Woman Who Wore A 'Bra, Skirt & Stiletto Heels' To School As A Teen Reveals How She Avoided Getting Dress Coded
Dress codes are wrong, so anything you can do to get around them is good.
TikTok A woman named Halley Mcgookin, who touts herself as a fashion content creator, has been recently showing off her outfits from high school and roasting herself for them.
Many people weren’t only shocked at how bad some of them were, but how she never got in trouble for some of the more revealing outfits she wore. Everyone knows how over-the-top high school dress codes can be, so how did she get away with it for so long?
She claims she got away without being dress coded by lying her way out of it.
In response to someone leaving a question on her original video where she shows off her high school outfits, Mcgookin posts a video explaining how she was able to get away without being dress coded for so long.
“Okay for context, I wore sl-tty a-- outfits to high school every single day and I often would get dress coded,” she claims. When teachers would try to punish her for breaking the dress code, she reveals that she would come up with a story about why she wasn’t covered up.
“One time, shocker, I walk into school wearing, like, a bra, skirt, and stiletto heels, and basically not one item of clothing I was wearing was following the dress code,” she starts her story. During the very first period, Mcgookin gets up to go to the bathroom and is met by the principal in the hallway who tells her she can’t be wearing that.
“Here’s the thing. I have always been an incredible liar, I’m very talented at it, okay?” she explains. “I’m not saying I do it a lot but if I need to finesse myself out of a situation I will.”
She believes there are two principles to being a good liar.
“One, you have to make everyone think you’re a bad liar by telling a bunch of little, white lies all the time and getting caught in them and being like ‘oh my God you guys I’m so bad at lying,’” she explains. That way, if you say something that might sound like a lie (when it’s a good one), everyone will believe you’re telling the truth because “you would know” if she was lying.
Next, she explains that in order to pass off a really good lie is to “make up a lie that makes the person so f--king uncomfortable that they can’t say anything.” When the principal asked her if she had a jacket to cover her shoulders and cover her stomach, she thought of a lie on the fly, and told her “‘I do have a jacket’ — I didn’t have a jacket, obviously I was lying.”
“‘But I had to give it to my friend because she’s on her period. She just started her period and she bled through her pants and I needed to give it to her so she could tie it around her waist.’”
Mcgookin explains that the principal was very uncomfortable and immediately sympathetic, opening the way for her to get away without being dress coded.
“You know what, that’s very respectful but you do need to cover yourself so I need you to go get that jacket from her, have her get a jacket from somebody else,” the principal told her. “I need you to bring me the jacket and show me that you actually have it.”
In a 2020 study of the dress codes at 100 New York schools, the group Girls for Gender Equity found that many of the clothing items prohibited by many of the schools are typically worn by girls, despite the city having rules against gender-specific dress codes.
"Most of the students who are being disciplined for dress code-related interactions are girls or Trans or gender nonconforming students," Ashley Sawyer, the Director of Policy and Government Relations for Girls for Gender Equity, told Spectrum News at the time.
The group says these dress codes often go hand-in-hand with thinking that the best way to prevent sexual harassment in schools is to tell girls to cover up.
"You cannot prevent school-based sexual harassment or assault by telling girls that they cannot wear a halter top or cannot wear a spaghetti strap blouse,” said Sawyer.
Needless to say, these unfair rules often result in girls feeling disillusioned with their school's rules — as experienced by this TikToker.
Halley Mcgookin had another solution to not get in trouble.
“I don’t know why this was my solution, but I just packed my s--t and I just left,” she explained. “I left school. I just walked out. I was like ‘yeah, I don’t need to be here today.’”
She was shocked that she had never faced any consequences for the dress code violation or simply up and leaving school, but she didn’t.
“But yeah, the faculty and administration at the school did not like me,” she finished her story.
Dress codes are morally unethical and often target the wrong people or are unevenly enforced, meaning that any way to get around it will always be the right thing to do — even if you have to do a little lying.
Isaac Serna-Diez is an Assistant Editor who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics. Keep up with his rants about current events on his Twitter.