Girls' School Dress Code

Girls' School Dress Code was a set of school regulations that governed girls’ clothing much more tightly than boys’ and made a gendered difference in what students could wear and do. At Kim Jiyoung’s middle school, the rules were especially strict after the school became coeducational: they prescribed not only skirt length and acceptable shoes, but also the layers girls had to wear beneath their uniforms. A student’s protest brought the rules’ practical consequences into view, though the written code itself remained unchanged.

Setting and Scope

Kim Jiyoung attended a small, run-down public middle school a fifteen-minute walk from home. It had been an all-girls’ school when Kim Eunyoung began attending; it became coeducational the year Kim Jiyoung entered. The change took place amid a broader shortage of school places for boys and a growing imbalance in the number of male and female students. The book notes that there were already about twice as many boys’ as girls’ classes in coeducational schools, and that nearby schools followed the same shift to coeducation within a few years.

According to Kim Eunyoung, the dress code became stricter when boys joined the school. Girls’ skirts had to cover their knees and be loose enough to conceal the contours of their hips and thighs. Because the summer blouse was thin and white, girls also had to wear a round-neck undershirt. Spaghetti straps, T-shirts, colored or lace undergarments, and wearing only a bra beneath the blouse were prohibited. The requirements extended to footwear and hosiery: in summer, girls wore tights with white socks; in winter, black tights without socks. Sheer black tights were not permitted, and girls had to wear dress shoes rather than sneakers. During winter, the combination left Kim Jiyoung’s feet so cold that she wanted to cry.

Unequal Rules for Girls and Boys

The code’s contrast with the rules for boys was apparent in daily school life. Boys’ trousers could not be too tight or too loose, but most other clothing choices were overlooked. They wore undershirts and T-shirts in white or sometimes gray or black, and could undo shirt buttons and wear only T-shirts during lunch or between classes. Their permitted footwear included dress shoes, sneakers, soccer cleats, and running shoes. Girls, by contrast, were required to observe more detailed restrictions on both clothing and shoes.

The difference was defended as a practical response to boys’ activity. A student discipline teacher explained that boys ran out between classes to play soccer, basketball, baseball, or malttukbakgi, and argued that they could not reasonably be expected to keep their shirts buttoned to the top and wear dress shoes. A female student challenged that reasoning: girls also wanted to play sports, she argued, but skirts, tights, and dress shoes made it uncomfortable. She recalled that in elementary school she had gone outside during breaks to play red rover, hopscotch, and skip rope. The exchange reveals a circular logic in the rules: girls were restricted in clothing that limited movement, while the resulting difficulty of playing sports was treated as a difference between boys and girls rather than as an effect of the restrictions.

Protest and Enforcement

The dispute became concrete when a female student was stopped at the school gate for wearing sneakers. She protested that boys were allowed to wear T-shirts and sneakers while girls were not. The school responded by punishing her for violating the dress code and talking back: she had to make laps around the field in a squat walk. The teacher told her to hold her skirt hem together to avoid exposing her underwear. She refused, explaining that she wanted the teacher to see for himself how uncomfortable the outfit was. He stopped her after one lap. Her protest therefore took the form of making the regulated clothing’s physical inconvenience visible, rather than merely arguing about the rule in the abstract.

The school’s response did not formally revise the code. At some point afterward, however, prefects and teachers began overlooking girls who wore T-shirts and sneakers. That informal tolerance eased enforcement without removing the written distinction between the permitted clothing for girls and boys. The episode thus records both a limited practical change and the rule’s persistence: the student’s challenge altered what staff sometimes allowed, but it did not produce an official change to the regulation.

Wider Significance

The dress code sits within a school culture in which differences between boys and girls were treated as ordinary arrangements. Elsewhere in Kim Jiyoung’s school experience, boys routinely went first in lines and presentations, while girls waited; these conventions could seem natural even to students who noticed other unfair practices. The clothing rules gave that broader pattern a material form. They regulated girls’ bodies and movement in greater detail, then invoked boys’ freedom of movement as the reason for treating them differently.

The student’s protest unsettled that apparent common sense by connecting the rule to its consequence: girls could not participate as freely while wearing the prescribed uniform. The later decision to overlook some violations suggests that enforcement was negotiable, but the absence of a formal amendment left the unequal standard intact. The episode makes the dress code significant not only as a list of uniform requirements, but as an everyday school rule whose justification and effects reproduced different expectations for girls and boys.