South Carolina's Chapin high school has a strict dress code for graduation: dress slacks for boys, dresses or skirts for girls. And Chelsea Sarvis can't graduate, they say, without a skirt - and under a cap and gown, no less. Sarvis, who wore a tux to her school's prom, says, she's "not trying to be direspectful", according to the Wis10 article, and adds "If girls are uncomfortable with their bodies like I am, I just don't like wearing them...Why is it a stereotype that a girl has to wear a dress?"

While it makes us sad that discomfort with her body is a factor in the decision - she shouldn't need a justification for wearing whatever she likes (as she says, "If it looks nice, why can't they wear it?") - we're also just baffled by such retrograde rigidity. Says Feministing's Jessica Valenti, "What really gets me is that the principal of this school is actually enforcing the dress code, and in turn enforcing traditional gender roles." The principal comes off as far more clueless than malevolent, not that that's ever better.
"It's certainly appropriate to ask young ladies to wear a dress or a nice shirt and a nice outfit and young men to wear slacks, a shirt and a tie...If a young man showed up in flip-flops and shorts, and said I wanted to walk, we'd say no you can't."

And in addition to the familiar, trying anility of the knee-jerk position is the utter incomprehensibility of this level of obliviousness. Have they not heard of the ACLU? Of similar rulings in Delaware and Nebraska? That they haven't, as school administrators, is almost as worrisome as an educational philosophy that privileges outmoded views and Inherit-the-Wind rigidity over students' well-being.

Chapin High Student Fights To Wear Pants, Not Dress For Graduation [Wis10]

Enforcing Femininity: SC School Will Ban Pants-Wearing Female Students From Graduation [Feministing]

In a recent interview with Empire magazine, Ryder discussed two of her most famous roles—Susanna from Girl, Interrupted and more importantly, Veronica Sawyer from the 1988 high school flick Heathers:

"Whatever you hear, there is a sequel in the works. I swear to God," she told the magazine. "But for some reason the writer Dan Waters and director Michael Lehman don't want to talk about it. I've been wanting to do a sequel forever. There is a story, and Christian [Slater] has agreed to come back as a kind of Obi-Wan character."

For those unfamiliar (spoiler alert!), the original film takes place in Ohio, at a fictional high school where a group of mean girls, called "the Heathers," control the student body through their cruel pranks. Three of the girls in the popular clique are named Heather, and they are led by queen bee Heather Chandler. Ryder's character, the sarcastic Veronica, is part of the group, yet still somehow separate. She becomes bored of her life in the popular crowd, and with the help of a new student, J.D. (Slater), she begins to rebel against the tyranny of the ruling class. However, the charming J.D. is actually a violent sociopath with serious mommy issues: He goes on a murderous spree, killing not only two thirds of the Heathers, but also some random meathead jocks. Eventually, he moves on to plan a mass murder of the entire high school under the guise of a suicide pact.

The movie became a cult classic, and its not too hard to see why. It contains many of the same elements as a John Hughes film, yet with darker content. Heathers takes the revenge fantasies of every kid who has ever been tormented in high school by those who have been arbitrarily deemed popular and amps them up a notch, allowing us to enjoy watching the backstabbing and bullying of the popular crowd while simultaneously reveling in their downfall. We seem to have a cultural obsession with the bitchy, beautiful girls of high school, whose bad behavior is at once both condemned and celebrated. Is the continued fascination with the cruelty of teenagers because it's so universal, or because it somehow seems less real than the violence of the adult world?

Anyway, we're not sure whether to be excited about the return of Ryder and Slater, or afraid of the possibility that Heathers 2 will completely mangle all the things we once loved about the original. There are rumors that the movie will follow the surviving characters (which are Veronica Sawyer, Heather Duke, and Martha Dunnstock) into college and beyond. If Veronica goes to college, we expect it will be set at a big, preppy, Ivy-esque university, where she will come into contact with some snobby sorority girls. Although there is no mention of whether Shannon Doherty will be back to play Heather Duke, we hope that someone will fill in the role of the Moby Dick-obsessed teen.

As for casting, well, we know that Ryder will be back, hopefully playing Veronica, but here are a few mean girls we'd like to see on screen:

Leighton Meester. This one is a no brainer. Meester has already perfected her bitch face playing Blair Waldorf on Gossip Girl, so this would surely be an easy role for her.

Amanda Seyfried. She played the dumbest of Tina Fey's mean girls, and flexed her acting chops on HBO's Mormon drama Big Love, now lets see her bitch it out with Ryder.

Emily Blunt. It's no secret: we love Emily Blunt. After seeing her play a supercilious fashionista in The Devil Wears Prada, we're pretty sure she could take on the role of a collegiate bully.

As for the other characters, we think Maggie Gyllenhaal could be a great ally for Veronica in her quest to demolish social hierarchies. And although Slater is set to return as an "Obi-Wan character," we would like to nominate Ed Westwick as his Skywalker.

Now that we've had our say, what say you? Who would you like to see duke it out in Heathers 2? And are you looking forward to the sequel, or dreading the potentially disastrous outcome?

