Sadie Roach’s 15-year-old daughter Jenelle was excited about her upcoming homecoming dance.
However, Jenelle is six feet tall and her school have a strict dress code which made her search for the dream dress a lot harder.
Jenelle attends an American Leadership Academy charter school, which requires homecoming gowns to have shoulder straps at least 3-inches wide.
The school also bans dresses with a hem above the knee, as well as bare backs, cutouts and sheer fabrics.
Given Jenelle’s height, the strict rules meant most of the dresses which fit her were above the knee and therefore out the question.
On her parenting blog Slap Dash Mom, Sadie explained the predicament the young teen found herself in.
"We tried on so many dresses. We headed to Ross, then Target, then Wal-Mart, then back to Ross", Sadie wrote in a post on her parenting and lifestyle blog, Slap Dash Mom.
“If they fit, they weren't dress code appropriate (usually too short because she's six feet tall). If they were dress code appropriate, they didn't fit (or looked like a potato sack).”
“A day that should’ve been magical was filled with tears,” Sadie explained.
The school recommended certain “modest” dress stores and suggested altering a dress but Sadie said neither of these options were feasible.
“The school suggested that we sew and alter a dress to make it modest … or shop at one of these ‘modest’ dress stores, where the dresses were $100-plus,” she wrote on her blog. “No thank you!”
Thankfully, Jenelle finally found a dress after returning to one of the department stores they’d previously visited.
“She ended up having to get a dress that was way too big in order to have it be the right length, but we tied it up and she loves it. She said she feels like a princess”, Sadie said.
Sadie said that while she knew the school she sent her daughter to was conservative, she feels that the dress code is unfair.
“Dress code, in general, is created so ‘boys aren't distracted’. Heaven forbid they see some thigh or shoulder”, she wrote.
“I think it's ridiculous to expect teenage girls to sew dresses to make them more ‘modest' as to not distract boys,” she told TODAY Style in an email.
What do you think mums?
