In her 14 years of school, Alexi Halket has never been suspended or expelled. Up until this week, the Grade 12 student hadn’t even seen the inside of her principal’s office.

All that changed when the Etobicoke School of the Arts student dressed for class on Monday, choosing to bare her midriff with a sleeveless, turquoise and black patterned crop top.

The shirt, she was told by a vice-principal, who pulled her into the office, was “too inappropriate and looked too much like a bra.”

Halket disagreed, and when she stormed out of a 90-minute meeting about her attire she did so with a plan that spread like wildfire over social media that evening.

By Tuesday, Halket’s 18th birthday, it had trickled down to hundreds of young women across the GTA, who made their way to class dressed in crop tops of their own emblazoned with messages fighting dress codes, which they say unfairly target females.

Their goal was simple, said Halket: “We wanted to stand in solidarity against people making women cover their bodies because it's offensive and inappropriate.”

As they walked the halls of about 25 Toronto District School Board schools and a handful of universities, there was a flurry of wide-eyed glances and crowds of new supporters — including plenty of men.

Many used it as an opportunity to exchange stories about previous trips to the principal’s office and run-ins with teachers who, they say, doled out detentions and ordered offending outfits — yoga pants deemed “too tight,” a spaghetti-strap shirt revealing a girl’s shoulders, or a skirt just a few millimeters above the knee — removed.

In contrast, they said, boys are allowed to run around the gym and school yards shirtless, seemingly skirting dress codes aimed at desexualizing institutions.

“We are just trying to love our bodies and appreciate them for what they are, even with a dress code,” Halket told the Star, noting she had never been dinged for an outfit infraction before. “Why would you send a female home because guys can’t control themselves when they see a girl’s outfit?”

But at Etobicoke School of the Arts, where Halket’s movement was born, principal Rob MacKinnon claimed the dress code has been a “non-issue” over the past few years.

When students paraded around the halls of the high school Tuesday baring their stomachs, he noted there wasn’t even any reprimanding.

Instead, he said, he was “proud of the students” for sparking such fervour, and invited them to a lunchtime chat about the dress code — a “pretty open and purposefully vague” policy without common caveats, like skirts that must be at the knee or longer and tank-top straps required to be larger than the width of three fingers.

“For a student at a swim meet in the morning to come to school in a Speedo is not appropriate, (just) like a student at school in a bikini is not appropriate,” he said he told the students. “There is a line, and now we need to define it.”

Over in North York, where about 15 students at Earl Haig Secondary School walked into the building with their midriffs exposed, prepared for the consequences, 17-year-old Zoe Santo said one teacher rushed over to her and told her “cover up.”

But she said others “looked away and ignored it” when they saw her donning a red bralette, with “Stand in Solitary” written on her arm and “Not asking for it” on her lower back.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

Her friends Sara Klebanoff, 17, and Kayla Buium, 18, who organized the school’s iteration of the protest, said they’ve heard of girls who got in trouble for wearing shirts that lifted a half-inch above their waist and others with shorts more than a hand’s length above their knee.

“What about that is sexualized?” Klebanoff questioned. “This is over-exaggerating, and students should be modest, but you shouldn’t be pulled out of class for wearing those kinds of outfits.”

TDSB spokesperson Shari Schwartz-Maltz said she wasn’t aware of schools other than Etobicoke School of the Arts where protests were being staged, but said the board allows individual schools to customize rules around dress in the code of conduct.

“It is not just a decision made by the principal. It is often a decision made with the teachers, often the kids and very often the parents,” she said. “Different schools have different communities, different wants and different community levels.”

When they delve into the professional world, she said, students will quickly find that it is not appropriate to show up in a sports bra or a crop top, but she added: “We encourage kids to think critically and speak their minds. There is so much passion here, and this is part of learning.”