While the debate on "republican attire" rages on, a poll conducted by Ifop, published Friday, September 25, reveals that the majority of French people – and especially French women – would like to ban the crop top, the "no bra" or the plunging neckline.
Since the movements # monday14septembre or #balancetonbahut, initiated by middle school and high school girls across France to put an end to sexism vis-à-vis their clothing, the issue of school clothing is at the heart of the news. The Minister of Education Jean-Michel Blanquer has also called on schoolchildren in France to dress "in a republican way". If no one really understood what this entailed "republican dress", we now know what it is not for a good number of French people.
An Ifop survey for Marianne, carried out between September 18 and 21 with a sample of 2,000 people, explored the question to know the opinion of the French on what is a correct outfit for a girl in high school … who seems rather conservative.
Internalized sexism
If the practice of "No Bra" has become commonplace since confinement, two thirds of French people (66%) are for the ban of "top without a bra through which the tips of the nipples are visible". Exit also any outfit with a plunging neckline for 62% of respondents, the crop top (for 55% of respondents). The survey draws a more surprising observation: the majority of people who would like to forbid schoolgirls to dress as they see fit. seems to be women. 73% of women questioned refuse to wear a bra in high school, against 58% of men surveyed. The crop top is not unanimous either since more than 61% of French women want it. ban (against 49% of men). "As surprising as it is, this stronger opposition by women to this form of clothing freedom is nevertheless an old phenomenon that Ifop was already observing in 1967 on the question of the mini-skirt", recalls the organization. "Men are then twice as likely (20%) as women (12%) to approve French women wearing mini-skirts to go out and or go to friends."
The mass of the population still considers that it is up to girls to manage male desire by showing 'good measure' in terms of dress.
These results reflect an internalized sexism and highlight injunctions that concern only women, held responsible for the way men look at them. For François Kraus, director of the "Gender, sexualities and sexual health" pole of Ifop and Louise Jussian, researcher at Ifop, this survey "highlights the generational conflict between young people and their elders on these questions of bodily and clothing freedom: the mass of the population still considering that it is up to girls to manage male desire by showing 'good measure' 'in terms of dress, then these young girls belong to a generation which, in line with the' body positive 'and the Metoo movement, show their bodies and firmly reject the sexist character of any dress code.
But where are the boys?
In a column published on Liberation, Sophie Ferry, a teacher declared: "The dress injunctions made to young women are not only discriminatory because they are imposed only on one sex, but they also highlight and perpetuate what is called 'culture of rape', based on a mechanism of guilt of the female body ". Because that is the whole problem with this controversy: it concerns only women and places the responsibility for sexualization on women, also considering men as weak creatures obeying their impulses. It would have been interesting for the Ifop survey to also cover the outfits worn by boys in schools.
To these injunctions, the high school girls determined to claim their rights respond in the best possible way: "We must educate young people and not cover girls", they tell Fance TV Info.