was skin and bones or overweight (not to offend anyone) I would be overlooked and no comment would be made (at my particular school) because ‘they must do that to feel better about themselves and they crave attention.’ But because I look like a curvy woman and may distract young boys, I have to miss class and change my outfit.”

STORY: School Shames Girls Who Break Dress Code

Her photo, which was posted on Dec. 11 and has gotten more than 15,600 likes and 15,000 shares, accuses the school (which she does not name specifically but is part of the Lawton Public Schools) of sexism, and features the T-shirt Rose was wearing when she eventually returned to school. Quoting the school officials who sent her home, the front of the T-shirt says, “It doesn’t cover your crotch” and the back says, “You’ll distract the boys.” In her photo caption, Rose takes a stand against the school administration: “Once again, society has failed to advocate [for] young ladies, by confining them in a box, where they are stripped from their sense of self-respect and self-expression, rather than teaching young men to respect the boundaries of young ladies. My response: #‎Feminism #‎YoullDistractTheBoys #‎SocietyIsFailing.”

Yahoo Parenting was unable to reach the Lawton Public Schools for comment.

In an update in the photo comments, Rose says that when she was originally sent home, she asked if she could first take her algebra test, which would have taken 20 minutes, but her request was denied. “I was shut down, and had to miss the test to go change,” she writes.

STORY: School Forces 8-Year-Old With ‘Black Girls Rock’ Shirt to Change

So Rose returned to school in the featured homemade T-shirt, which she says she wore in “silent protest.” The new shirt adhered to all dress code rules, she says. “I was completely covered crotch, butt, cleavage, etc. (even though the only problem was the crotch). I was sent out of class and talked to by 2 principals and 3 teachers in the middle of the hallway, in front of other staff and pupils. (Which [by the way], another student with a similar outfit, crotch showing, walked by and I was informed that she could wear it because they weren’t concerned about her,)” she writes. “They were upset because I was ‘mocking them’ and they didn’t appreciate it.”

Though her outfit did adhere to dress code regulations, Rose says she got sent home a second time — this time for not wearing her student I.D, which she says was in the classroom that she had been called out of.

Rose says she has since adhered to the outfit standards — wearing leggings only with oversize T-shirts — but maintains that another student with a similar outfit and less developed body would have experienced a different reaction from the school. In the comments of her Facebook post, her father, Lance Miles, makes the same claim. “If she was built like a board or as round as a ball she wouldn’t have been sent home but [since] she has a figure she was told she had to change,” he says. “This is 100% on [Lawton Public Schools] because they have left the rule up to interpretation. She has been taught that if you believe in something, do what you must and be prepared for the consequences. She has done that.”

(Top photo: Facebook/Rose Lynn)

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