This is a wonderful campaign by Rose, Mae, Aylin and Willow to ban the use of school uniform in pornography (We’re teenage girls fighting to ban the use of school uniform in porn. Why have you left it up to us?, 23 October).
Perhaps it could be followed by another to ban school uniforms altogether. The reasons for having them are specious and outdated. There is an idea that it makes class differences invisible. As someone who wore a visibly secondhand and well-worn uniform at school and was the butt of much teasing, I know it does no such thing.
There is another idea that they are worn as a badge of honour and indicate pride in being part of a community. On the contrary, some children have to wear home clothes on the way to and from school to avoid being bullied on the bus or the street because of their uniform.
Most schools in Europe do not make uniform a part of school life – they should be banned. This would also undermine the pornography industry’s fixation with school uniforms, thus killing two birds with one stone.
Susanna Dammann
London
Well done to Rose, Mae, Aylin and Willow for their wonderfully written opinion piece and campaign. As a not-so-little feminist and former schoolgirl decades ago, it struck me how we just took it for granted that we would be catcalled in our uniforms. Sunday afternoons enjoying St Trinian’s films on television reinforced this, and it was only Britney Spears’s video for …Baby One More Time that brought me up short and I thought: “Hold on, why are we sexualising school uniforms and schoolgirls?” And well done to the Guardian for allowing the students the platform to share their impressive campaign.
Amanda Rae
Ilkley, West Yorkshire
I was – I now understand – groomed at school from the age of 11, and the relationship with my teacher became sexual when I was 15. After I left school, he asked me to wear the top half of my school uniform while we had sex. I will never, ever get the picture of myself like that, in the mirror at the end of his bed, out of my mind.
I couldn’t applaud Rose, Mae, Willow and Aylin’s campaign more, and they are right when they say that adults should be taking care of this. I admire their realisation that this is not how things should be. If I had been as aware as they are, my life would have turned out very differently.
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