Winona: I Have "No Resentment" Toward Angelina Jolie [People]

As someone with a looming high-school reunion, it was with chagrin that I read the following summary of an ISER "Popularity" study in the new issue of New York magazine:

The study uncovered "a popularity premium" that seems to quasi-scientifically confirm what Kurt Vonnegut once observed: "Life is nothing but high school … you get into real life and that turns out to be high school again-class officers, cheerleaders, and all." There was a 2 percent bump in how much money the former student made for each additional friendship nomination he or she received. And friends were worth 40 percent of additional years of education, earnings-wise; so instead of doing that master's, you should have made two and a half more friends.

As the write-up points out, this rather gives the lie to the alleged renaissance of the last few years (and, as someone I know who went to high school with neo-nerd poster-boy Marc Jacobs scoffed, 'Oh, he was always cool.' And real nerds are not cool, and people dressing up like outcasts of 30 years ago does not change anything for kids in high school now.) But then, people toss around the term "nerd" pretty loosely, and kids can be social outcasts for all kinds of reasons, be it legitimate behavioral or social problems, or simply an unconventional self-presentation in a deeply conventional community. And by the same token, "popular" can be those genuinely friendly, well-rounded people, or else a select few who most people resent but who are for some arbitrary reason elevated to special prominence in the tiny universe of one's school. I'd guess it's the former who succeed, the latter who live off high school dreams.

Besides, Facebook has changed everything. Not only has the late bloomer lost the ta-da! factor a reunion once meant, but somehow, in cyberspace, in the great universal rush to have more connections, a bigger profile, a larger network, a lot of these old animosities have disappeared. If life's high school? Well, we're all "friends" now.

No Revenge Of The Nerds? [New York]

Unfortunately, her high school has a zero-tolerance policy on drugs. Students have been penalized for ibuprofen to sunscreen. Students across Virginia face expulsion if they carry in any "controlled substance" regulated by the federal government or even any "imitation controlled substance," which includes virtually any prescription pill. Some have criticized this harsh policy, which dictates the same punishment for a student who takes their birth control during school hours as one who brings a gun onto school property. "To put birth control in the same category as illegal drugs or handguns stigmatizes responsible behavior," said Deb Hauser of Advocates for Youth. The suspended teen, who wishes to remain anonymous, has asked her school to reexamine the regulations so that other students will not "needlessly suffer" as she has. [Washington Post]

Double-dutch teams have been created at 10 high schools in predominantly black New York City neighborhoods, according to Salon. Last year, the New York Times reported that the city was introducing varsity double-dutch to address the fact that in city schools only 10 percent of high school students played on sports teams, compared to more than a third in many suburban districts.

Legitimizing the sport, which many girls already participate in when they're young, may be the key to getting them to continue their involvement in sports through high school. A study last year from the Women's Sports Foundation found that inner-city girls of color have some of the lowest rates of sports participation of U.S. teens, according to Women's eNews. Sociologist Don Sabo, the organization's research director says that urban girls tend to start organized sports later and are thus more likely to drop out. He says:

"They haven't learned the fundamentals of how to balance, jump, run, how to be a team member, how to suck it up and play through being tired. They feel foolish," said Sabo ... "When was the last time you tried something you weren't good at and stayed with it for a year?"

Urban girls of color are "hit with a double whammy," says Neena Chaudhry of the National Women's Law Center. Often their communities have less access to open spaces and they face competition for scarce resources at school. Theoretically, Title IX should solve this problem, but unlike in colleges and universities, high schools are not required to report gender breakdowns by sport, resources, and funding. A study by the National Women's Law Center suggested that few urban female athletes were using Title IX to demand equal treatment.

There's a push now to require high schools to report statistics like colleges and universities do to make sure that the schools are complying to Title IX. Last month Senator Olympia Snowe reintroduced a 2004 bill to the Senate called the High School Sports Information Collection Act, which would require high schools to report the gender of student athletes and the financing of sports teams.

Advocates say that enacting Title IX compliance laws would increase sports opportunities for girls and boys across the country. While city officials hope to increase girls' participation in sports especially, the new double-dutch teams in New York are coed. The video below from the annual double dutch tournament held at the Apollo Theater in New York shows the incredible amount of athleticism that competitive double-dutch requires. Since countless studies have shown that student athletes perform better in school and have higher self-esteem, clearly girls across the country would benefit from similar programs.

Double Dutch Bust [Salon]
Double Dutch Gets Status in the Schools [The New York Times]
Girls' Sports Opportunities MIA In City Schools [Women's eNews]

Said the principal of the private Covenant School, "It is shameful and an embarrassment that this happened...a victory without honor is a great loss." The issue, as he and the school see it, is poor sportsmanship: in a fever of bloodlust, the team, spectators and coaches forgot one of the tacit rules of school athletics, which is, don't humiliate an opponent. Says a mother from the opposing school, "I think the bad judgment was in the full-court press and the 3-point shots... At some point, they should have backed off."

In the case of Covenant, it's hard to say whether the issue has anything to do with sex: it's a Christian academy in a part of the country where sports, and sportsmanship, are no joke. It seems unlikely that boys would have escaped the same penalty. Yet clearly, something about the story has struck a nerve: several tipsters brought it to our attention and seemed troubled by what feels like a larger culture that discourages female competition.

