Mother attends daughter’s graduation in the dress that got her daughter sent home from school

A North Carolina woman made quite a fashion statement by wearing the same dress that got her daughter sent home from school to her graduation. 

Central Davidson High School senior Violet Burkhart wanted to mark her last day of ever being a high school student by dressing up. “I thought my last day was going to be great and exciting,” explained Burkhart. Instead, the school, “pretty much ruined it for me.” Burkhart recalls that at 1 PM, with only two hours of school day left, her teachers “took me in a crowded hallway and told me to grab my crotch….while they measure[d] it in front of everyone.” After determining that the length of the dress violated the school’s dress code by a half an inch, the school sent Burkhart home.

image via Buzzfeed

(Image via Buzzfeed)

This wasn’t an isolated incident for the school. After the news site WGHP posted the story on their Facebook page, a woman posted: “My daughter goes to the same school and she was sent home. Not for the length but she was told it enhanced her figure too much. Central Davidson high school is a joke.”

image via facebook

(Image via Facebook)

Sadly, Central Davison is not the only school humiliating and slut-shaming its female students. As we’ve blogged about before, a Utah high school recently photo-shopped the year book photos of certain female students so their necklines would be higher and their sleeves would be longer. A school in Canada sent female students home for wearing tank tops that revealed their bra straps. Another student at a different school got sent home for the same bra-strap related infraction. Another–you guessed it–female student got sent home over the length of her shorts. And a 17-year old girl got sent home from a prom for provoking “impure thoughts.” The silver lining to this puritanical persecution is that some of the people being targeted are calling it out by making statements, putting up posters, and talking to the press.

image via

(Image via HannaHettinger.com)

Amy Redwine, Burkhart’s mother, is the latest person to respond to body-policing in a creative way. She recalls being upset by the way the school treated her daughter: “I literally looked back at the clock and I’m thinking, it’s 1:00 in the afternoon on her last day of her senior year. My daughter — it’s supposed to be one of her best days and she’s there crying.”  So Redwine decided to really wear her heart on her sleeve–or dress–and don the very dress that got her daughter sent home to her daughter’s graduation. “If her dress is too short, then my dress is too short and I’m going to wear it in front of everybody and be proud just like she should have been able to on her last day.”

image via Buzzfeed

(Image via Buzzfeed)

You can read the video transcript here

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Screen Shot 2013-10-28 at 11.13.50 PM Katie Halper has been borrowing clothing from and lending clothing to her mother since high school. 

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Born and raised on the mean streets of New York City’s Upper West Side, Katie Halper is a comic, writer, blogger, satirist and filmmaker based in New York. Katie graduated from The Dalton School (where she teaches history) and Wesleyan University (where she learned that labels are for jars.) A director of Living Liberally and co-founder/performer in Laughing Liberally, Katie has performed at Town Hall, Symphony Space, The Culture Project, D.C. Comedy Festival, all five Netroots Nations, and The Nation Magazine Cruise, where she made Howard Dean laugh! and has appeared with Lizz Winstead, Markos Moulitsas, The Yes Men, Cynthia Nixon and Jim Hightower. Her writing and videos have appeared in The New York Times, Comedy Central, The Nation Magazine, Gawker, Nerve, Jezebel, the Huffington Post, Alternet and Katie has been featured in/on NY Magazine, LA Times, In These Times, Gawker,Jezebel, MSNBC, Air America, GritTV, the Alan Colmes Show, Sirius radio (which hung up on her once) and the National Review, which called Katie “cute and some what brainy.” Katie co-produced Tim Robbins’s film Embedded, (Venice Film Festival, Sundance Channel); Estela Bravo’s Free to Fly (Havana Film Festival, LA Latino Film Festival); was outreach director for The Take, Naomi Klein/Avi Lewis documentary about Argentine workers (Toronto & Venice Film Festivals, Film Forum); co-directed New Yorkers Remember the Spanish Civil War, a video for Museum of the City of NY exhibit, and wrote/directed viral satiric videos including Jews/ Women/ Gays for McCain.

Katie is a writer, comedian, filmmaker, and New Yorker.

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