'Sexy' Teachers Should Be Named and Shamed, Say Russian Lawmakers

MOSCOW, December 20 (RIA Novosti) – Russian lawmakers plan to introduce a “wall of shame” for sexily dressed schoolteachers, the official government newspaper said Friday.

The penalty would be aimed at teachers who refuse to comply with a proposed new dress code, the Rossiyskaya Gazeta daily said.

The code is being devised by the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, alongside a newly restored school uniform for children. It will not require teachers to wear uniform, but will include recommendations on appropriate dress.

Female teachers would be banned from wearing immoderately short skirts, exposing cleavage or using excessive makeup, while brightly colored outfits and huge accessories would also be off limits.

Although teachers cannot be fired for refusing to obey the new rules, Russian lawmakers suggested placing their pictures on a “wall of shame” instead, the report said.

School uniforms were reintroduced in Russia in September 2013. Unlike in the Soviet Union, there is no single state design and each school has the right to decide on its own uniform.

Many model school uniforms have been designed by a famous Russian couturier, Slava Zaitsev, who has also developed a collection of uniforms for teachers that have been adopted in a number of schools.

Yelena Senatorova, one of the authors of the dress code, who represents the ruling United Russia party on the Duma’s committee on family issues, recently claimed that moral standards had fallen in schools.

“Teachers allow themselves to dress with undisguised sexuality and … get side jobs in strip clubs or advertise services of sexual character on the Internet,” Senatorova told the Izvestia daily.

An intern at a public school in the Volga River city of Yaroslavl worked at a strip club, and a chemistry teacher in the city of Togliatti was fined for running a brothel in her apartment, whose employees included a 17-year-old schoolgirl, the Komsomolskaya Pravda daily reported in April 2009. Both complained of low pay in their teaching posts, the paper said.