A group of high school students has staged a walkout to protest their school's allegedly sexist dress code policy.
According to The Independent, pupils attending the performing arts academy of Natomas Charter School in Sacramento, California, walked out of school after the principal banned girls from wearing outfits showing their midriffs.
Student Evita Frick-Hisaw, aged 16, later took to her personal TikTok account to share footage of the protest, which occurred on June 3.
Take a look at this video of the protest:The video shows Frick-Hisaw and her classmates showing off their outfits, which all included crop tops displaying their abs.
It then cuts to a clip of her donning an oversized brown shirt and then changing into a red spaghetti strap top.
She also took to Instagram to share photos of protesters on campus, many of whom had made signs to voice their displeasure at the draconian dress code policy. Others had scrawled messages and slogans on their stomachs instead.
One of the posters put up around the school read: "Teach boys to focus, not girls to cover up".
Commenting on the protests in a later interview with Newsweek, Frick-Hisaw stated: "[The school principal] was going to have an assembly on dress code so in response we wore crop tops to protest.
"It was a day-long process, we showed up in crop tops and they started dress coding people."
Evita responds to one of her critics:In a follow-up TikTok video, Evita said that the school's existing policy "is sexist towards women and perpetuates rape culture. It makes us very uncomfortable".
She added: "We as students feel like what we wear is not distracting towards others or affecting anyone’s learning environment. We should not be kicked out of school for wearing a crop top".
Per Newsweek, the school's handbook states that: "Clothing must cover areas from one armpit across to the other armpit, down to approximately three to four inches inseam length on the upper thighs...[and] tops must have shoulder straps."
However, Natomas Charter School's Executive Director Joe Wood insisted that the students were blowing the issue out of proportion and that the focus on the faculty's part has always been on their emotional well-being.
Wood stated: "It seemed like they were more protesting other schools' dress codes, not ours, and the largely sexual and racial [tone] they can have.
"Our dress code's primary concern is that they come to school with appropriate clothing on their body. The kids are more frustrated about wanting to be able to wear crop tops or sports bras."
