Stopping teenagers from expressing themselves is an action to be undertaken with caution. In ambiguous cases, it’s often best to just give them the benefit of the doubt.

Such seems to be the case with the recent trend of suggestive T-shirts in high schools, according to a Sept. 27 article in The Washington Post. Administrators don’t know where to draw the line between messages that are offensive and those that are not.
The article said that shirts saying “Pimps,” “Your boyfriend is a good kisser” and “Too hot to handle” are raising questions.

A lenient policy regarding these kinds of T-shirts in high schools, making students change only when wearing overtly obscene messages, would probably be the most effective approach.

A message that one person finds offensive or sexually suggestive may seem innocuous to another person. Attempting to draw that arbitrary line could open challenges to T-shirts that are not suggestive but merely insulting.

Most teens are only wearing the shirts to be funny or ironic, not to convey actual messages about their behavior. The article mentioned that the prevalence of teen sexual activity continues to decrease.

The article said that administrators often make students wearing offensive T-shirts turn them inside out or wear a school shirt instead. This only draws peer attention, reinforcing what he or she was probably seeking in the first place. If a shirt is bad enough to warrant discipline, it would be more effective to call the student’s parents to pick them up or bring another shirt, garnering attention from the parents instead of other students.

In the grand scheme of things, high schools should focus their energies on bigger issues than offensive messages on T-shirts and let students keep this relatively harmless form of expression.