kilt-shorts give me the creeps.

Max’s school is one block away from a Catholic high school. If the image that immediately popped into your head was Britney Spears from the Baby One More Time video, I don’t blame you. That’s where I’m going with this anyway – everyone’s favourite stereotype: the slutty Catholic school girl. As the days grow colder, I wonder to myself, will this be the day the girls give up their kilt-shorts for some sensible pants? And every day I become more and more confident that any self-respecting slutty catholic school girl would happily freeze her sweet patootie off in 3 feet of snow and subzero weather before she would give up her kilt-shorts for a pair of khakis. It just isn’t going to happen.

You heard me, kilt-shorts. What? You haven’t had the pleasure of seeing these yet?

Kilt-shorts are shorts (I’m talking short shorts à la John Stockton) that are part shorts and part kilt. If jean shorts are "jorts", these are "shilts", or "kirts". Probably kirts, that is way more catchy. I digress. The kilt part barely covers the shorts, making it look like the person wearing said kirt, is wearing a mighty mighty short skirt. Yes – gone are the days of seeing private school girls walk to school and back rolling their kilts up and down from the top to make them shorter.  Thanks to your local uniform company, that is no longer necessary.

I find myself torn about these kirts. It feels like by including this garment as part of what is deemed to be an "acceptable" part of the school uniform, girls are being given permission to dress inappropriately for their age. Or, to be more direct, like sluts. Wait, that’s going to far. Let’s go with this instead: Young girls are being told it is absolutely okay to dress in a sexually provocative manner at school, in fact, they are being encouraged to do so.

The other side of this is that if these girls are going to roll up their kilts anyway, at least these kirts are protecting their modesty by keeping their vaginas and buttocks fully covered. Because, you know, that will stop them from dancing, and dancing leads to sex and stuff, and we can’t have that. And we won’t talk about the fact that under these kirts, most of these girls are wearing thongs they purchased at La Senza Girl, the junior version of La Senza - a lingerie store for women. Start 'em young eh? It's never too early for butt floss!

Am I out to lunch on this? Would you let your daughter wear a kirt? Were you the girl rolling up your kilt on the way to school? Maybe because for me, clothing for school consisted of a beaver canoe sweatshirt, jeans and a pair of converse and I never wore a uniform I don’t get it. Let me know.