Interestingly, Shakesville happens to touch on a somewhat similar issue today: the age-old practice of feminine self-sabotage. It's one of the oldest tricks in a coquette's book to play dumb and helpless and stroke a guy's ego. The blog contrasts an open instance of this — a thrown archery tourney in a Lousia May Alcott novel — with the ad campaign for the dating site Chemistry.com, specifically a woman's "vow": "I promise to take out the recycling, even though I think you’re way better at it." The double whammy of servitude and old-school feminine self-deprecation is, at best, a pretty lame marketing ploy. But none of this is, in itself, much to get one's knickers in a twist about. The issue is a deeper one, and has to do with all these things in combination: clearly those who found the Covenant forfeit troubling see a link between this sort of "graciousness" and a culture that rewards throwing games. On the other hand, surely there is something between the two — keeping the win, perhaps, while extending an apology (which, in any event, isn't going to make their humiliated rivals feel any better!) — which would serve as a better example in every respect?

School Seeks To Forfeit 100-0 Win [High School Rivals]
I Promise to Pretend That You Are More Competent Than I Am, While Still Doing The Work Myself [Shakesville]

Well the school district doesn't really explain that, but the girls' lawyers are pretty peeved. Matthew King, who is representing the two families of the girls involved tells the CBS Morning Show, "There is an implied 'boys will be boys' sort of mentality here, where none of the boys who had these photos on their phones were ever punished. That's a problem, we feel."

Over at Nerve, Colleen Kane thinks that this is all part of "the grand old tradition of condemning the high school female slut but not other participants in the slutting, and adds, "We have a feeling that this is the kind of scandal that Europeans love to laugh at Americans for, for being so uptight about nudity in the first place."

Another compounding issue is that one of the girls allegedly took the photos of herself when she was 13, before she attended the high school, so, in that case, the argument is that those actions should not affect her standing at her current school. Early adolescents are going to test the boundaries of their sexuality and sexual expression whether their parents — or school districts — like it or not, and kicking these girls off the cheer squad seems to be an unfitting punishment for something that's not really a crime, but rather a stupid youthful mistake. As one of the girls' mother points out, "If she had been caught taking illegal drugs twice, she would not have been punished this severely. The school has arbitrarily taken away the one thing that my daughter loves most. She will never get that back again."

Cheerleaders' Nude Photos Spark Dispute [CBS News]
Nude High School Cheerleader Scandal Is Disturbing For A Few Reasons [Nerve]

• An animal welfare journalist named Mira Tweti (pronounced "Tweety") advocates "planned parroting," or being aware of the challenges of raising parrots, to keep down the rising numbers of unwanted pet birds. • A new regulation in England, which went into effect today, no longer requires barristers to wear wigs in the courtroom. • A new craze of wacky beauty gadgets in Japan gave birth to the Kogao Meiku Beruto, or "small face make belt," which is a strap worn around the head that claims to shrink the wearer's face over time. • On Monday, New York City Transit, which is part of the MTA, will begin distributing 200,000 pamphlets about sexual harassment on public transportation to accompany the new anti-sexual harassment SubTalk ads in subways. • A female arsonist and police officer from Wisconsin is engaged to one of the firefighters who responded to a blaze she set in an abandoned house in March. • Police in England are investigating a death threat against a female priest following a series of hate crimes against her, including someone throwing a lit candle into her car.• Parent Television Council filed an indecency complaint with the FCC after a portion of a male contestant's penis slipped out of his shorts during the season premiere of Survivor: Gabon. CBS calls the incident "completely unintentional" and "virtually undetectable." • A 20-year-old woman from Atlanta was "livid" and "scared to death" when some men attempted to "rape" her after someone posted a phony "rape fantasy" ad for her on Craigslist. • When a New York woman told a nurse during a routine GYN exam that she had been treated for PMS mood swings in the past she was transfered to the psych ER unit and wasn't allowed to be released until after 5 hours of tests. • An argument this week between two brothers in Boston over a dog that ate the other brother's watermelon eventually led to one of the brothers repeatedly stabbing himself to prove he wasn't afraid of pain. • And just to prove that women can sometimes be prone to violent overreaction: A woman in Florida punched and bit her ex-husband on Monday after he forgot to buy kitty litter. • Many breast cancer advocates from the U.S. are reaching out to Africa to help promote breast cancer awareness and proper treatment , including a delegation of advocates and doctors that will travel to Ghana in October to open a medical center to educate and treat breast cancer. •

Earlier: It Was The Best Of Times, It Was The Worst Of Times: A Gallery Of Not So Gorgeous Bridal Fashions
When Animals Attract: Your Cuddly Childhood Creatures

Related: Red Carpet [NYT]

So here is my question: I was a dork in high school. And sure, that probably helped make me a slut, but never the sort of boy crazy sociopath you'd expect, given my degree of social alienation. Why is Being A Nerd In High School so much more damaging to dudes than girls? Is it just that even nerdy girls get hollered at on the street?

Instant Message, Instant Girlfriend [NYT]