Can High Schools Tellguys They Cant Wear Makeup In Texas

A Texas school district has adopted a new gender-neutral apparel code after making national headlines in Dec for suspending an openly gay male student who wore nail polish to school.

The Clyde Consolidated Independent School District's policy for the 2021-2022 schoolhouse year doesn't distinguish between "girls" and "boys," co-ordinate to NBC affiliate KRBC-TV in nearby Abilene. Instead, the wearing apparel code provides guidelines for all students, and it no longer prohibits boys from wearing smash shine or makeup.

Trevor Wilkinson, a senior at Clyde High School in Texas, says he was suspended for his painted nails. — Trevor Wilkinson, a senior at Clyde High Schoolhouse in Texas, was suspended for his painted nails. Trevor Wilkinson

Trevor Wilkinson, a senior, said he received in-school suspension when he returned from Thanksgiving pause wearing nail shine.

He said the school's principal and vice chief told him he could remain in break, remove the shine or get to virtual learning, NBC News reported in Dec. He told them that he wasn't going to remove the nail polish, so he would stay in suspension.

At the time, Wilkinson said the district's dress code was discriminatory.

"It's really lamentable to me because I feel like it's 2020 and we should exist progressing and not taking steps dorsum," he said in December. "And information technology makes me actually sad because I know that there are other people who experience similar this and feel similar they can't express themselves and that they never volition be able to because of people similar this, who are non open up-minded enough to see another perspective."

Wilkinson started a Alter.org petition shortly afterward being suspended titled "Allow males to wear boom polish," which received more than than 400,000 signatures equally of Wednesday.

"I am a gay male person and I'thou beyond proud," he wrote on Change.org. "This is unjust and not okay. Help me show that it is okay to express yourself and that the identity that order wants to normalize is not okay."

The commune did not comment on Wilkinson's suspension, but Superintendent Ken Drupe said in a argument at the fourth dimension, "The District will conduct a thorough review of its clothes code when it performs its annual review of the Student Handbook, and, until that time, the District will clinch that no pupil is treated in a discriminatory or caitiff fashion," according to KRBC-TV.

Two weeks after his suspension, Wilkinson addressed the school board at a meeting in Dec, noting that the American Ceremonious Liberties Union of Texas had sent a letter to more than 400 Texas school districts — including Clyde's — only two months prior "and gave them a heads up that some of their policies were accounted discriminatory."

"Why is it against dress code for a man to be comfortable with his masculinity and defy the gender norms that society has imposed on the states," he told the school lath. "Meliorate yet, in what way is information technology harmful for me to article of clothing nail smoothen?"

The board created the new apparel lawmaking policy later on months of discussion among staff members, administrators, parents and students, KRBC-TV reported. It was unanimously approved by the district school board Monday.

Wilkinson told KRBC-TV he's proud of the district for taking "steps in the right management."

"People are more comfortable at schoolhouse," he said. "I call back that I will always look back on this experience and know that I did the right thing."

Jo Yurcaba is a reporter for NBC Out.