It seems that school dress code policies are coming under scrutiny for slutshaming--for enforcing dress codes for girls in order to provide a distraction-free learning environment for boys.
It is definitely unfair--and unfair in an oppressively harmful way--to police girls' clothing choices for that reason. No question about that.
It is also true that part of learning how to be a grownup involves showing courtesy to other persons and respecting their worth and dignity no matter how distracting anything about them might be.
I am nevertheless uncomfortable with arguments, implicit and otherwise, that suggest that girls--or anyone--should just dress however they want, wherever they want, for no better reason than that they want to, and that anyone who says otherwise is engaging in slutshaming. There are many parts of life that come with dress codes or to which informal rules of sartorial etiquette are attached: We wear our very best clothes in black or some other somber color to funerals. We wear our very best clothes in brighter colors to weddings. We wear enormous hats to parties thrown for the Kentucky Derby, and we wear smaller (but possibly similarly elaborate) hats on Easter Sunday, if we are a member of a church where hats are still de rigeur. We wear costumes on Halloween and we wear academic regalia when we graduate with an advanced degree. We make sure to put on a neatly pressed suit for job interviews, and we take care to put on older clothes when we paint the house.
This is to say that for pretty much every part of life, there are some norms governing clothing choice so that we do not create an inappropriate distraction--one does not wear an elaborate white dress to a wedding at which one is not the bride no matter how lovely one might look because to do so would draw inappropriate attention to oneself. One does not wear one's Halloween costume to work on the day after the Halloween party, no matter how many compliments one received on the evening previous, because to do so would disrupt the flow of work--and it would likely violate the employer's dress code.
Supporting--and even strengthening--dress codes is not automatically or necessarily a perpetuation of rape culture. We seem to have lost a vocabulary or value-orientation that allows us to say that the things we do in public are done, in some important respects, to and for the public. That the things we do are not ours alone when done in public space. And for saying this, I will probably be accused (even if kindly and generously) of promoting victim-blaming. I am not doing this. I am saying that a response that says "anyone can and should be able to do whatever they want, whenever they want, however they want so long as it does not physically harm anyone else or encroach upon the genuine rights of other persons" is too thin; it promotes a hyper-individualistic solipsism that falsely imagines that the things I do can and should have no effect on other persons, and that if they do have such an effect, then the other persons are at fault for letting themselves be affected. But in our current climate, to say that something has an effect on other persons slides to the extreme that claims that the effect is totally irresistible, absolutely quantifiable, and that it is tantamount to deliberate, culpable intent.
I remember vividly my sartorial epiphany in college. My freshman year I lived on campus and only worked part time, so I was able to go to class in pajamas and slippers, as many freshmen do at some point. I experimented with very short shorts and very short tops (and no, nothing terrible happened--no one ever even gave me a hard time). The summer before my sophomore year of college I moved off campus and began working full time. Since I worked most days, my work clothes were my primary wardrobe. I dressed like a little professional out of convenience and frugality (I could not have afforded multiple wardrobes; and, like most other college students, my weight changed enough to eliminate from practical possibility the wardrobe from my freshman year), and I was caught quite off guard by how my change in dress changed the attitudes of those around me toward my person and their estimation of my worth, work, abilities, and authority. Suddenly there were students who assumed I thought myself superior to them by dressing differently (which baffled me, as I was poorer than most of my peers). People started asking me for directions on campus and in the town in which I lived and worked. I received much better customer service than I ever did when I dressed like a typical student.
I am glad I got to learn about the effect of clothing choices in different social settings, and I am glad I learned it freely, if entirely accidentally. Removing dress code requirements, however, makes for fewer, not more, places wherein a young person can learn about those differences, especially since the only conversation we have about how other people should dress is overwhelmingly dominated by the fear that any acknowledgment or investigation of the effect of clothing promotes victim-blaming and rape culture.
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