90 Years of Women

The Ideal Woman

2008-12-05T07:40:00.004-05:00

It doesn’t take a genius to see the discrepancy between men and women throughout history in society. Women have always been at the backburner to men in all aspects of life, in particular to our study, in academia. Women were allowed to attend institutions of higher learning but had stereotypes and negative ideas pressed upon them before they even set foot on a campus. Women in academia were not taken seriously. They were cast off from respectable, or even normal, majors of study and were reduced to taking classes made exclusively for them. Before you get excited for special classes, read carefully. These classes entailed learning how to be a good housewife. Cooking, cleaning, sewing, etiquette, hosting, the list could go on and on. How fun does it sound to sit in classes for hours at time to learn how to iron a shirt just right or properly baste a roast? I thought so…

In her book College Girls, Lynn Peril explains, “women needed a specialized program, one that would not merely deal with the generalities of child psychology, for example, but should “prepare the mother to cope with a tired four-year-old, and, in addition, to get meaning out of this”…with an underlying assumption that housewife was the career that most women, if not aspired to, nonetheless found themselves in.” (Peril, 200)
Even if girls were smart and did end up studying something more stimulating than mashing potatoes, being a smart girl was viewed as tremendously unattractive. In fact, the women students were pushed to hide any intelligence at all! Being as smart as or smarter than a boy was too much for them to handle and they did not like the risk of being shown up by a girl, much less one that they were interested in dating. “Men wanted a woman who was “appreciably less intelligent than they were”.” (Peril, 212) There were even published articles in Redbook addressing dating and a woman’s intelligence. “Men are attracted to women to whom they can feel intellectually superior. They tend to marry girls whose I.Q. and educational achievements are less than their own. Indeed, investigations show that the average male has a very marked tendency to shy away from girls whom he suspects of having as many or more brains than he has.” (Peril, 212)

So at this point, men had already captured women’s capability of brainpower if any of the girls wanted to have a family or even date. Perhaps these harsh standards left no more standards to dominate women’s looks, but they were also controlled, too. If college girls wanted to be noticed and pursued by other college boys, they had a visual standard to maintain, to be the “Ideal Woman”. “According to a poll of male students at “two leading Eastern universities…the ideal wife is 5 feet 5 inches, weighs about 120 pounds, does not wear glasses, possesses sex appeal and a good figure.” (Peril, 212)

Women were to dress right, weigh a certain amount, and look sexy, yet innocent, if they desired any male attention. If these standards were not followed, a girl could wave goodbye to any social life with boys, especially since most campuses before the 1950s were not co-ed. This left girls to socialize with other girls only, unless a male specifically came to visit her due to the fact that girls were not allowed to leave campus and fraternize with a boy. Looking good was imperative.

These standards may seem crazy, but if you really focus on it, is it that much different from today? For example, there is still a looks scale placed upon women in social situations at colleges today if they want to be pursued by a boy. She still must look sexy but innocent and maintain a good figure. And for the intelligence factor, how many women are famous for their notoriously dumb phrases, attempting to accentuate the idea that she is an imbecile when it is usually the opposite. One current example of this is Jessica Simpson’s phrase about “buffalo having wings” that was so laughed at for making her appear idiotic that there are national ad campaigns playing on her ‘idiot’ success. Simpson thinks it is cute gaining laughs and attention when, in fact, it’s just an example of Master’s Tools at work, keeping her at the same standards that were used against women in the early century. Jessica doesn’t see her commercial as degrading and a way to exploit her intelligence to make a buck.

Hopefully women like Jessica Simpson will see one day the negative impact that she makes at spreading the falsity about the ‘ideal’ woman. For all the girls out there, don’t worry about being the ‘ideal’ woman. Take the ‘l’ off and you’ll see the hidden word, it’s just an ‘idea’.

-Laura Condyles

sex (mis)education

2008-12-04T19:19:00.002-05:00

This week we read chapter seven from Lynn Peril’s book College Girls: Bluestockings, Sex Kittens, and Coeds, Then and Now, titled “Sex Ed and Husband Hunting”
Sex education has changed quite a bit since it first entered the university in the late nineteenth century.

When women first entered institutions of higher learning, sex was quite a taboo subject. Women students were expected to maintain actions of a “mannered lady” and virginity was the pinnacle of this job. Women students were only to attend class and be casual, not sexual, playmates to the male students; “She sells her birthright when she becomes a mere playmate, and forgets that God made her for man’s helpmeet.” (excerpt from The Freshman Girl, Peril, 279)
Most schools were extremely strict when it came to relations between the men and the women. Schools set up stern rules for the women to follow and much more relaxed rules for the male students to abide by. Some of the rules emplaced upon women were curfews, parameters of campus they could not leave without special permission, and certain public places – the only places – where they could interact with the opposite sex. The rules were stringent to follow and had severe consequences when broken. Peril explains, “In order to give girls a place to entertain, special, appropriately chaperoned parlors were set aside for receiving visitors”… “Women almost always had earlier and more restrictive curfews than men” (Peril, 282-283) These restrictions lead to awkward developmental patterns between the males and females. When trying to solve a problem, here being sexual relationships, banning the activity completely only exploits it more and makes the issue a bigger problem than initially. Restricting the students from interacting in a normal, adult, and natural manner and keeping sex as taboo kept college students as uninformed children instead of adults.

Students were extremely misinformed when it came to sex. The universities refused to address it, and when forced to due to student body interest, or demanding, the only answer to sex education was abstinence. “At the turn of the century, sex education was still largely a matter of providing what one writer called “just enough anatomical explanation to blunt the curiosity of the young…and to warn them away from any sexual thoughts, feelings, or actions” ” (Peril, 278) Students were told to ignore anything sexual and just focus on school work. After many demands, schools folded to its students and gave classes on ‘marriage’ that still did not address the issue of sex education, but was one step in the direction and became wildly popular among students.

“Students at Northwesten University complained that the ‘faculty was old and fogeyish, and that sex hygiene is not given enough prominence.” Finally, at the University of North Carolina in 1925, sociology professor Ernest R. Groves responded to the requests of male students with the first-ever elective college course in marriage. It included information on sexual fulfillment in wedlock, the psychology of family life, and child rearing. It even encroached on a staple of today’s self-help industry: how to meet the right girl.” (Peril, 280)

These classes were popular but often still did not explicitly address healthy sex education and contraception practices of the time on many college campuses. Some even told students wrong information! Sadly, sex education still remains like this today in parts of our society. While there are many campaigns to increase knowledge of safe sex and the use of contraceptive, many portions of our media still play on the innocent mind or fanciful stories to tell youth today about sex. Two examples seen are in popular movies today, “Knocked Up” and “Mean Girls”. These examples are funny to people who do already have a base knowledge of sex education, but what about those young adults who don’t? The media still leaves it a mystery to many, a large problem that we have in our society. Young adults have the right to knowledge about sexual education and denying it or keeping it a taboo only minimizes our society back into a mislead youth of the 1950s.

-Laura Condyles

I'm a Beautiful (but dumb) Bride!

