A student from the prestigious Ivy league, Cornell University, was presenting her thesis when she chose to strip down to her underwear and bra in front of the entire class. This was in protest to a teacher criticizing the length of her shorts.
The senior student, Letitia Chai, took off her shorts and top during the presentation as an act of public protest because the teacher, Rebekah Maggor, ‘offensively’ commented on her clothing. The teacher told her her shorts were ‘too short’, and that she was attracting male gaze away from her presentation and on to her legs. Chai stripped and continued presenting for half an hour.
The student then took to Facebook to tell her story and explain why she stripped.
“The first thing that the professor said to me was “is that really what you would wear?”
She, a white woman, continued: “Your shorts are too short”.
The professor proceeded to tell me, in front of my whole class, that I was inviting the male gaze away from the content of my presentation and onto my body.
She said I was making a statement by wearing my outfit. I told her that I sure as hell wouldn’t change my statement to make her or anyone else feel more comfortable.”
Chai said the male students in her class agreed with what the teacher said to her, which is what further enraged her.
“I do not tell my students what to wear, nor do I define for them what constitutes appropriate dress. I ask them to reflect for themselves and make their own decisions.”
They said the teacher’s comment had an ‘error in phrasing’; her point was to throw light on the ‘importance of professionalism in certain public speaking situations’. They explained she was not commenting on the shorts in general, but insisting that they were inappropriate for a class presentation, which calls for formal clothing.
They further added that Maggor even apologized on her choice of words, and that they didn’t hold her responsible.
Why people just have to mention when the “offender”‘s skin color is white? You just going to make it based on racism, which is not. That makes whoever mentioned that racist by the way.
Reverse racism doesn’t exist because white people invented it.
You should look up the word racist before using it.
This happened in America, which is a significantly racist society, so mentioning the races of the people involved gives us a better picture of the power dynamic between student and teacher, just as mentioning the sex of the teacher does, since America is a sexist society.
Janet are not American, because you’re wrong to state such sweeping Generalizations , America is not inherently Sexist society and you must not know about True Racist societies , such as middle East and India, south Africa etc. S T F U
The ‘journalist’ obviously had an agenda, as evidenced by the harass ‘offensively commented on her clothing…’
Seriously, the mental weakness of these overprotected ivy league children is stunning.
*the phrase
Who gives a thesis presentation in shorts? It doesn’t speak well of her regard for the institution nor the degree she is shooting for.
the thing is: why don’t people just stop giving a fuck about what other people wear and focus on what truly matters – in this case, HER THESIS.
I believe that the young lady should have been dressed more suitably to give a thesis presentation. In as much as this incident may want to spike up issues of “feminism” or even “racism”, I cannot see it for any of these. Young people nowadays are too hard to “train” in a sense because I think that the teacher was actually looking out for her and asking a reflective question. If we women want to be respected as professionals, we need to present ourselves also as such. I know I would not present a thesis or any paper in a shorts, nor would I want my students to do it!
The planet is warming. We need to redefine what formal means, when dressing for the new weather conditions. But the teacher did not couch it in these terms, and that wasn’t what caused the problem. Mentioning male gaze is sexist. Mentioning what your mother might think of you is sexist. It makes you into a sex object, not an informally dressed student. Saying that bare skin is automatically sexual, is sexist. If the teacher had said that short shorts are too informal, that wouldn’t be sexist. Impractical perhaps, in hot weather, but not sexist.
Thank you, Dr. Collins. I also think that the professor was making a relevant comment. The way I see it, what would the audience think if a male student made this presentation in short-shorts? Millennial seem sot believe that any criticism against them is based upon racism or misogyny. They are unwilling to hear criticism based upon experience or common sense.
good 4 her !!!!!! what she was wearing was fine she just needs to give her presentation … professor is in no position to lecture her on how to dress she just needs to teach .. if she thinks that shorts are fine to give a presentation then that’s her opinion and she can do what she wants.
Sure in the context of a class room who gives a shit about shorts or not heres the question,
Was the Teacher really just giving her shit for something she didn’t like,
Or was the comment from classmates true and it was a miss-phrasing and was intended to help her in a professional setting later down the road,
When i read the headline and the first part of the article i was siding with you, but after reading the entire thing and realizing that in a professional setting, shorts wouldn’t have been seen as appropriate. If the student miss-understood what the teacher said, and took it as ‘ don’t dress like a whore etc” then i can see why she did what she did,
Due to college students drastically taking things out of context and blowing them out of proportion, and how ‘social justice’ and ‘feminism’ are in the for front of most collage students minds
i think it was a miss-understanding, but consider it a bold move on her part either way,
The reason i put quotes around feminism and social justice is because both are so far away from their intended goals that referring to these as such is an insult to what the original goals were and or should be today
@carmen She was teaching. Teaching her that it was unprofessional to dress that way during a thesis presentation.
