I was shocked to discover that girls aren't allowed to bring purses into their classrooms in the middle school our daughter attends. How stupid. This is the time when girls are first getting their periods and suffering from all the anxiety that it brings in our culture where menstruation is the blood that keeps misogyny alive.
Maybe it's not part of a plot to further ridicule young women, or even a plan to bail out financially failing schools by forcing females to pay for pads and tampons in those restroom vending machines; the official excuse is that for safety reasons, purses, like backpacks, are forbidden from classrooms. This may sound sane to some of you (the sorts of folks who would argue with Cevin Soling's The War On Kids). But it ignores basic biology. And such discrimination fosters all those fears and discomforts which lead to men who can neither purchase pads nor push a cart with tampons in it.
You might be surprised to discover that your school system has just such a stupid policy. If so, I urge you to contact your schools and point out the errors of their so-called pragmatic thinking.
Some schools do not prohibit young ladies from carrying purses, just regulate purse size. If so, consider coordinating a Small Purse Drive for schools serving low income students as Mocha Momma is doing. If you do so, please feel free to leave your link &/or information in the comments section so that others can donate their small purses for students in need. As incentive, I offer Mocha Momma's account of what is happening as those donated purses come in.
2 comments:
Schools seem to be cracking up. My nephew isn't allowed to wear hoodies to school. He won't wear a hat on a cold day but at least he used to have the option of pulling up his hood when he wore one of his sweatshirts with a hood. I don't know what the problem is with the kids wearing hoods. They say it is hiding their faces. But, does that mean they can't wear any hats, hoods or balaclavas all winter?
The purse thing is silly too. Why can't they bring purses and backpacks to school? How do they carry their lunch, in their teeth, when they have their arms full of books and pens?
Girls should be able to carry a maxi pad in their pockets. They have made them pretty small now. But, I still agree, a purse is much better. You don't have to worry about your pad falling out of your pocket that way.
How absolutely silly! I agree with you that this is the age when young girls feel so vulnerable. This is worse than my kids no chapstick in classroom policy. What is she supposed to do go to the office everytime her lips are dry!
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