2008-12-04T18:40:00.000-05:00

Since coming to college I have attended three weddings. I plan to attend one more in December and know of several other weddings, engagements, or planned engagements. These matrimonial plans are all the plans of female friends. With these kinds of experiences happening all around me, I have to wonder: why spend the money to attend university if you’re just going to get married? Granted, conceptions of work and home have changed drastically in the years since women first began to attend college, but marriage continues to mean different things for men and women. Considering laws preventing married women from working remained in place up unto the 1950’s, a women’s place is stereotypically thought to be in the home taking care of her husband and children.

The question of why women bother attending college if their ultimate plans are marriage is explored by Lynn Peril in her book College Girls: “The more one reads mid-twentieth-century prescriptive literature aimed at teenage girls, the more one wonders that any of them went to college at all” (287). If a girl were to attend college it was mainly to look for a husband. Although the college girl would inadvertently receive an education as well as (hopefully) a husband, a woman was expected to downplay her intelligence during the dating process. Popular notions of men and women held that “…men don’t want their wives to be intellectuals…[and] dominating, intellectual women didn’t make good wives…” (Peril 211-212). Popular culture also had significant influence on whether women chose to attend college and the priorities these women set once they entered university: “Books and articles suggested that female intelligence should be hidden, lest it frighten men off, and described college as a smorgasbord of prospective husbands rather than as a place of learning” (Peril 287). Unfortunately, popular culture has not changed much.

A commercial for Gartner Studios, a company specializing in invitations, features brides that have gone through a mental breakdown due to the overwhelming demands of planning a wedding: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cmku_ZaB714 . The mental institution is full of women in white dresses. The only male featured is a hospital staff member. This commercial makes it very clear that weddings are not only the responsibility of women, but also a significant goal and moment in a woman’s life. Maybe if these women’s fiancées helped in wedding plans, they wouldn’t have gone insane! Commercials like this create the expectation that a woman’s primary hopes and plans should center on marriage, children, and the creation of a family.

Given the number of weddings I have attended already, I would argue that expectations for women have changed only to a certain extent. Popular culture today, as it has in the past, continues to encourage women to invest their efforts in the home as opposed to other spheres. Unfortunately, this encouragement de-emphasizes the importance of higher education. If a woman is going to spend her entire life as a house wife, a college degree seems almost obsolete.

-Irene Davidson

A Woman's Place?

2008-12-04T18:33:00.005-05:00

In one of the chapters of her book College Girls, Lynn Peril opens with an interesting and somewhat unsettling quote: “Proud Daughter: “I have made 100 in algebra, 96 in Latin, 90 in Greek, 88-1/2 in mental philosophy and 95 in history; are you not satisfied with my record?” Father: “Yes, indeed, and if your husband happens to know anything about housekeeping, sewing and cooking, I am sure your married life will be very happy” (178). The father’s response conveys much of what was expected of young women; marriage, homemaking, and childbearing were thought to be a woman’s primary responsibilities in life. A college education was a unique experience for a woman and was thought to be almost a deterrent to her divine role in life. While it may appear that this ideology has changed since the early 1900s when this quote was used, dominant images of women in current popular culture would say otherwise.

Historically speaking, a college education was believed to prevent a woman from adequately fulfilling her appropriate roles which were wife, mother, and homemaker: “That a college education somehow unfit women for household duties was perhaps the most resonant criticism of college for women…” (Peril 187). The popular notion “…was that college kept women from learning housekeeping skills by filling their heads with unnecessary things like dead languages…” (190). Thankfully, experts and educators in favor of women’s education argued against these ideas and believed that higher education produced wives and mothers that went above and beyond their expected responsibilities and duties. Popular culture served as a perfect venue to advertise these ideas: “Articles appeared in magazines and newspapers in which [women’s college] presidents defended liberal arts education as excellent training for the future housewife” (196). While I am grateful for the historic defenders of education for women, the fact that very few publicly challenged the assumed role for women is an interesting one.

The film Mona Lisa Smile is a perfect example of a woman frustrated in her attempts to encourage women to look beyond what is socially expected of them. In the film Julia Roberts plays the role of an art history professor, Katherine Watson, at the prestigious all-women’s school: Wellesley. In the following clip Ms. Watson presents a unique lecture to her class using images of housewives in advertisements. This lecture is in response to a school newspaper article accusing Ms. Watson of encouraging her students to betray the expected roles of wife and mother: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5PwQkM0KlY . To an extent this film challenges the idea that women are expected to become housewives regardless of whether they have a college degree or not.

As much as I would like to believe that these expectations no longer exist, current pop culture continues to uphold these expectations. The following three commercials defend the idea that a woman’s place is in the home as a wife, mother, and homemaker. Her primary responsibilities are to her husband, children, and the upkeep of the house. The Jif Peanut Butter commercial has a mother teaching her two sons to equally share the peanut butter sandwich: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdYFVN35h5w&feature=related . Jif’s catchy slogan, “Choosy Moms choose Jif”, blatantly makes the assumption that the only people who should be interested in peanut butter and other cooking and food products are women taking care of their families. The Swiffer commercial plays on the supposed emotional attachment women have with their cleaning products: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_JpYfScoHs . The woman featured in the commercial can’t stand her mop anymore and moves on to the more improved Swiffer product which significantly increases her quality of life. Obviously, since a woman’s only duties are house cleaning! The last commercial is for Bounty paper towels: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGrSMdi87zM . A father and son stare dumbfounded at a spill on the kitchen floor until Mom swoops in and saves the day with one Bounty paper towel! This commercial makes the statement that men do not belong in the kitchen and are clueless when it comes to anything having to do with the home.

While the argument is rarely made currently against women in higher education, the belief that a woman’s place is ultimately in the home continues to be reinforced in popular culture.

-Irene Davidson

Sadie Hawkins Dance, In My Khahi Pants, or, the Tri-Polar College Girl

2008-12-03T22:27:00.003-05:00

Scan the cafeteria for some good seating
I found a good spot by the cheerleaders eating
The quarterback asked me if I'd like a beating
I said that's one thing I won't be needing
And since I'm rather smart and cunning
I took off down the next hall running
Only to get stopped by a girl so stunning
only to get stopped by a girl so stunning

She said, "You're smooth, and good with talking.
You're going with me to the Sadie Hawkins"

The Sadie Hawkins Dance
in my khaki pants
There's nothing better
oh oh oh
The girls ask the guys
it's always a surprise
There's nothing better
baby do you like my sweater?

-Reliant K, “Sadie Hawkins Dance”

Before reading Chapter 7, “Sex Ed and Husband Hunting,” of Lynn Peril’s College Girls, I didn’t know the history of the Sadie Hawkins Dance. While I remember taking issue with the idea that Sadie Hawkins was the only event where it was acceptable for girls to ask guys out in high school, I was unaware that Sadie Hawkins was a girl so ugly that she had to quite literally chase down and capture a husband for herself. Charming. That Sadie Hawkins days are still so ubiquitous that Reliant K wrote a widely popular song about the tradition is somewhat disturbing to me. For some reason, girls have never been able to ask guys to Sadies in a private, personal settings still holds true. Peril’s section on Sadie Hawkins finally explained the bizarre tradition at my high school where senior girls would stand on the balcony and all at once drop down banners with their intended dates’ names on them for the whole school to see. I always found this incredibly strange, but now I can see that it is just a continuation of a highly public fight to get a man.

