Love it.  If only Catholic schools would enforce such rules at their proms….

At proms? Heck, Catholic schools should try enforcing a modest dress code with their uniforms! The teeny tiny skirts that are allowed at Catholic schools are a disgrace.

As I recall from my 12 years of Catholic girls’ uniforms, that “teeny tiny” effect was attained by rolling the waistband of the skirt before and after school hours.  There was indeed then, and also only a few years ago when my daughters were in Catholic school, a very strict skirt length code which was enforced during school hours. 

Unfortunately, I recall a rather well-known Catholic blogging mom posting a picture of her then middle school aged daughter in a very short, very tight dress (the girl was rather plump, an unfortunate fact which, besides the modesty issues, precluded her from that sort of dress) and another even more well known Catholic mom blogger of older girls applauding the girl on her “modest” dress.  One of those “huh???” moments, that.  I suppose if it’s not a g-string and pasties, it’s modest for some folks. 

If only those girls and their mothers would realized how unsophisticated those kinds of dresses are.  They scream a decidedly suburban lack of taste and style, and then there’s all that pudgy flesh oozing out the edges.

Like the reporter in the locker room when asked if she felt her pants were to tight,“well they fit”. What happened to leave some for the imagination? Society says pay more for more skin and less material. Parents need a little more parenting and a little less let the kids raise themselves.

Life is… Too $hort!

Heidi Klum says that you get to pick boobs or legs, but you can’t showcase both. Those dresses show why.Those poor girls looked like they were wearing bright-colored rubberbands around their middles.

Two other usually immodest findings when I taught at Catholic schools:

1) Cheerleader/dance team uniforms
2) Popular volleyball shorts, those short and skin tight things.

When I taught high school I often chaperoned homecomings and proms. My husband accompanied me, and we’d make a special night of it with another couple, my co-worker and her husband. By the mid-90’s, my husband and the other adult man would escort us to the dance, and excuse themselves to chat outside or anywhere but near the underage girls dressed provocatively, inappropriately, and downright scandalously. They wanted no part of that, and I’d be willing to bet that in the 15 years since then, the state of undress has declined even more. Even if the school’s position is to protect the male adults in the group, it’s a beginning.

I think maybe the mothers are the culprit here.  In another article I read, it said that the guys bought the tickets so many girls didn’t know the guide lines, but I bet any money that these girls bought these dresses with their mother’s approval.  Some of these mothers “want the girls to be in fashion” and some just can be bought with the “everyone dresses like this” and don’t have a backbone to say “no”.

And where were the fathers in all of this?  My husband would not even let my daughter go to church in the 80’s in a sleeveless sundress, and her prom dress had ruffly sleeves, and not strapless either.  She also went to a public high school.

And the Catholic schools should begin making the girls wear longer skirts.  The pictures of these girls in our diocesan paper still show short skirts in pictures they run in the paper.

Sadly, looking at the photo, the dresses ARE tame by current standards- they cover the legs to mid-thigh and some even have straps or small sleeves! Clearly, though, to anyone with a sense of it, they are not modest. I think the uncovering of shoulders, tops of the arms and cleavage is significant. Even the dresses you show at the top of the article have nothing to cover this area, although they all have long skirts. I don’t think they are good examples of modest dress if that is what they are intended to show- the biggest problem is the lack of sleeve/top area. Sadly, I frequently see young and older ladies dressed in outfits which reveal even more flesh than these young ladies featured- bare midriff, “skirts” which barely, if at all (!) cover the buttocks, and see-through tops which are already low cut. It makes me sad- they must have such little self-respect. Thanks for highlighting this big, current problem.

Excellent! It is about time that we stop the continuing degradation of our young women. I am thrilled as that the school did the right thing. If parents can’t recognize that their daughters are dressing like street trash then the school must. I am sick of the constant disrespect toward young women, we must teach them they are worth more and deserve respect.

They look like tube tops with ballet tutus.  What happened to beauty?  Are beautiful prom dresses, full length evening gowns, even offered for sale to young ladies anymore?

