A Utah girl was told to cover up her dress at a high school dance because she dared to expose her shoulders, KUTV has learned.
Gabi Finlayson, 15, arrived at her Lone Peak High School dance last Saturday wearing a calf-length white lace dress she bought in Paris. But before she could enjoy the dance, a school employee told her she needed to cover her shoulders.
"She said, 'Would you mind putting on a shawl?' I didn't want to make a big scene so I said, yes," Finlayson told the station. "I had a coat in the car so I had to go back and get it."
Finlayson spent the entire dance covering her dress, which she said she chose because it reminded her of her idol Audrey Hepburn. There were plenty of other girls at the dance wearing tighter, shorter dresses, she said. But she was the one who was shamed. Her dress did not violate the dress code, she said.
"Somehow my shoulders are sexualized," Finlayson told KUTV. "Like it's my responsibility to make sure the boys' thoughts are not unclean."
The student's mother is equally outraged.
"How have we gotten to the point that we look at shoulders as if they're somehow pornographic?" Kristy Kimball, Finlayson's mother, told the station.
The dance dress code, which the school principal says was approved by students and teachers, stated dress straps must be at least two inches wide.
"Shawls, boleros and other shrugs are acceptable if worn over the dress at all times. Cleavage covered," reads the dress code.
Principal Rhonda Bromley stood by the decision to ask Finlayson to cover up.
"This was done by one of my female school employees in a very careful and sensitive way," Bromley told KUTV.
Finlayson, however, was embarrassed by the incident she says should not have had to happen in the first place.
"Maybe instead of teaching girls they should cover themselves up, we should be teaching boys that we're not just sex objects that you can look at and derive pleasure," she told the station.
