Thom Nickels: The CAPA controversy and the culture of public dress
Earlier this week something went down at the Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts (CAPA). Apparently two adult men followed a group of female students into the school. When the incident was reported, the principal is alleged to have laughed it off but instead issued a dress code that primarily affected female students.
While laughing off an incident like this is not cool, the administrator’s response – connecting the untoward stalking to the way the female students were dressed – brings up a larger issue, that being how women dress in public, especially in warm weather.
As someone who has written about life in a Maryland nudist colony where I was obligated to dress down (ahem) in order to get an accurate story, I’m no prude when it comes to bare skin and an occasional – with apologies to William Burroughs – “Naked Lunch.” And yet over the last couple of years I have noticed how women have increasingly been taking off their clothes to feel comfortable in warm weather. A trip to any supermarket in Philly is a kaleidoscope of female bare backs and shoulders, cleavage exhibitions and shorts (some flesh -colored) that ape nudity.
What’s going on here?
By comparison, men are extremely modest. Modesty for men, I think, began when basketball shorts, both in pro games and in schools, became longer and longer until they all but covered the ankles. It used to be that basketball players wore shorts that left little to the imagination. The baggy longer style came from black athletes, but soon everyone was wearing these weighty pajamas.
I’ve also been informed that male students are so modest in high schools that group nude showers after gym class – this was the norm when I was in high school – are a thing of the past. Today, the male students are embarrassed to be nude around one another. They don’t shower, but go to class sweaty and then shower when they go home. And all because of modesty.
Okay, so what happened to women and girls? Why this penchant to let it all hang out in public, as if the public wants to see it in the first place?
This brings me back to CAPA and the student walkout in protest of the dress code there. While there may be other issues with the principal there that need to be addressed, the dress code is not one of them. My understanding is that CAPA’s dress code prohibits see-through garments, plunging fronts, and open backs. It also stipulates that shorts, skirts, and dresses cover undergarments and reach mid-thigh.
That seems fairly reasonable and sane.
I am aware that the “creative” flavor of a high school for the arts might seem to encourage bohemian and renegade dress, but an exposed bosom with a lot of tattoos doesn’t make you an artist any more than wearing a French beret in a café makes you a talented poet.
It also struck me that some of the female students at CAPA were annoyed that only female students were called out for dressing inappropriately. The reason for that should be obvious: males dress modestly: they don’t dress for class with one nipple exposed or try to sit in a ceramics class in a jockstrap. Men, if anything, are overly modest. This has been a cultural trend for a while now, going back to those pajama-clad ballplayers.
One CAPA female student posted on Reddit (the Internet’s scatological blackboard) that security guards at the school “were pulling girls they found to be ‘dressed inappropriate’ out of the metal detector line and holding them in an empty classroom without AC, where they told them that dressing like that was like a ‘buffet for men.’” (This incident, apparently, inspired the student walkout.)
She continues:
“No cis boys were dress coded. The only boy in the room was my trans classmate who intentionally didn’t wear a binder that day, and the only AMAB person in the room was a passing trans girl who wore a crop top. A ton of boys and AMAB kids tried to get dress coded but didn’t. One kid wore a cheerleader uniform with a crop top and miniskirt. Another wore a baggy t-shirt with the caption ‘I’m the cum man.’”
What this comment tells me (aside from the fact that the speaker is charmed by woke terminology) is that even when boys try, they still can’t dress immodestly and be “dress coded.”
So, yes, this dress code crackdown is nothing about sexism, as several CAPA novice feminists attempted to point out.
It’s been reported that the Philadelphia School District will hold town halls and listening sessions to address the issue, even though the dress code isn’t really an issue.
As one reasonable person on Reddit commented, “Pretending that wearing clothes that look painted on is somehow not for attention (even if that attention is you preening like narcissus at yourself in the mirror) is wild work. You know damn well why you’re dressed like that.”
When you go out in public or to school half nude, expect stares, expect cameras to roll, and expect to attract the stares of an unhinged person who might follow you for several blocks. There are thousands of stories in the naked city!
The issue of scantily dressed females is also a problem at gyms like Planet Fitness. Over the last few years, I’ve noticed that many women stopped wearing t-shirts at the gym. They only wear their bras, which was considered rather inappropriate and unusual not so long ago.
“Women wear too revealing clothing,” one woman wrote on a site about women and gyms. “It is not for comfort, heat regulation, nor for improved range of motion. It’s for the male gaze. Being almost naked does not equate to female empowerment.”
Thom Nickels is Broad + Liberty’s Editor at Large for Arts and Culture and the 2005 recipient of the AIA Lewis Mumford Award for Architectural Journalism. He writes for City Journal, New York, and Frontpage Magazine. Thom Nickels is the author of fifteen books, including “Literary Philadelphia” and ”From Mother Divine to the Corner Swami: Religious Cults in Philadelphia.” His latest work, “Ileana of Romania: Princess, Exile and Mother Superior,” will be published in May 2026.