I agree with what you’re all saying; I, too, believe in modesty. You can’t enforce it all the time - for instance, girls are going to roll the waistbands of their school kilts up after hours when nobody’s looking - and that’s part of teenage rebellion. What’s important is that they keep hearing the message from adults they respect and follow (even if they don’t act like they do) like parents and teachers, who enforce standards when they can. When I was a teenager, I rebelled against my mother’s rules: I rolled my skirt, and sneaked forbidden bikinis to beach vacations. By college, though, when I would have been in real danger away from home, I had shifted back to modesty and grew to embrace it more and more as time went on. Remember that lessons are for the long term. Teenagers will fight you in the moment because they’re oppositional, and that’s developmentally normal. What we’re all hoping to see is values come full circle when their hormones settle down and they become adults.

Fiona, I don’t mean to be rude, but I found your comment about a friend’s daughter being too plump to be sad. You undercut your own argument. Catholics don’t need to be guilty of the objectification of women, first of all. Secondly, you made it sound as if the sin were really that she didn’t look “fashionably” good (and yes, thin vs. plump bodies as they pertain to the way clothing falls on them is a fashion issue) in her too-tight dress, which is a contradiction of the ideas of modesty. The idea of modesty is not that we protect “beautiful” bodies from being seen because they’re so precious, and “unattractive” bodies from being seen because they offend our aesthetics. The idea is that EVERY body is precious, beautiful, and private and therefore we protect its privacy.

The purple and pink ones isn’t too bad.  IF it was floor length.  A simple shawl or jacket to wear over it would look very nice with it.

For eighth grade graduation, there was one student who wore spaghetti straps and she almost wasn’t allowed to participate at the ceremony that night.

Of course my prom gown, I was completely covered from the neck down to my ankle, long sleeves.  Do you know how difficult it is to disco dance in a full length gown?

When it came for our graduation, we had to have at least our shoulders covered (must to the protest to most of us), but the nuns put their foot down with a vengeance.  And this was in 1980.

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Modesty is not just how one dresses.  Modesty is also a sign of worship unto the Heavenly Father.  The most important thing for a person is to come into a personal relationship with Jesus.  Being a Catholic or a Protestant is not the issue.  The real issue is if one has been born again and lives a life that pleases Jesus Christ.  I was raised a Catholic, but none of what was taught never meant anything.  It was when I came to the place of knowing that I had lived my life without God that Jesus Christ, in His mercy gave me a new life.  I was born again.  When I began to live as one person put it, “Living for the audience of ONE,” then everything in my life changed.  You might say, Jesus changed me from the inside out.” When I look back at my life as a sinner, I know what the Bible means when it says, “While I was a sinner, Jesus died for me.”  He loved me evn in every immodest way that I had been living.  And I say that as a sinner there was not one of God’s commandments that I did not break.  I knew at a young age that if I died I would go to hell.  Then one day, because of God’s tender mery, Jesus saved me.  At one time I had a fear of death.  Now the fear of death is gone.
I have said all this to express one important message.  Catholics and Protestants alike, can teach all their rules and regulations, but if they are not teaching about the Kingdom of God and the meaning of being born again and true repentance, their teaching is in vain.

I know that it isn’t easy to stick to good morals, but I applaud the school administration for doing so. In the high school that my 17 year old daughter goes to, they have been sending girls home for wearing cloths that are not appropriate. The hardest part about this is the parents that instead of being embarrassed by how their young lady was dress is defending her (properly because they bought it) instead of taking an opportunity to teach why this is important and the signals they are sending to everyone else. I guess some parents miss the face that short shirts and low cut shirts are just saying “I’m easy”. Do they want their daughters to be thought of that way or even worst treated that way?
Just a thought.

we are catholic at at our parish all the girls,little,preteen and teen all wear the traditional white poofy,knee length baptism dress with a bonnet,lace socks or tights and white mary janes.Many of the older teen girls in the 15 to 17 year old range push the tradition and wear their baptism dresses almost to mid thigh length and even tho they look cute,the short dresses are immodest and when the girls bend over to get the water on their heads,their dresses go up in back and cloth diaper and plastic pants can be seen either plain under the dress or showing thru their white tights.i feel it is very in appropriate for their diaper and plastic pants to be seen and the teen boys gawk at them and i can only imagine what they are thinking!I just cant beleive the 15 to 17 year old girls would want every one to see their diaper and plastic pants under their dresses!