The Bizarre Decision of Banning Ponytails in Japanese Schools
Schools in Japan has banned girl students from tying ponytails claiming that seeing the naked nape of their necks will sexually entice male students. How absurd and bizarre can this be.
Japanese Schools are famous for their strict and bizarre rules for the kids, especially the female students. From the length of the socks to the color of their hair and underwear, the schools dictate the lives of the students. Now they have banned girl students from tying up their hair in a ponytail inside the school claiming that girls showing the nape of their neck will sexually entice the male students.
As bizarre as this decision is, Japanese schools have also put on the rule that students should only wear white undergarments. This is also in the notion that coloured or more fancy undergarments would be a distraction to other students. And most of the schools in Japan already have accepted this practice and have added ‘only white undergarments’ in their school’s dress code. It is not even a rule that says ‘undergarments should not be visible’ but that it should only be white. And with this rule in practice, the schools are giving the teachers the authority to check the color of the students’ undergarments. Which is an even more scary situation.
There could be many reasons why a school would try to enforce certain rules on their students. However, in this situation instead of teaching the right way to treat girls and correcting the boys’ mindset, they are putting restrictions on the girls. This is something that is happening all around the world. In order to stop the man from getting ‘enticed’ covering up a girl’s face, neck, legs, any other body part…
But why is it the girl’s fault if the men are so easily getting ‘enticed’?
Shouldn’t we be changing this way of thinking instead of trying to restrict and cover up a girl? This kind of way of thinking is dangerous. This leads to the point where people blame women for getting raped. They blame that she was wearing some particular outfit that showed too much skin. She was ‘asking for it’ – they say.
What one wears and how they present themselves should be one’s own choice. Schools can put forward certain rules for modest clothing but going forward as much as to ban ponytails and banning hijab etc is just going too far. Schools should be places that teach personal freedom and encourage people to be looking at each other with respect despite in whatever way they are dressed. But they are clearly failing to teach that by all this banning.
– Staff Reporter
