Switching at School

James looked at the clothes that had been laid out on his bed with a mixture of fascination and fear.

The items laid out were a white blouse, a lace bra, a school tie, a navy blue cardigan, a pleated grey skirt, knee high white socks, a pair of white cotton panties and a pair of shiny black girls' shoes.

James knew that he would shortly have to put these clothes on. To go outside dressed as a girl!

The only consolation that he was not the only one, for all boys at his school were required to don the uniform of a schoolgirl and attend school.

It was the fault of that interfering busybody, Nancy Cochrane. She was a classmate of James who was a feminist and active on all of the student committees. She had always insisted that a girl was superior to any ten boys and kept on quoting statistics, that more girls than boys graduated from high school, went to university and got good degrees and good post grad qualifications. That females made better students and leaders. Why then, she asked, did girls still have to wear the same uniforms that their grandmothers had worn? That denoted inferiority to boys? Nancy had pushed for girls to be allowed to wear trousers but had been defeated in the vote that followed.

Undeterred, Nancy introduced her next motion. A role reversal day. One day when girls came to school in male attire and boys came in female attire. The committee saw little harm and even some fun in the proposal, and so it passed. And that was why James had to put on a girl's uniform.

With some help from his mother (especially with the bra), James got into the outfit. The blouse was tight against his body, the panties were tighter than the underwear he usually wore, but the most disconcerting item was the skirt, for it defined him instantly as a girl, and he felt vulnerable wearing it for his legs were exposed. For one used to trousers, the transition to a skirt felt very incomfortable. The shoes were clunky and he was unused to wearing knee length socks and the bra was just alien to him.

Ironically, James was wearing the uniform normally worn by the proposer of this arrangment, Nancy Cochrane herself, and she would be wearing his, for they were roughly the same size, although the cuffs of the blouse rode slightly up his forearms. James headed out for school, carrying Nancy's satchel and her sports kit. It was a cold, windswept day and James immediately noticed the cold drafts up his skirt and that his bare legs were cold.

His appearance predictably caused hilarity for he still had the short hair of a boy pupil and he was clearly a boy in skirts, which caused him embarressment. In classes, the trousered girls sat smugly, laughing and making comments about the blushing boys in their skirts. James found the experience humiliating. The boys had to attend the lessons that the girls normally attended, such as home economics where they had to wear aprons and learn how to cook cupcakes, and do needlework, whilst the girls did woodwork and metalwork.

In sports, James was clad in a white T-Shirt and a cute bottle green mini-skirt that showed off his legs and earned him some wolf-whistles from girl spectators. The boys played netball. The girls, clad in shorts, played soccer. It was noted that the girls became more confident and assertive in trousers and the boys became quiet and shy in skirts and were better behaved.

The headteacher was pleased to see that the school had survived the experiment. However, when the girls went home, it was still dressed in the uniforms of their male peers. The boys were left in their girls' uniforms and wondering when they would get their own back. James, returning home in his girls' uniform, phoned Nancy and asked her to return his uniform.

Nancy's response was "Oh, you silly boy! You're already wearing your uniform! Did you really think that once we had put on your trousers that we'd ever give them back? Get used to the skirt, cos that's what you'll be wearing from now on! We girls are way ahead of you in every way and now we're just claiming what is ours by right and putting you boys in the clothes that you should be wearing!". The line went dead.

James looked dumbly down at his skirt with the horrible realisation that everything Nancy has said was right.