“Wearing a bra is a personal choice.”
One year ago, then-17-year-old Kaitlyn Juvik decided that bras were just too uncomfortable and restrictive, so she decided to stop wearing one. “Wearing a bra is a personal choice,” she told People. “It’s my body. Why is it anybody else’s business whether I’m wearing a bra, especially when I’m covered up and dressed appropriately?” But last month, one week before her high school graduation, she was called into the principal’s office at Helena high School in Montana because a male teacher complained that her braless outfit made him “uncomfortable.”
“I was told that a male teacher had complained he was uncomfortable because I wasn’t wearing a bra, and I was told to find something to cover up with,” she told People. “When I left the office, I was so upset that I posted a picture of what I was wearing on Facebook, telling everyone, ‘If any of you are curious, this is the shirt I was wearing when I was called out.’ I most definitely wasn’t wearing anything against the dress code.”
via Twitter
On May 31, hundreds of her fellow classmates got together and staged a protest in support of Juvik who they nicknamed “The Braless Warrior.” Nearly all of the female students at her school went braless and some of the men wore bras on the outsides of their shirts. After the protest hit the local news, Juvik’s movement brought the school a ton of notoriety, but its principal, Steve Thennis, is sticking by his guns. “I’m not going to check students’ undergarments,” he told KTVH News. “We are going to ask them to dress appropriately and if we feel it is inappropriate, male or female, we are going to ask them to cover up.”
Although Juvik has since graduated from Helena High School, her movement isn’t over. People across the world have been showing their solidarity with her at #NoBraNoProblem.
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