Do you allow your pre-teen daughters to wear T-shirts with suggestive messages? Well, plenty of parents do. Just stroll through any clothing store catering to the younger set, and you will find "Hottie" and "Sexy" on shirts too small to fit anyone older than 12. Bare midriffs are marketed to girls as young as 7 and 8. I don't have daughters; I have sons. But I hate for them to be living in such a coarse society.

The Washington Post recently ran a story about how schools are
handling the issue at all grade levels (yes, these kids apparently walk out
the door dressed like this). A 14- or 15-year-old girl stared happily into
the camera wearing a T-shirt that read, "Behind every great girl is a guy
checking her out." Her companion's body-hugging T-shirt read, "Yes, but not
with u."

Most middle and high schools have dress codes that forbid
plunging necklines, bare bellies, droopy drawers, and T-shirts glorifying
drugs and alcohol. But the suggestive T-shirt, according to the Post report,
is less clear-cut, falling into "a gray area that requires officials to
evaluate one shirt at a time." And apparently, this can be challenging.
"Administrators said evaluating the shirts can be awkward because the words
are usually printed right over a student's chest. Sometimes students stride
quickly past or take other evasive maneuvers to conceal a questionable
T-shirt."

Perhaps there's something I'm missing here, but why must the
assistant principal catch the kids on the fly in the hall? What are the
classroom teachers doing?

"For teenagers who chafe at clothing rules for midriffs and
cleavage," the Post explains, "'attitude' shirts offer a chance to show some
skin, without showing skin."

Great. Let's hear it for women's liberation. Our 13-year-olds
are free to look and act like sluts.

The tentativeness of the adults in this narrative is just
amazing. These suggestive messages are in a "gray area." They must be
evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Really? Here are some of the examples
offered in the Post story: "Two boys for every girl," "Pimps," "Got (slang
expression for breasts)?" "Flirting my way to the top," "I am too hot to
handle" and "I know what boys want."

In some instances, school officials demanded that the shirts be
turned inside out or exchanged for a school T-shirt. But not in every case.
Amazing. Of course, there are occasions, explained Fairfax County, Va.,
community relations coordinator Paul Regnier, when principals phone a kid's
parents about an offensive shirt only to be told that the parents saw no
problem.

It isn't that the adults here have no standards. Are we in any
doubt about what would happen to a kid who wore a T-shirt that said "Girls
can't do math"? It's not that these people are impossible to offend, it's
that the wrong things offend them.

Earlier this month, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued
a decision upholding the First Amendment rights of a teenager who had worn a
"Chicken Hawk in Chief" T-shirt to a Burlington, Vt., middle school. The
shirt also implied that George W. Bush was an alcoholic and drug abuser.
School officials -- this was Vermont, after all -- instructed the boy to
tape over the drug and alcohol images, turn it inside out or cease wearing
the shirt. The boy -- this is America, after all -- sued, with the help of
the American Civil Liberties Union. The Appeals Court held that the school
went too far. So now teachers and administrators -- at least in the 2nd
Circuit -- will be even less likely to invoke their authority to discipline
the messages emblazoned on immature chests.

I know, I know. If parents were doing their jobs, none of this
would be a problem. The trashy clothes would hang unsold on the racks, or
failing that, would be stopped at the front door before junior or little
miss left the house. But parents are abdicating massively. So the only hope
is that courts and schools will reassert standards. They can do it in the
name of educational environment; they can do it in the name of feminism if
that makes them feel better -- but these kids desperately need higher
standards of comportment.

To find out more about Mona Charen, and read features by other
Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web
page at www.creators.com.

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