The Sadie Hawkins tradition is part of a constant tension for college (and high school) women between being beautiful and sexually available and being über-studious shrews. Peril notes that “portraying the college girl as an eroticized playmate defused the threatening image of a man-hating intellectual harpy by reducing her to a sexy submissive pussycat” (Peril 317). It seems to be my theme this week, but it really is astounding how far we still have to go, how far we haven’t come. We are either harpies, or we’re frail and need to be protected, or we’re well-educated prostitutes. On the conservative side of the spectrum, Peril relays that “in the 1930s, Elizabeth Eldridge declared William and Mary’s rules to be the most conservative…Eldridge dryly wondered whether proximity to the sights of Colonial Williamsburg resigned ‘the co-eds to living in the deliciously quaint pattern while on other campuses their gayer sister go whither they please unquestioned’” (Peril 284). While W&M certainly no longer has rules on where students may go on dates, this idea that women need to be forced into protection is still present. While I agree that services like Campus Escort and Steerclear are incredibly valuable when you need to get across campus late at night and that it’s always safest to go out in groups, I hate that friends always ensure that I walk with a friend or get a ride from one of those services late at night or that I go to the frats with friends, but never bug their male friends about the same issues. On the hyper-sexualized side, however, you only need to look at the latest late-night tv ad for Girls Gone Wild to see just how crucial the idea of the promiscuous college girl is for an unfortunately large chunk of our economy.

Eldridge illustrates this perpetual tension when she describes the ideal coed: “bluestockings in class, and silk hose and silver slippers in the evening. It’s a big order, but a girl today must be equal to it if she is to deserve the name of co-ed” (qtd. Peril 290). The college girl of yesterday, of today, and hopefully not of tomorrow must be bright, intelligent, and forward-thinking in class but must revert to the mindset of a (hypersexual) Disney Princess on the weekends.

-Cate Domino

Women’s Studies Students – the New College Girls

2008-12-03T12:11:00.003-05:00

In her book College Girls: Bluestockings, Sex Kittens, and Coeds, Then and Now, Lynn Peril notes that “as part of the protest movement, students held teach-ins and ‘free university’ classes on racism and black history in addition to those on the pacifism and conscientious objection, and at the Free University of Seattle in 1966, a course on women’s history. From these roots grew the demand for including in the traditional curriculum such interdisciplinary courses as, first, black studies…and, finally, women’s studies” (Peril 222). The rise of women’s studies courses and departments were met with serious opposition, and, unfortunately, continue to face serious criticisms, both from college culture and academia.

Much like the College Girls of yesteryear, as a women’s studies major I have been told to hide the nature of my education from men. Much like advice book author Frances Strain’s observation that “it takes discipline to hide a Phi Beta Kappa key and wear instead a piece of swank costume jewelry…but it pays if a girl is matrimony bound” (qtd. Peril 213-214), friends have advised me to answer only with my first major, government, to that ubiquitous pick-up line, “what’s your major?” In a strange, circular, irony, the social need for women to hide their education has landed squarely on the shoulders of women’s studies majors, yet, thankfully, we are too confident in our feminist identities to hide them. I always respond with “government and women’s studies,” and if the frat boy in question makes a quick exit, then I’ve saved myself time – he wasn’t worth it anyway.

Women’s studies faces harsh critiques from within the academy as well. Peril notes that “even today, women’s studies is attacked by academics for its ‘unfocused’ interdisciplinary nature, and mocked by antifeminists for the touch-feely nature of ‘consciousness raising’ and for what they consider its fractious identity politics” (Peril 223). I am consistently surprised when people who I generally consider to be well-educated and open-minded ask if I have a major other than women’s studies, and when I inform them that I am also a government major, respond with “oh, thank God you have a real major, too.” As if women’s studies isn’t a “real” course of study. Feminists’ work is never done, yet even women’s studies professors have advised me and other students to take a second, more mainstream major and even to go to grad school in that field to prepare for inevitable continuing budget cuts in women’s studies departments and fields. It is unfortunate, but today’s women’s studies major truly faces the same binds as the college girls in the early 20^th century – we are expected to really be preparing for something other than what we are earning a degree in and to hide that degree from eligible bachelors. How far we haven’t come!

-Cate Domino

Come one, Come all

2008-11-20T19:17:00.002-05:00

One of the best indicators of a prospering and equal society is citizen’s access to education. Education provides the skills necessary to determine the role of duty for people in regards to intellect and enter into those networks to people with similar roles and education. Access to this education that determines roles, in particular elite and specific education that prepares people for highly skilled and prestigious positions, is the indicator of equality in that society. Within the last century, our country has seen equality by the existence of co-education of male and females in our universities.

We see equal access to education examples in Gina Barreca’s book Babes in Boyland; A Personal Narrative of Co-Education in the Ivy League. In her book Babes in Boyland, Barreca takes her reader through her personal experience as a student at Dartmouth college as the school newly became desegregated from and all-male school to a co-educational institute of higher learning. In her book, she often cites the woes of entering into a ‘boy world’. Girls are often looked over or treated like morons and are not given nearly the amount of respect as a male student, even if the wit and intellect of the female student soars over that of the male student. She is able to take her account of these negative aspects and make her book funny and entertaining as readers, particularly young readers who currently experience co-education in colleges today, gain insight to males and females first ‘learning’ how to ‘learn’ together in the 1960s and 70s.

Barreca explains how she felt like an outsider as a girl entering a world of boy’s education by even signs in bookstores, “The sign suggested that the campus lad not adjusted to the fact that women were now actual full-time, legitimate students at what had always been an all-male college.” (Barreca 53) Conversations and examinations of this prejudice even happened in bathrooms!
“First Girl: “Why do they like the girls from other schools better than they like us?
Second Girl: “Because they can drive them home. We’re always right here, all the time, and you need to drive us away, not jut drive us home, to get rid of us….They help them type. They’ll even do their laundry.” (Barreca 63)

The males at Dartmouth were not ready for the girls. The girls came on campus as a spectacle and were unfairly treated as lesser students by the males. They were not taken as seriously and tested just because they were female. This is an example of oppression, and a pathetic time between sex relations by creating false ideas that women were lesser. We see an issue almost exactly like this in more recent times. Over ten years ago, Virginia Military Institute was ordered to become co-educational. The school and alumni stopped their feet and refused by giving the state two alternative options to allowing females into their school: one, going private and two, setting up a military cadet core at an adjoining all-female school nearby, Mary Baldwin. VMI implemented the all female cadet core but eventually fell to the state and had to admit girls into their freshmen class. Once the girls arrived, many were tested beyond necessary by males in order to make them drop out and leave the school and even some violent actions were taken, such as sexual assault. Over the years, the acceptance of females have dramatically risen and today they are said to be seen as equals, yet the haunting memory still lasts.

