Sorry, your skirt is too long for France

Twitter lit up with the hashtag #JePorteMaJupeCommeJeVeux —"I wear my skirt as I please" — after a Muslim schoolgirl in France was sent home from school for wearing a long black skirt to class. School authorities, citing concern over France's secularity law, asked her to leave and come back with a more neutral outfit.

The student, known only as Sarah K, is at the center of a controversy in France over its 2004 secular law banning overt religious symbols, including Muslim niqabs, large Christian crosses and Jewish skullcaps. Sarah wore none of these to school. Rather, her choice of a long black skirt inspired the principal of her school in the village of Charleville-Mézières, north of Paris, to send her home with a note to her parents, telling them to "rectify her clothes if you want her to continue her schooling."

This Tweet, widely circulated, showed a  photo of a school-aged girl who could well be Sarah K.

Alissa J. Rubin, who reported the story for the NY Times, says Sarah was wearing a straight black skirt with a fitted shirt and a pink sweater over it.  "And she wore a hijab [a traditional headscarf].  But her face was open and visible, and she looked put together and friendly, and not particularly like she could be seen as breaking any rules or laws in either the West or a Muslim country." 

The Collectif contre l'islamophobie en France, a group that collects data on Islamaphobia says "Sarah is unfortunately far from being an isolated case." It published extracts of testimonials that it says represent a conservative drift among French school authorities.

Rubin, the New York Times reporter, notes the controversy over Sarah's long black skirt raises questions about discrimination in French schools. "If a child is Muslim, and a wears a skirt that is too long, or a headband that is too wide, the teachers are more likely to censure that, where they won't if it's being worn by a non-Muslim child."

Social media is awash with images of females whose hemlines might not pass muster in a French school.  The Statue of Liberty has been cited.

As are these Disney princesses.

Many Tweets ask why a maxi-skirt can be a fashion statement, but still be deemed not secular.

Rubin observes that a clothing controversy in France's elementary and secondary schools reveals a larger cultural divide. "There's a kind of fear [among some French] that if you start to allow anything in the way of signs of religiosity that then it will rapidly be a slippery slope, and soon you'll have headscarves and then who knows what."