More than 25 percent of all students in the nation have been bullied at some point, according to stopbullying.gov. When it comes to what students get bullied for, often, a common theme revolves around outward appearance, particularly about what clothes fellow students wear.

This is not much of a surprise, as a study conducted by Susan Swearer, a professor at the University of Nebraska, showed that more than one-third of surveyed middle-school students said they were bullied for the clothes they wore. Another study conducted by Dorothy Espelage, a professor at the University of Illinois, attributes increases in fashion-related bullying among teens to the rise in advertising of designer brands. Brand names are expensive, so with the affluence of the city of Carmel as a whole—let alone CHS—it’s hard to imagine this not being a problem here. However, criticizing or judging people’s fashion choices still extends far beyond school hallways and into the political world.

In particular, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton still suffers from some of the same criticism that bullied students do—that of her clothes. According to USA Today, around the time of the 2012 election and even more so now as a potential presidential candidate to represent the Democrats in the 2016 elections, what she’s wearing seems to matter much more than her stances on bigger issues in this country. But women aren’t the only ones getting attention for their physical appearance—men are too, as the media has also highlighted Paul Ryan’s biceps, Chris Christie’s waistline and the like.

Relatively recent and highly discussed surveys from “Name It. Change It.,” a project addressing the effect of female politicians’ fashion choices on their poll ratings, concluded that female candidates lose voter support with media coverage of their physical appearance. But studies conducted by a study conducted by Danny Hayes, Dan Hopkins, Jennifer Lawless and John Sides, associate professors in political fields of study, suggest otherwise and additionally point out flaws within surveys conducted by “Name It. Change It.,” which included grotesque negative descriptions and several differences between the candidates (including issue stances, political experience and even marital status). The professors’ surveys found that such media coverage can also equally affect voter support for male candidates, and not even by much. Furthermore, the studies also showed favorability ratings didn’t even differ as much for whether the ratings were positive, neutral or negative.

So set aside the issue of candidates’ genders since the study showed that male and female candidates differ negligibly in media coverage effects. In political elections, their clothing shouldn’t matter. A person you might find to be the nicest person you know could dress very casually, and likewise, someone as mean as a serial killer could dress up nicely. Candidates’ outward appearances might paint incorrect pictures of whom they really are, so that shouldn’t be taken too seriously. Instead, we should turn our attention to what they have to offer—their stances on the many issues in this country. We should be more concerned about those since those are what will affect us in the future.

The candidates that you and many others will choose will run this country someday. They will represent you. Especially this upcoming school year, political campaigns for the U.S. presidential candidates will hit us hard with the next elections coming up in 2016. And this is not just for the faculty in CHS: to the seniors—most of you will be able to finally cast votes in this next election. We want to elect candidates who can represent us well and potentially create change for an America we will experience in the future, and that person does not necessarily need to be wearing fancy clothes. That kind of person should run the government of us, by us, for us.