It’s getting cold in Japan and as each year I wonder how Japanese school girls can survive with bare legs everyday? I know from Japanese friends that school boys usually even wear leggings under their uniform. In the classroom girls and boys apparently fight over air conditioner setting because they are dressed so differently.
Are girls forbidden from wearing stockings or do they feel pressured to show their legs to look “cute”? Or do they feel less cold because they are used to it? It blows my mind why nobody would want to change the fact that teenage girls have to dress like this. In other countries, older ladies would tell young girls like this to wear stockings and a coat to not get a bladder infection.
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Some schools allow tights/stockings, other schools allow them to use a blanket/throw over their legs in the classroom. Although it is cold, it doesn’t seem to be an extremely serious issue for the girls. I often ask students if, given the choice, they’d rather wear pants, and the majority of them say they prefer the skirts.
Also, it balances out because summer is awful and the boys are stuck in long pants while the girls get skirts. (I think they should all be given the choice, though – when I lived in Taiwan a lot of girls chose to wear pants).
My classmates are all girls and they would rather wear pants than skirts because of cold. I am the only boy in my class :p
It’s not as big of an issue as you’re making it.
我慢
Why do people always bring this topic up? What is so interesting about school girls’ legs? Haha
Anyway! I can’t speak for Japanese girls specifically – but I had to wear a skirt as part of my uniform in secondary school in the UK and it just wasn’t a big deal. I mean it wasn’t like we had a choice lol. I do think my legs got very used to the cold because even now as an adult I rarely ever wear trousers and wear skirts and tights all through winter.
But actually, I will say another reason I didn’t mind the cold when I was in school was because I looked cute in my uniform. It wasn’t pressure to look cute, it was just being cute haha. So yes, that might be a factor too 🙂
There’s nothing funnier than a bunch of middle aged redditors discussing online about school kiddie legs on a Friday night.
Whatever it is they definitely don’t need you to white knight about this. キモイ
Some schools don’t allow kids to wear tights under the skirts. My kids are elementary age and the boys have to wear uniforms with shorts year-round. The girls are allowed to wear tights in the winter but the boys are not. The strangest thing to me is that the uniform has summer shorts and winter shorts, so they could easily make the winter shorts pants since they’re making us buy another pair anyway, but they don’t.
Fat grows on their legs faster as natural resistance.
What I reckon you should do it wait outside the school gates, with a clipboard and hi-viz vest, and ask all the girls when they’re coming outta the school gates.
*What are you wearing young lass?
Oh I see you got the LycraSpandex… woooo… you smart girl. Aren’t you cold though?*
Make sure to do it only at an all girls school, so none of those pesky boys mess up your stats.
I’m trying not be a complete dick about this, I really am.. but …
Like, for real?
You are seriously asking this?
Japanese school girls have the monopoly on wearing short skirts in cold weather in the whole wide world?
“Hmm, I’d better ask Reddit why *JapaneseSchoolGirls*® wear short skirts in winter.”
How is this even a Japanese related question again?
Either you’re a woman who has never seen or worn skirts and it’s your first time to see girls wearing skirts in winter which I can kinda appreciate… maybe… if you’re from Trinidad and Tobago and never seen a snow flake or winter in your life.
Or you’re a man (which I really hope isn’t so…barf)
Or perhaps you’re super young and naive, but if that was the case then you’d also presumably know how to type “wearing skirt in winter” in English into google and seeing the hundreds of results with many non-Japanese women/girls *also* wearing skirts in winter and realizing this actually isn’t a Japanese-only topic at all.
It’s the price one must pay to achieve maximum kawaii
Don’t understand why everyone in the comments is so aggro. I’m a woman and this constantly boggled my mind when I had to share a bus with students. I’d be wearing heat tech, thick pants, a coat, and scarf and still be absolutely freezing my ass off, and then young girls had their bare legs exposed and no coat on and were just fine. I wondered if they used some kind of warming cream or what, because I couldn’t comprehend not being cold in -10 degree weather.
I always feel sorry for them and remember my traumatizing memories from high school. For the first couple of years I was sexually harassed by many ADULT men on the street because our uniform had a mini skirt look. (No pleats and kind of form fitting for a high school skirt) Grown ass men would loudly make sexual comments about my still developing body.
On my third year of high school, pants became available for girls legally but the boutique where I got my school uniform didn’t have any. I immediately asked my mom to get me one pair of pants, she had to find the fabric approved by the school administration and a tailor designed it for me. After careful inspection by the dean (!) my tailored pants were approved by the school. That stopped the sexual harassment by adults but now I was being relentlessly bullied by mostly boys and were called insulting names like tranny etc for trying to protect myself as a 17 year old from sexual harassment. Boys lived life in easy mode. There was name calling from some girls too, I guess deep down they were afraid of being bullied if they didn’t conform to society’s expectations of women. (aka continue to be a sex object instead of focusing on your education!)
There are just way too many pedophiles in this world. And the systemic behaviors of people serve their interests
I’d say don’t concern yourself with the affairs of teenage girls mate
It’s done purely out of pride.
Source: Ask every Japanese person I know for past 10 years.
I just don’t feel cold on my legs. My Japanese friends also said the same. As long as we keep moving, legs never feel cold. I’m a man tho, and i only wear boxers at home.