How long must women endure this “you can’t do what I do” mentality from men? Whether it’s in education, the workforce, or any social scene in life, women often become a spectacle when trying to cross over into “boyland” or a “man’s world”. This is an exact example of oppression and women have to often deal with receiving criticism when they attempt to do something that isn’t engineered or predetermined for their gender. Hopefully this can phase out over time as the preconceived notions of women being ‘lesser’ phased away from schools such as Dartmouth and VMI.

-Laura Condyles

And I pay for this how...?

2008-11-20T19:14:00.004-05:00

Everywhere you go on our campus of William and Mary, you can see student job offers. From corner signs to bulletin boards and even in the bathrooms, there are tremendous amounts of resources available for students who are looking for some extra cash. Jobs offered on our campus can range from teaching assistants to secretarial duties to child care. Many students work in the student dining halls and libraries hoping to earn an extra dollar for spending or saving.

Student workers are not a new concept. Ever since the rise of college students in the 1960s, campuses across the nation have seen a soar in students who are also job holders. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, attendance of an institution of higher learning was often reserved for the financial elite or well-off families. Student’s tuitions and other school costs were covered by their families and working was not a conceivable option. Also, many schools placed rules on students in the earlier years which left little time outside of the classroom for potential work at a job. Students went to school and only focused on their schoolwork.
As time progressed, the number of the working class increased and there needed to be a way to separate higher earners from lower earners, and thus, began the boom that separated the two, the college degree. With society demanding more people earning a bachelor’s degree, the ability to attend college was more feasible for student who previously would not have been able to. The only problem with this was money, a sudden large tuition fee being processed into family budgets came often with a shock and lack of coverage, thus creating the student worker! Many students up to this day have to find their own means of paying for some sort of their college education whether it is tuition, books, or room and board. This increasing need has lead to the boom of student workers, a topic studied in chapter four of Marc Bousquet’s How the University Works: Higher Education and the Low-Wage Nation. Bousquet explains with example Oswego University:

“Owego is a fairly moderate employer of student labor, directly employing 2,000 undergraduates as part-time workers, or a bit more than a quarter of the student population. Nonetheless, students are overwhelmingly the largest sector of workforce on the campus, substantially outnumbering all other employment groups combined.” (Bousquet 149)

This shows the abundance of student workers everywhere, but there is a problem, many of these workers are not treated fairly. Often these jobs are tedious and low paying, being left to be done by no one else than those who desperately need the money to attend school and/or pay off loans. Students accept these jobs with the mantra of “Accept contingency now, in exchange for an escape from it later.” (Bousquet 148) to remind themselves that their hard work now will help them achieve their college degree and they won’t have to work at such a negative job again. Many of these jobs pay low wages and compromise the lack of salary with promises to give thousands of dollars in scholarships to the students, but because of the double working as a student and an employee, many of these students fail or have to drop out of school and the company saves money by continuing to pay low wages and not fulfilling the scholarship promise. One example of this is by UPS, “UPS counts on its student workers failing or dropping out. Because of the high rate of failed classes, withdrawals, and dropping out, UPS ends up paying only a modest fraction of the education benefits it offers.” (Bousquet 143)

This process of non-affordable college and student worker cycle is to me an unfair disadvantage placed upon students. Society harps on the attainment of a college degree, yet makes it almost impossible for students to dependently achieve one without the financial help of parents or huge student loans. This is an example of Master’s Tools, placing a standard upon young people to earn a college degree, but putting boundaries on achieving it a making it almost impossible to be independent of other sources. Bousquet explains, “For the 80 percent who are trying to work their way through, higher education and its promise of a future is increasingly a form of indenture, involving some combination of debt, overwork, and underinsurance.” (Bousquet 153)

Students are already put under enormous amounts of stress trying to earn excellent grades to forward them into a bright future, but the burden of money and student employment brings down many of these students into negative spirals that often lead to never graduating.

-Laura Condyles

Can't Even Afford a Tweed Jacket

2008-11-20T18:31:00.002-05:00

What do you think of when you hear the word “professor”? An old man with glasses and a tweed jacket? That image is typically what the mainstream media would have us believe. The typical professor is someone like Mr. Feeny from Boy Meets World: smart, kind, tough, and old (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAOTiQ86BgM ). Or maybe the image of the typical professor is more generic and not a specific character. However, the same characteristics still apply. The professor is always an older gentleman with a jacket, tie, and glasses (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaADQTeZRCY ). Even Gina Barreca comments in her personal history Babes in Boyland that the tweed jacket seemed to be a standard issue among the mostly male professors of the classes she attended at Dartmouth. As images of professors have become gendered, so has the compensation through the universities and colleges that are increasingly falling under corporation-type management.

A shocking quote that is used in the book How the University Works by Marc Bousquet in chapter three “The Faculty Organize, But Management Enjoys Solidarity” is from New York University’s Dean Ann Marcus: “We need people we can abuse, exploit, and then turn loose” (95). As universities are consumed by the drive to make a profit, the faculty and staff are financially neglected: “It is obvious today that managerial values interpellate the faculty…” (Bousquet 93). Unfortunately, as can be seen from Dean Marcus’s candid statement, these “managerial values” have been internalized and remain unquestioned by those that benefit: “…tenured faculty, even unionized tenured faculty, accept the managerial accounts of “necessity” in the exploitation of part-time faculty, graduate students, and the outsourcing of staff” (Bousquet 93). It seems as though the university is beginning to be transformed into a university industrial complex, where the drive to retain money trumps the concerns of individual faculty and staff.

In regards to gender, women faculty are the most disadvantaged concerning monetary compensation from their places of employment: “…women faculty teach for as little as a few hundred dollars per course, frequently earning less than $16,000 for teaching eight courses a year, without benefits. Even in the full-time nontenurable positions, women with doctorates, averaging as much as ten years of post-baccalaureate study, commonly earn under $30,000, often without benefits” (Bousquet 91). The exploitation of female professors and faculty are defended by the adoption of a corporate mindset when running a university. Numerous tenured professors or well-paid faculty with sufficient benefits is not cost-effective. It is clear what a university’s priorities are when sports coaches are receiving several times what faculty are. Unfortunately this reality is even more severe for female faculty: “The economic and social violence experienced by…the majority of women faculty working in undervalued disciplines and in nontenurable positions, is experienced…and is sustained by a network of beliefs and institutions “outside” the relationship between administration and employee” (Bousquet 91).

The university has changed significantly from the days of kindly old male professors in tweed jackets. The good news is: women have been accepted as instructors in institutions of higher education for year. The bad news: their labor is being exploited.

