Students at California high school rebel against ‘sexist’ dress code

A group of students in California have gone viral on TikTok, after protesting against their school’s “sexist” dress code policy.

The video shows how the students from the Natomas Charter School, a performing arts school in Sacramento, went on strike wearing midriff jeans in protest.

You can watch the video in full here.

The TikTok of the walk-out now has over 3.3m views and 1.1m likes.

It appears that the teenagers walked out after the school organised an assembly to announce the ban on coeds from wearing shirts that revealed their bellies.

Messages challenging their school rules were painted on their bellies such as “It’s not my fault,” “Distraction,” and “Am I distracting?”

The caption on the TikTok read: “We started this all because our principal was going to have an assembly abt dress code so day of the assembly we did this. (There was a reason).”

Evita Frick-Hisaw is the 16-year-old midriff mastermind behind the movement and posted a flyer on her Instagram story about the walk-out on June 3.

“In protest of the dress-code assembly regarding “too much mid-drift,” we are all wearing crop tops :) we suggest you do too!”

“Boys! Support your friends and crop you tops!!”

Several boys did in fact join in the with protest and can be seen in the TikTok sporting crop tops.

Alongside the post, Frick-Hisaw captioned: “Our body our choice, it isn’t our fault they’re distracted. They can’t take away our confidence and expression.”

She posted several videos on the app about the issue.

TikTok/baggyjeanmom

“The dress code is sexist towards women and perpetuates rape culture. It makes us very uncomfortable,” she said.

“We as students feel like what we wear is not distracting towards others or affecting anyone’s learning environment.”

Frick-Hisaw added: “We should not be kicked out of school for wearing a crop top”.

People on TikTok praised the students for taking a stand against their school.

One person said: “ THIS IS GOOD!!! Keep it up omg.”

“Yes! Keep it up! Time for a fricken change!” Another person wrote.

Someone else commented: “Y’all are legends for this.”

“I don’t get how schools are gonna have mandatory dress code when we’re required by law to be there, its not like we’re getting paid,” a fourth person added.

Joe Wood, the executive director of Natomas, told The Independent that the school’s dress code “is intentionally gender neutral” and that “many of them had not read our dress code”.