School Suspends Overweight Girl For Not Wearing A Muumuu To Prom
As prom season wraps up, it looks like girls have another hoop to jump through when it comes to meeting the expected dress code: don’t be fat. At least not if you attend high school in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Harrisburg high school senior Alexus Miller-Wigfall was handed a suspension a few days after prom, for wearing the “too-revealing” dress you can see pictured at left. The dress, which is floor length and has long sleeves, is one of Miller-Wigfall and her mother’s design, with some additions from the school district’s dress ‘pre-approval’ program. Under district orders, they removed slits from the side of the dress and added the long sleeves, and also made the neck opening smaller and less revealing. But when the modestly-modifieid dress was re-submitted for approval, they didn’t hear anything back despite repeated attempts to follow up. Given the choice between “go to your senior prom in your gorgeous dress that there’s no possible way anyone could find immodest after you made the changes they wanted to it” and “stay home alone”, the decision was pretty simple, and the only comment she received about her dress from staff at the prom was a thumbs-up from the superintendent.
But then, surprise! At school the next week she was handed a suspension referral for her shockingly immodest dress. The only explanation she received with the suspension was that her dress was “too revealing”, and the public statement issued by the school district was that dresses needed to “support and promote the elegance of the prom season”. Judging by the look of Miller-Wigfall’s dress, this appears to mean “if you aren’t a size four, either stay home or wear a turtleneck.”
Here is a fun fact about body fat: it’s squishy! When you put body fat, including but not limited to boobs, into an article of clothing, it has to go somewhere, and in a formal gown, it’s hard for that somewhere to be entirely inside the dress’s neckline. I would be willing to bet that even though Miller-Wigfall was the only student issued a suspension, there were any number of thinner girls with deeper necklines (and shorter skirts or barer arms and backs) who no one noticed. Good job on having a dress-code-compliant body, everyone else!
The happy ending to this story is that a high school administrator took Miller-Wigfall’s suspension notice and ripped it up in front of her before she had to serve it. That’s the best possible way this situation could have played out (A+ for the dramatics, unnamed administrator!) but it’s a shame Miller-Wigfall was subjected to this humiliation in the first place. At least it won’t be too hard to say goodbye to the old alma mater when she graduates in a few days and takes off for greener pastures at Lincoln University.
(Image: Fox59)
