Way back in the dark ages, when I was but a girl, I went to a school where uniform code was very strictly applied. The most important rule was the length of the dress, which had to be 3cm above the knee when kneeling on the teacher's desk - weird, but true - it was called hemline inspection and a ruler would reveal the true distance. Bearing in mind that this was the late 60s and the era of the mini skirt, you can imagine that this went down like bacon at a barmitzvah. I'm not sure if the object of keeping the girls' skirts near the knee was to prevent the boys from the school next door enjoying their shapely legs, but the only place that the girls applied the rule was in the school grounds. As soon as they were outside the gates, belts were put to good use as about 30cm of skirt was hoiked up over them, sometimes to better effect than others. There is no doubt that some legs would have been better hidden.
Today I passed a group of schoolgirls with shirts hanging out of their skirts, and the skirts were pleated and wider than they were long - the hem barely reached the bottom of the bum. Once again, there is no doubt that some legs would have been better hidden, but the real problem was the wind. All those pleats allowed the southeaster to blow the skirts up like tutus, and the lack of material left nothing to the imagination as they crossed the road in front of four lines of traffic. They must have realised that there was no point in doing any clutching to cover, or else it genuinely didn't bother them, but I think that a re-design of skirts to suit Cape Town's weather conditions should get some serious consideration.
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