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2026-10-12 17:41:31 - Paul D. Foy -
SchoolIssues

I came across the other day, on the news, a young lady, a school pupil, who was rather distressed about the fact that there were depictions (of young ladies, predominantly, no doubt, although I'm sure there are boys, young people) in their content being sexualized in pornography and things like that. She was rather upset by this: it cast her in a very bad light and could lead to people regarding her inappropriately or even doing things to her inappropriately. I'd like to reassure the young lady that I don't really think you should worry about these things too much. It's all part of becoming an adult. There are lots of associations of sexual things with all sorts of adult activities and all sorts of activities. There are sexual depictions of police ladies, prison ladies, nurses, doctors, dentists, and administrators. All these types of people are associated with sexual things and put in a sexual light. It's just part of the role play of life and the relations, in some senses and in some ways, between men and women. I'm sure women do this to men equally, to rugby players and athletes and this kind of thing, and I don't think it's too important really. Society's got to instruct people to actually behave well towards people, not be too concerned that they're getting sexual interest and sexual gratification even from viewing images of things. That's just part of sexual attraction in a way. On that front I wouldn't be worrying too much about it for the boisterous young lady. I'd like to make another point, I think: the association was with a school uniform and sexual activity. To tell the truth a school uniform is a rather modern development. When schooling first started people mixed up work (working in a mill or a factory) with going to school. They just went about both the work and the school period in the clothes that they naturally worked and lived in. I don't think there were special clothes put on for these activities. There might have been special clothes put on for dangerous and arduous things at work but even that, not very much. People just wore the clothes that they went about their daily lives in, and they represented perhaps the fashions at the time. To tell the truth many of the fashions, many older fashions, are simply things born out of necessity and need, and no particular fashion or adornment is connected to them at all. Young people traditionally just wore similar but smaller clothes, although that isn't certain either. They sometimes wore baggy clothes because it was expensive to make clothes and they wanted them to last a long time so that they could grow into them. They wore the same clothes as adults and they went about their same business in the clothes in their educational institutions, as they might work, and as adults might wear these similar clothes as well. There's no particular differentiation. In fact this association of clothes with need in the past is very strong. For example young boys would wear what looked like dresses as they were described in their breeching stage before they were ready for trousers. These dresses were for ease of access to the toilet and potty training and that kind of thing. They had nothing to do with the fact that they wanted to be made effeminate in any way. They were just natural clothes and the dresses were made long and baggy so that they wouldn't have to be replaced so much and so that money could be saved. In many of the pictures of French royalty and French nobility, it's very difficult to distinguish male from female because of this attire, this need for having to do concrete things with their clothing, and the clothing representing concrete things. If anything I'd regard the sexualisation of the uniform as a bit of a home goal, to tell the truth. I don't quite see (and that's my personal attitude) why you need a uniform. You don't need particular uniforms for doing most activities in schools. You just go about as you would outside or in a T-shirt, as far as I'm concerned.