Life’s a two-way street: if you tell students and their parents that an important (and life-saving) school policy is optional, you shouldn’t be surprised when they apply the same logic to all the other policies in place. Hypocrisy and double standards won’t fly.

A feminist mom from Chattanooga, in Tennessee, called out her daughter’s school for being hypocritical after they declared that the mask mandate would be optional and anyone can opt-out of it. She then contacted the school board to opt out of the school’s official dress code that she finds to be “misogynistic and detrimental to the self-esteem of young women.” Of course, the mom’s main goal here was to highlight the importance of wearing masks and to protest the fact that they were made optional.

The mom’s email quickly went viral on Twitter after being shared by The Tennessee Holler and Mark Elliot. Both threads started an important discussion about school uniforms and wearing masks during the Covid pandemic, as the highly infectious delta variant continues to spread. Have a read through the mom’s email to the school below and let us know what you think of the situation, dear Pandas.

A mom from Chattanooga wanted to highlight the importance of wearing masks at school as the pandemic continues…

Image credits: Morrowind

…so she called out her daughter’s school’s hypocrisy in making mask-wearing optional but still having “misogynistic” dress codes

Image credits: markmobility

Here’s the mom’s full email to the school board. In it, she addresses the double standards the school has

Image credits: markmobility

The situation in Hamilton County is quite confusing. Ironically, the Hamilton County Schools webpage notes that face coverings are a must. However… parents still have the ability to opt their children out of wearing them. Thus, the entire policy sounds more like a recommendation rather than an obligation, as the Chattanooga Times Free Press notes.

Mark’s thread on Twitter racked up nearly 60k likes, meanwhile, The Tennessee Holler’s post got almost 30k likes.

According to the Chattanooga mom, it’s best to empower young women instead of shaming them into “covering up their shoulders (and other parts of their body).”

However, in an interview with Raw Story, the mom highlighted the fact that she wanted to draw attention to the importance of wearing masks in schools.

“While I disagree with the dress code policy, I’m not really in this to fight that policy. My goal is to draw attention to the importance of mask usage in our schools. We need to base decisions around this issue on medical data and be guided by the recommendations of experts in this area. But I’m up for fighting the dress code once we get the mask issue taken care of!” she told Raw Story.

“We should be guided by science and the recommendation of experts, not by what Tucker Carlson says. Our cases and hospitalization rates in Hamilton County have spiked up in a big way the past few weeks. We are back to where we were last February. It’s very discouraging. There is a very loud contingency agitating against mask use, but I do not believe they are representative of most of us who want to keep ourselves and others safe. Hardly anyone is wearing masks at this point, which is troubling given the spread of the delta variant,” she said.

“It is frustrating that people do not want to get vaccinated and they do not want to wear masks either. I hope that my letter will inspire others to make their voice heard and to advocate for policies that will keep our children and teachers safe.”

Here’s how some people reacted to the mom’s email

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