-Irene Davidson

Gina Barreca's Unique Voice

2008-11-20T18:23:00.005-05:00

As a Women’s Studies major, I frequently get asked what it is exactly that I study. At times I receive looks of amusement or disapproval. Other encounters with confusion result in a demanding, “What could you possibly do with a degree in Women’s Studies?” One of my favorite responses, however, comes from a friend’s older brother. He asked me why I would even consider majoring in Women’s Studies; he challenged that taking a trip to the mall was as far as I needed to go to “study women”. After experiencing these criticisms, it is refreshing to encounter a memoir like Babes in Boyland by Gina Barreca which recounts her experiences in the newly co-educational Dartmouth as a member of the class of 1979. Barreca acknowledges women’s experiences as unique; she also examines through humor and entertaining observation how sex shaped her time at Dartmouth and beyond.

“Being a woman at Dartmouth College in the 1970s was like having a double major. You were not only a freshman, you were also a “co-ed.” You were not only a physics major or a government major, you were a “female” physics or government major – as if more estrogen in your system changed everything” (Barreca 5). At times merely being female can discredit thoughts, opinions, or actions; enthusiasm for education and intelligent discussion is seen as odd, “cute”, or a way to manipulate. This contempt for intelligent women can be seen in a popular Twix commercial depicting a man and a woman talking at a party, possibly a college party (check out the red solo cup). The woman’s zeal for political discourse is viewed by the male as a way to manipulate her. He pretends to be interested in what she is saying as a way to convince her to accompany him to his apartment, where he will inevitably try to have sex with her (http://www.youtube .com/watch?v=dQJ2SegGWyc ).

Gina Barreca definitely experienced this discrimination as a “co-ed” at Dartmouth. Barreca recounts having a professor ask her what a “woman’s opinion” would be on the texts the class read, as if being a woman automatically creates difference and incompetence in interpretation. What Barreca eventually realizes is that being female does influence how we see the world and this also interacts with other facets of our character: “It occurred to me that nothing was neuter or neutral. I saw that my responses were determined in part by the fact of my gender – as well as by other factors such as my class and ethnicity” (48). In part this realization contributes to Barreca’s assumption of the title feminist: “So, when I really thought about it, I was already a feminist no matter what I chose to call myself….We’re inevitably informed by our gender. You’re taking on a new perspective, offering your statement or question when the system would encourage you to be silent” (50-51). The following YouTube video depicts several advertisements that encourage the physical domination and silencing of women: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ft67TI9Wstc&NR=1 . With this blatant preference for weak, compliant, and unvoiced women, it is no wonder that Gina Barreca found it to be a struggle to be an outspoken and educated woman: “And every time a woman laughs out loud – any time a woman makes a noise that isn’t a wimper or a cooing sound – she’s breaking down a barrier (51).

In her personal history Babes in Boyland, Gina Barreca uses humor to shed light on not only her experiences breaking down barriers in higher education, but also the general experiences of woman that demand to have an equal voice. This is what our project is all about: celebrating the first class of women at William and Mary and ensuring that those woman and all those to follow receive recognition and acknowledgement of their unique and inspiring voices.

-Irene Davidson

White Male Upperclass Privilege

2008-11-20T15:47:00.004-05:00

Our readings for this week, Gina Barreca’s Babes in Boyland: A Personal History of Co-Education in the Ivy League and Chapter 3 of Marc Bousquet’s How the University Works: Higher Education and the Low-Wage Nation entitled “The Faculty Organize, But Management Enjoys Solidarity,” are connected by their discussions of the socioeconomic inequalities that the university system has failed to remove from its central models.

Barreca’s working-class roots seemed to create a barrier between her and the typical Dartmouth student throughout her time there. She notes that “what remained totally out of my reach was the polished look that comes from being a kid from a family with a solid financial and social foundation…I didn’t have ‘the look,’ and so literally couldn’t look at things from the same perspective…I couldn’t fool myself or anyone else into thinking that Dartmouth was the kind of place that would have welcomed me” (Barreca 67-69). Indeed, there was certainly quite a bit of truth to Barreca’s outsider status. When she and a group of friends formed a sorority in critique of a more traditional sorority founding, their opposition wrote to the school paper “saying in essence, ‘If these girls are so against our enterprise, why didn’t they use their real names?’ We had. It was us, no disguise, no camouflage. Our names were Barreca, Lager, Cohen, Rosen – with a handful of other names obviously unexpected for a Dartmouth by-line” (Barreca 80).

The idea that not just male gender, but also money and Anglo-Saxon ethnicity made the ideal Dartmouth student is reflected in battles at the faculty and administrative levels. Bousquet notes that a blind trust in the market to make morally good decisions ends up shorting those who do not fit a specific profile. He quotes “Lucy Snowe,” an present-day English professor, as saying that “teaching here is like being in a bad marriage that looks good to outsiders. I’m the wife whose husband slaps her around but who, nonetheless, smiles gamely, maintaining the relationship ‘for the sake of the kids’” (qtd Bousquet 90). Bousquet’s commentary, that “a chief component of Snowe’s oppression is the very idea that this arrangement is fair or rational, the inevitable – and impersonal – consequence of some such guarantor of the public good as a ‘market’ in the wages of women” (Bousquet 91) is an echo of the idea of economic privilege as natural that Barreca experienced at Dartmouth. Indeed, by assigning cash value to subjective qualities (like a good professor or excellence in education), the academy has essentially codified the system of economic privilege that was such a problem for Barreca in the upper echelons of the university.

Here at the College we have seen backlash against former President Nichol’s Gateway Program, which provided much needed financial aid for low-income students. A significant number of community members believe that the Gateway program’s funding was a serious factor in the Board of Visitors’ decision not to renew Nichol’s presidency. And with statewide budget cuts, students in and out of state are facing continual tuition hikes while hiring freezes hurt academics on the job hunt. Socioeconomic tension, which leads to the idea that there is a very narrow “type” of person who goes to college, is unfortunately still alive and well in American academia and especially here at William & Mary.

-Cate Domino

Rewriting Tradition

2008-11-20T14:53:00.004-05:00

Gina Barreca’s Babes in Boyland: A Personal History of Coeducation in the Ivy League is an interesting and poignant look at Barreca’s experience at Dartmouth College in the mid-1970s, just a few years after it became coeducational. While Dartmouth became coed about 50 years after the College of William & Mary, the comparisons that can be made between Barreca’s experience and what the first classes of women here would have experienced in the 1920s are striking. Barreca’s experiences with Dartmouth traditions are good illustrations of an institution's inability to change overnight from a bastion of male privilege and gender exclusion into an integrated learning environment. During a concert welcoming freshman, the choir sings a song with the lyrics “Dartmouth’s in Town Again, Run, Girls, Run/Dartmouth’s in town again, fun girls fun/our pants are steaming hot, we’ll give you all we’ve got” (Barreca 32), a parody in college tradition that makes Barreca supremely uncomfortable. While the Alma Mater, the College’s favorite traditional song, sung at every possible opportunity, does not overtly objectify the women of the College, it does not include them either. Written by James Southall Wilson, Class of 1904 (Choir of the College of William and Mary) the Alma Mater’s third and fourth verses assume only male students and alumni:

All thy sons are faithful to thee,
Through their college days,
Singing loud from hearts that love thee,
Alma Mater's praise

God, our Father, hear our voices,
Listen to our cry,
Bless the college of our fathers,
Let her never die.

