The Student News Site of Harvard-Westlake School

The Harvard-Westlake Chronicle

The Student News Site of Harvard-Westlake School

The Harvard-Westlake Chronicle

The Student News Site of Harvard-Westlake School

The Harvard-Westlake Chronicle

    Ditch fashion homophobia

    Wearing “skinny” jeans, which is the nickname for tightly-fitted jeans, is a purely personal choice, as with any decision to wear any type of clothing. Thus, students who berate other students for wearing skinny jeans are attacking them personally.

    To create a Facebook group like “Students Against Skinny Jeans” demonstrates the extent to which seniors are willing to go to put down underclassmen. Seniors should understand how wrong a group like this is before having to be told by students from other schools such as Crossroads.

    At Harvard-Westlake, which is constantly teaching morals, even adapting yearly themes such as “Just Because You Can, Doesn’t Mean You Should,” it should be overwhelmingly clear that insulting people for the way they dress is both rude and far from acting with common decency.

    Moreover, seniors, who as the oldest members of the student body represent the leaders and therefore should be the most thoughtful students, are giving a bad image to not only the senior class but to Harvard-Westlake itself.

    It is disconcerting to think that those students who should be acting most maturely are, in fact, behaving in such a cruel way.

    These senior boys’ actions in and of themselves are mean-spirited, but to target sophomores, who may have a very difficult time transitioning to the Upper School without an oppressive senior class, is particularly nasty.

    How could any sophomore feel comfortable coming to school if they fear being taunted by older students?

    That seniors are putting down younger students for something as trivial as wearing a popular style of jeans suggests that they’re looking for any tiny peculiarity to put sophomores down.

    That calling students homosexuals has developed into name-calling or a put-down suggests homophobia. Calling a student ugly or dumb is by no means proper, but to attack them on the basis of sexuality, a very delicate topic, especially with teenagers, is much more serious.

    It insults not only those who wear skinny jeans but everyone in our community, not just students, but faculty members, parents and alumni, who is gay.

    It is neither wrong to wear skinny jeans nor wrong to be a homosexual.

    However, making fun of students for the way they dress or who they are, since sexuality is a major component of who they are, demonstrates a genuine unkindness and an invasion of other students’ personal life.

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    Ditch fashion homophobia