Actually, the professor IS in a position to lecture her on what to wear for a presentation. The professor is doing her job. If this was some type of final presentation, the student should be in more formal attire. I say this as a 20 year teacher.
In a professional setting you are expected to dress professionally, eg. formal wear, suit, etc. If you are going to take offense when someone points out that you outfit is not appropriate for a presentation, then strip down to your underwear to protest it, then you aren’t likely to be hired or employed long. Grow up!
rly bc last time i checked yalls sweaty balls and asses in suits reeked of real professionalism let the queen wear shorts ya fucking pigass
It was not couched in terms of formality, it was couched in terms of bare skin equating a sex object instead of a presenter. It was not a protest against formality, it was a protest about sexism.
Obviously never been to uni if you think students wear suits
If a male did this the police would promptly be escorting him to jail in the name of feminism and he would receive zero community support. Ivy League student acting like a child.
I teach public speaking and I don’t think I would ever, ever comment on a student’s outfit or body. If dressing up to certain standard is expected of a thesis defense, then it should be made aware and a part of the defense. There is a difference between asking a student to dress to a certain standard–like business casual or formal business–and telling a student that her outfit is “distracting” the male students. This is like saying a woman is responsible for being sexually assaulted or objectified because of what she is wearing. Why should women be expected to adjust their outfit to men? The teacher is way out of line here. No offense, but any male who is too distracted by a woman’s outfit to pay attention to her presentation is an idiot. If dressing to a certain standard is so important then make it a part of the thesis defense.
Stripping may have been a bit extreme (also funny), but I don’t get the problem with the shorts. If she is at Cornell I think she is smart enough to know when she can get away with wearing shorts or not and doesn’t need to be lectured on it. She is doing a student presentation, not applying for a job – give me a break. And not all “professional” settings are the same. In some professional / public speaking settings this would be totally acceptable. Case in point – at a sex ed conference. Blaming a girl for the “male gaze” is just bizarre and inappropriate. Not to mention she is a mere student and maybe she can’t afford a suit right now or hasn’t had time to go shopping for fancy clothes! I’m 29 and my only “business clothes” either are old and have nonfunctional zipper or don’t have pockets thanks to the patriarchy. Unless she was informed ahead of time that shorts were outside of the dress code this is inappropriate commentary.
I am really a radical feminist, but I am also a coach in presentation and interpersonal communication. I must say that for an academic presentation, there is still a dress code. Like it or not, in a public presentation, verbal messages need support in non-verbal messages and visual cues, and consistency with the verbal message. If there is no such consistency, the effect is counterproductive and damages our presentation. If I want to have an image as an academic, as a researcher, this image must be reinforced by the signs and visual hints, which have to be consistent with the image I want to achieve. That is all. Also, these codes, signals and visual cues are extensively studied in social psychology. The way they work is of utmost importance for communication, and the understanding of the message that the spokesperson wants to pass on.
This young lady is currently trying for the appeal to popularity fallacy by bringing up two popular discussions: feminism and racism. The former is when she keeps bringing up her so called feminism (by wearing anything she wants regardless of the occasion) and the latter when she tries to prevent sympathy for the professor with how she mentioned the professor’s “a white woman”. (As if the professor’s gender and skin colour had weightage over her comment). Perhaps she’s under the impression that considering how everything is painfully PC, by trying to hardsell her behaviour as feminist-friendly and vilify the professor (the “evil white woman”), she’d gain support. If this article were posted in a group with heavy millennial readership, she may though.
It’s hard to see who may have said what because currently it looks like a “he says, she says” scenario unless someone has a video of the full presentation. The professor could have been indeed commenting on her dress code being short, or the young lady could have been triggered based on the word “short skirt” and thought immediately that the professor was being sexist (and reacted well…like an impulsive teenager rather than a mature one). Then there are her classmates who also mentioned that the professor was talking about dress code in a professional setting, but again, will still need some form of a video to verify that.
Was it in the rubric for the presentation? No?…. Then the comment was out of line. Period. And appealing to the “male gaze” and “what [her] mother would think” being an error in phrasing? This professor said what she meant. If it was about professional dress she would have said something about professional dress. Again if it wasn’t in the rubric, then this professor is simply making a case for the hound dog “boys” she apparently has in her class.