While the third verse has been eliminated in practice (only the first and fourth are commonly sung), there is something incredibly dismissive in the lines “Bless the college of our fathers/Let her never die.” If they go by the song, students at the College were only preceded by men, not women. Yet the College itself is gendered female, much in the way that ships and other impressive objects are – as proof of male power and distinction, as something for men to treasure and protect.

Much like my continual confusion over the College’s ubiquitous catchphrase “Hark Upon the Gale,” (taken from the Chorus of the Alma Mater), Barreca was intrigued by Dartmouth’s “It May Be Small, But There Are Those Who Love It” (Barreca 53). While Barreca and friends found their catchphrase hilarious for a previously all-male institution (Barreca 54), the College’s is more appropriate. “Hark,” when used with an object, means “to listen to; hear” (Dictonary.com), while a “gale” is a storm. If the first women of the College were indeed Harking Upon the Gale, they were interacting with the forces trying to push them back, working through it, and pioneering a path for the women at the College today.

-Cate Domino

And you are...?

2008-11-06T19:09:00.003-05:00

This week we watched the movie “Legally Blonde 2; The Red, White and Blonde” starring Reese Witherspoon. In this movie, a recent Harvard Law graduate, Elle Woods, leaves (well, gets fired) from her law firm in Boston for her determination to represent and change an issue that hits quite close to home with her: animal rights. She is recently engaged and planning her wedding and decides she wants her Chihuahua pet, Bruster, to be a part of the wedding. In order for her dog to take part, he must have his mother in attendance. When Elle discovers that Bruster’s mother is kept in a laboratory and used for animal testing, she holds off her wedding until she can get the dog out of the laboratory. So what does this entail? Not just petitioning the lab – but passing a bill against it! And how does she do this? Not on her own, but with the help of her undergraduate sorority!

Sorority life in college can be demanding to say the least. It requires time and money, something of which is an instant commodity to college students. Many sororities of the South, mid-West, and West have intense greek life that demand high amounts of these cherished items, time and money. Alexandra Robbins claims in her book, “Pledged”, that “the financial commitment a sister must make to her sorority can be enormous. In fact, many girls cite this as one reason why candidates who wouldn’t be able to withstand the financial drain of sorority membership simply won’t be accepted to the sorority in the first place. Wealth becomes a prohibitive prerequisite…If a sorority doesn’t believe that a girl will be able to pay sorority dues - which can range from a few hundred dollars to $2,500 a semester – it’s not likely to accept her as a member.” (Robbins, page 68)
This amount may seem outrageous to most but is a sacrifice that girls are willing to make to belong to an organization.

The other major commitment is time within a sorority. Girls are expected to participate in all events, usually taking up much of their free time and even intervening on classes and family breaks. Robbin explains, “Between meeting and activities, fund-rasising and date-finding, sorority membership can be as much of a commitment as a part-time job. Even attending a party can require more time than a girl might be willing to spend…Sororities expect their sisters to prioritize their sorority membership above other aspects of their lives.” (Robbins, pages 94 &96) There is even an example where a sorority girl missed her sister’s grand debutante ball to go to her sorority’s philanthropy event. Girls are expected to be willing to make their sorority number one in their lives.

So how does this relate to Elle Woods? Well, Elle uses her power from her sorority life to ultimately achieve her main goal, the passing of Bruster’s Bill to ban the testing of animals. This seems peachy but the movie portrays Elle as not being able to do these things without her sorority experience. How does she get the attention of everyone? From the styling standards of her sorority. How does she break the ice and make new friends? By using the “snap cup” that her sorority does. How does she get the attention of Congresswoman Hauser? Not by smarts but because of her ties with her sorority, Delta Nu. This movie is supposed to represent a new sense of female empowerment, but fails to do this. Its goal is to show that even girly-girls can do ‘big things’ if they try hard enough – while looking cute and assuming everyone thinks you’re dumb! What viewers fail to see is the Master’s Tools working on Wood’s life. While she seems to be able to become successful, it’s only due to her ties with a sorority and other’s conceptions of thinking she is silly and worthless. I sure do hope that’s not the image that my sorority give me.

-Laura Condyles

There is an Image to Uphold

2008-11-06T18:49:00.003-05:00

Sororities can stereotypically be seen as a way to divide women based on looks, personality, preferences, activities, and race. The fact that sororities are extremely expensive contributes to the Greek system as a way to divide along the lines of class as well. Throughout the novel Pledged by Alexandra Robbins the monetary commitment to Greek life is mentioned as a way to pick certain women: “When sororities evaluate candidates during rush, the rushees’ financial status, which sororities determine partly by assessing the rushees’ wardrobes and asking what their parents do for a living, plays a major role” (Robbins 68). The Greek system can be a way to determine class status and a tool to divide women hierarchically based on money.

Most of the sorority women in Pledged exude money through their every action. Robbins opens her novel by describing the various designer names the women of Beta Pi sported as they moved into their house at the beginning of the semester: “As quickly as the men nailed extra shelves into the bedroom walls, the girls lined them with Michael Kors perfume, Juicy Couture tees, and rows of designer sunglasses. (One sister dissolved into peals of loud laugher because she’d lost the case to her Gucci sunglasses and as a result had stored them in a Calvin Klein case instead.)” (14). These designer names are not merely products; they carry with them attitudes and assumptions as can be seen in the Michael Kors ad. This ad features a woman dressed in expensive looking clothing stepping out of a luxury vehicle; the man accompanying her may be her significant other, but could also be her driver. The Juicy Couture ad depicts women dressed up as modern day royalty, a blatant nod to the class status of those who consume these products. Sororities that encourage sisters to wear these name brands endorse the elitist mindset that accompanies them. “…in certain houses, there is an image to uphold” and in this case the image is wealth (Robbins 68).

The sorority women in Pledged are expected to attend all mandatory sorority events. Even if sisters that are less privileged must work to pay for dues miss an event, they are still penalized. A main character in Pledged experiences this frustration: “Sabrina despised the sorority Catch-22, which applied only to the less privileged sisters: if a sister had to miss events in order to work to pay her dues, then she wasn’t allowed to go to social functions, which were a main reason to pay the dues in the first place” (Robbins 95). Sabrina is a sorority sister in the Alpha Rho house at Sate U. She works at a part-time waitressing job in order to pay her sorority dues and other costs of being in a sorority. Unfortunately, Sabrina finds it difficult to balance work, school work, and sorority obligations. Her obligation to work sometimes prevents her from engaging in bonding experiences between sorority sisters, an obstruction that more privileged sisters did not experience. Sabrina wondered “what might have been had money not played such a large role in these girls’ lives” (Robbins 85).

When sorority women pledge sororities they may not “…[forsee] the scores of obligations that [come]….Nor…[expect] membership to be so expensive” (Robbins 67). These women soon realize that Greek life can be a vehicle through which class lines are established.

