School board trustee Darrell Furgason invited Chilliwack parents to share their views on dress codes. I’m a Chilliwack parent. I agree with a non-sexist dress code. I note Mr. Furgason likes to frequently mention bras and cleavage to whoever will listen to his pontifications. He did it again in his diatribe in the local paper. Frankly, I’m concerned about him.
I spent a significant number of years coaching female and male athletes. Many of my students were provincial champions and I even had national champions prior to joining the public service. My athletes ranged in age from five to 55 and 95 per cent were girls or women.
The sport was figure skating and, as you can guess, the athletes wore very little clothing. Sometimes they even had “wardrobe malfunctions.”
I can tell you though, as a professional with solid values and ethics, I wasn’t worried about (or even talking about) their “cleavage or bras.” I do believe that is the type of talk that would get one banned from working with youth (and rightly so I might add).
So get on with it, board members. Let the committee study a non-biased dress code that allows boys and girls to dress in clothes that give them confidence in who they are as individuals, not in the clothes that old prudish people think are “proper” or “modest.”
Luckily there are fewer and fewer of these dinosaurs in positions of power but, until they are all gone, I will continue to be a voice for reason over rhetoric.
Peter Lang