Save the miniskirt!

What is it about men and miniskirts? A few months ago, I read with horror – but sadly not surprise – about a school that was considering banning girls from wearing skirts. Apparently, residents in Whitstable, Kent, were so alarmed at the ‘inappropriate skirt lengths’ spotted around town they had complained to the local school. Headteacher Alex Holmes (you guessed it – a man) immediately dashed off a letter informing parents that all pupils could be forced to wear trousers as part of a new ‘gender neutral uniform’ in response.

I’m sorry, what? Are we talking about a pretty seaside town in Kent or downtown Tehran? I thought the days of men lining girls up in a row to measure their hemlines were over. Clearly not. That letter sent a grim message to teenage girls. It told them that wearing short skirts is morally corrupt, sexually deviant and dangerous. How depressing.

It got me thinking about my hemlines over the years. Back at school, me and my mates would try to outbid each other when it came to who had the miniest miniskirt. I went to a comprehensive in London in the nineties, so didn’t have to wear uniform. Instead, every weekend we would scour the clothes rails at Topshop picking out the latest thigh-slimming numbers. We all wanted to look like Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Friends series 1/2 (think black mini, white top and knee-high boots). If I’m honest, I still want to look like this.

Looking back at photos of those years, I made some terrible fashion mistakes. I’m not sure the Adidas 3-stripe shell suit partnered with a beret was ever a good idea. But those skirts are not one of them. The miniskirt is a symbol of women’s liberation – not sexual servitude. Invented by British designer Mary Quant in the 1960s so women could ‘run and dance’, they were short on the hemline and big on fun. And they soon went global.

In Iran, women slipped into their miniskirts, cut their hair off into bobs, and went to university to study to be scientists, academics and engineers. But if a woman in Iran wore a miniskirt in public today she would be arrested and brutally punished. Those who bravely defy the morality police and refuse to wear a hijab and show their hair in public are lashed. Or, worse still, have their eyes gouged out. It is a double punishment. A cruel act of violence that leaves women unable to see – and robs them of their looks.

It is also a salutary lesson for us all. Women fought hard for the right to wear what they want. And these rights can be lost too. Our schools should be teaching teenage girls to be proud of their looks and confident to wear what they want. No man should be getting his tape measure out to check a girl’s hemline. Even if he is a headteacher.