-Irene Davidson

The Well-Dressed Sorority Girl

2008-11-06T18:39:00.003-05:00

“The well-dressed sorority girl wears ironed or starched jeans, a jersey with Greek letters sewn on, a visor with Greek letters painted on, Greek jewelry, a headband, the most ‘in’ sunglasses, a pearl necklance, expensive leather tennis shoes or penny loafers, and Lauren perfume. If it’s after hours, she’s donned her Lanz nightfown or a fraternity jersey and she’s still wearing her pearls.”

- Rush: A Girl’s Gide to Sorority Success, 1985, (qtd. Robbins 157)

Throughout Pledged, Robbins describes the Rush process as the most homogenizing of sorority experiences. Having sat for dress checks and followed carefully orchestrated rush procedures myself, I think she’s dead on here. Robbins notes that “the danger of sororities, it became clear, is that instead of enhancing a girl’s identity as she shifts from her formative years toward adulthood, the sisterhood could have a tendency to swallow that identity altogether” (Robbins 175), and never is this more true than in the weeks prior to and during the formal recruitment (rush) process. The uniform nature of what girls even in a sorority system as noninvasive as William & Mary’s is certainly reflected in Pledged. Robbins describes how “the night before rush began, the Beta Pi recruitment chair stopped in each sister’s room for ‘Dress Checks.’ Every night this week, the Beta Pis were required to try on the clothes they planned to wear at the next day’s rush events. The recruitment chair would look over each girl’s outfit and veto it if she thought it was inappropriate” (Robbins 201). The idea that a sorority girl’s appearance is her biggest asset, both in dealing with other women (as during rush) and with men is ubiquitous. From Elle Woods’ application video in Legally Blonde in which she wears a bikini to impress Harvard Law’s admissions deans to the Playboy Bunny’s essential makeovers for the ladies of Zeta Alpha Zeta in The House Bunny, pop culture reflects an image-obsessed Greek culture that can easily be seen in Rush procedures. Robbins describes a discussion about a girl during rush voting during which sisters said “She was wearing a Gucci sweater” and “She had a Kate Spade bag” as pros, good reasons to let the potential new member into Alpha Rho. In fact, Robbins notes that “many southern sororities blow up each girl’s rush application photo onto a large piece of poster board to display during the rush meetings…it is this photo, more than any other single factor, that essentially determines a sorority candidate’s fate” (225).

Sororities get their materialistic reputations from somewhere. If they want to change that reputation, the first place they should look is to rush, with their carefully choreographed outfits and emphasis on potential new members’ clothing.

-Cate Domino

Mixed Review: In Defense of Greek Life

2008-11-06T17:50:00.006-05:00

When I joined a National Panhellenic sorority (Alpha Chi Omega, Beta Delta chapter, pictured above on Pref Night Fall 2008), my biggest fears were not about hazing, being judged by the sisters, or other tribulations of pledges. I was worried about what those outside the Greek system (including every member of my family – I was the first to go Greek) would think when they saw me wearing letters. Greek life always advertises itself as an amazing networking too. As Alexandra Robbins notes in her famous sorority expose, Pledged: The Secret Life of Sororities, “in a sense, sorority girls are in a clique for life. A sorority is more than an affiliation; it’s a label that a girl can’t simply unstick after school ends” (Robbins 118). I feared, in a reaction exactly opposite what many of the girls described in Pledged, that I would be judged in a manner reflected by the subtitle of Robbins’ introduction: “’Delta, Delta, Delta, Can We Help Ya, Help Ya, Help Ya?’ (Or, So Do They Really Have Topless Pillow Fights?)” (Robbins 5). Now that I’ve been in Alpha Chi for a semester and a half, I can safely say that my fears were partially right. Many of my friends go to schools without Greek systems certainly do picture sorority life as an endless parade of topless pillow fights, wet t-shirt contests, and toga parties. My parents are still mystified as to what exactly I get out of my sorority experience. Friends from other schools judge me based on their school’s chapter of Alpha Chi’s reputation (for better or for worse).

In her Preface to the paperback edition, Robbins discusses sorority girls’ mixed reactions to Pledged. She notes that a “significant number of the thousands of contacts I’ve had with sorority sisters have fallen in the vicious category” (Robbins vii), yet “most former, current, and future sorority sisters whom I encounter recognize that this book was written by an ally” (Robbins ix). I do think that Robbins had the best of intentions while setting out to and writing Pledged, and there were parts of the book during which she could have easily been describing my own sorority. However, I feel that the broader implications that came out of her book (particularly the idea that the experiences of four girls in two sororities at “State U” are accurate examples for the whole system) are somewhat inaccurate. “State U” is just one school, one system, in one region of the country. As William & Mary Greeks we often discuss how “it’s different here;” I can’t tell you how many people I know (myself included) who openly state that if they were at another school, they probably would not be Greek. Maybe inherent in that claim is the idea that every school is “worse” than ours on the hazing/alcohol/cattiness/sorority-takes-over-your-life front, yet there is certainly a problem when a book takes a non-random sample of 4 and uses those samples to speak for a whole that numbered 3,612,176 between 2001-2003, when Robbins conducted her research for Pledged (National Panhellenic Conference). I appreciate Robbins’ work and certainly would not send her vicious emails, but I do wish she had presented her work as an interesting case study and not as a sample that represents the whole national sorority system. It is because stories from schools like “State U” are allowed to speak for all of Greek life that I felt the need to hesitate before going Greek, lest I be judged based on Girls Gone Wild contestants.

-Cate Domino

But I'm so much cuter!

2008-11-06T17:11:00.005-05:00

The majority of women first entering institutions of higher learning were met “…with a mixture of condescension, ridicule, and derision in differing measures” (Peril College Girl 27). Considering these spaces were run and populated by white males, from the beginning the college girl has had to work to gain male approval. This male approval signified acceptance by the university population; however, the requirements for gaining this acceptance were determined by the male population and not the female students themselves. While these women were seeking higher education, they were still expected to adhere to the tenets of Pink Think, or “…a set of ideas and attitudes about what constitutes proper female behavior” (Peril Pink Think 7). This happens especially within sororities. Groups of women are determined based on predominantly superficial impressions and her degree of adhere to “proper female behavior” (Peril Pink Think 7).
A historical hot bed of Pink Think lies in the Greek system on college campuses. In sororities, women may be chosen based on “Looks, wealth, bloodlines, connections, dates, friends – all of these can be major factors when sororities are deciding on which new members to accept” (Robbins Pledged 114). By women determining themselves based on these somewhat superficial categories, men are granted validation when using these distinctions to decide which women are worthwhile. Typically on campus “…a sorority’s standing among fraternity brothers often determines its status in the Greek system. Sororities resemble high school cliques, vying for the attention of the most attractive boys to boost their standing among the popular girls” (Robbins 51). To gain a significant status, sorority women must live up to the male expectation of what a college woman is: sexy, but doesn’t sleep around too much; and of course not too smart.

A sorority girl’s appearance and sex appeal is extremely important to her popularity. Just the right amount of sex appeal earns her approval from a male audience as well as jealous friendships with other sorority sisters. On a night out at a bar, sorority sisters danced provocatively with one another as fraternity brothers observed: “The brothers who were starting to trickle in sat on couches that ringed the dance floor and peered at the girls gyrating scandalously with each other” (Robbins 76). Amy, one of the sorority women focused on in the novel Pledged, complains to her friend Jake that her love interest, Spencer, is supposedly dating someone else. Amy quickly asserts her superiority to this other girl by exclaiming that she is “…so much cuter!” (Robbins 94).

Even exclusive relationships between sorority women and fraternity brothers can be a source of tensions and a way to determine a sorority’s standing. Brooke, a sorority woman mentioned several times in the novel, is ostracized by her sorority sisters for dating a fraternity brother belonging to a fraternity deemed the “loser” frat. Even our fictitious sorority girl heroine, Elle Woods, must assure a fellow Delta Nu sister that although her fiancé does not belong to a fraternity he is still “totally letter worthy”.

Sororities were created to be spaces where women can develop their personalities and talents while forging lasting friendships with other women and contributing to philanthropies and charitable causes. Unfortunately, it seems that sororities can be a master’s tool: pitting women against each other while they vie for male attention and approval.

-Irene Davidson

The Color of a Sorority

2008-11-05T09:10:00.003-05:00

This week we read “Pledged” by Alexandra Robbins. This book gave me an interesting insight on the activities that take place on American college campuses. To write her book, Alexandra Robbins went undercover as a college student to get an inside look into the college workings of Greek life, in particular, a look at the unseen negative aspects that come with sorority life on a college campus. There are many unseen negatives, such as hazing, that sororities possess, but one of the more interesting things I noticed was the still standing racial divide.

Even in Greek life today you can see racial tensions. These race factors would seemingly have disappeared over the last one hundred years since blacks were allowed higher education and co-education at institutes of higher learning, but the issue of race has not disappeared. In “College Girls” chapter one, The Birth of the College Girl, by Lynn Peril, an earlier reading, she states the first historically black “schools operated under the most primitive conditions. There was always the threat of physical violence from the nascent Klu Klux Klan or other whites ill-disposed to the idea of an educated black citizenry.” (Peril, page 41) This negative background between whites and blacks paves the way for racial tension to continue in today’s higher education institutes.

As viewed in the book “Pledged”, the average mainstream sororities are predominately white. Each sorority has only a handful of black females and they are often silently considered “a charity case” or a way for the sorority to be politically correct. These black females, while accepted into the sorority by the other women, are often viewed from the outside to have been picked to make the sorority appear more accepting and diverse.

One quote from Robbins book shows the racial tension in a predominately white sorority between white and black members; “[Fiona] expounded on what she saw as the recent trends in Alpha Rho. “You know” she said, eyeing Sabrina [a black member], who wasn’t a part of the conversation but who was studying close enough to the group that she could hear every word, “it’s getting so that every pledge class in the house has a black girl. The sophomores have C.C. and the juniors have Sabrina.” The other girls glanced sideways at Sabrina, then hurriedly focused their attention back on Fiona. Sabrina only chuckled and said lightly, “Yes, that’s me.” But inwardly she cringed. To many of the girls in Alpha Rho, she would always be the “token black”; to some of them, apparently, that would be her only role.” (Robbins, page 24-25) and “an organization in which some sisters mocked her culture (with racist remarks).” (Robbins, page 302) These examples show clear racial divides among sororities.

This is sad and makes the sororities look bad, but one has to ask, what’s the difference between picking a black woman, or any woman of color, to join the sorority to appear more diverse and picking women to join the sorority based solely off good looks or deep rolling bank statements? Not anything to me. Sororities today have become much different than their founding mothers imagined. Sororities once stood for scholarship and true friendship in sisterhood where today it means connections to parties, boys, money, and popularity.

But in defense of the sororities of the National Panhellenic Conference, or the traditional rich white girl sorority that you image, the percentages of black women to white women that rush these sororities are extremely low, thus, there are slim pickings when it comes to selecting a black woman for the sorority. So where are all the black women? Do they not participate in sororities? Well yes, they do, but in special sororities. Black women rush a different council, or the National Pan-Hellenic Council, that comprises of nine sororities and fraternities, otherwise known as “the divine nine” that are all black. This council is separate from the largely recognized sororities and is often criticized for being racist within themselves. Many media outlets target these groups just like the traditional sororities and use them for laughs, such as in the show “Campus Ladies”.

In conclusion, sex, parties, drugs, dirty money, and high standards aren’t the only negative aspects of sororities. The racial tensions that go on are often overlooked and what can be even the most negative aspect of the sororities, a lack of diversity resulting in ignorance.

-Laura Condyles

Rules and Restrictions

2008-10-23T19:29:00.004-04:00

When the college girl entered the sphere of the university, women were still widely believed to be the inferior and weaker sex. With this belief came specific rules and practices that were meant to protect women at universities and colleges. While the majority of these restrictions have been abolished, the mind set behind their implementation still remains in the university today. Women are continually challenged in academia in a way that men are not; their intelligence, abilities, and accomplishments are questioned and ignored based solely on gender. In particular, the College of William and Mary has continued to glorify its forefathers: Thomas Jefferson, Lord Botetourt, James Blair, etc. yet Martha Barksdale may be the only female alumnus that is given extensive attention, historically speaking. Through the interview with Dr. Carolyn Whittenburg, we have learned a great deal concerning the College’s history and the restrictions applied to women. Dr. Whittenburg completed her dissertation at William and Mary on President J.A.C. Chandler and the first female faculty.
In general, institutions that moved to co-education felt that women needed special attention and aid during their college years. These “Restrictions on students – involving clothes, dating, sports, drinking, smoking, and the like…” clearly affected all aspects of life (Solomon 159). Obviously, students were separated by gender in their living arrangements. Limited contact between the sexes and rules involving conduct concerning the opposite sex attempted to be heavily enforced. These rules were expected to uphold notions of “morality”: “As before, parents expected colleges to keep young people within the accepted boundaries of morality. Some colleges instituted formal dress codes, and others had regulations on proper appearance, in an effort to uphold earlier standards” (Solomon 159).
According to Dr. Whittenburg, President J.A.C. Chandler, president of William and Mary between the years of 1919 and 1934, believed that the first female class and onward needed specific supervision and guidance. He supported the prior president’s (President Lyon G. Tyler) creation of the office of the Dean of Women, the first dean being Caroline Tupper. President Chandler also created many rules and restrictions for the students in order to encourage “proper” conduct. For example, a woman was not permitted to travel in a car, attend a movie, go to church, etc. exclusively with one man; multiple couples must be present for such outings. Women were not allowed to be accompanied exclusively by one man and must be chaperoned during excursions down Duke of Gloucester Street. Even more confining, women were not permitted to leave Duke of Gloucester Street, alone or accompanied, for any reason. Dormitories were separated by gender and men were not permitted to leave the foyer of women’s dorms.
Surely these restrictions only for women made the assumption that women are the weaker sex much easier to accept and internalize. Unfortunately, women all throughout history have had to challenge this belief during their college years. Our commemoration of the 90th class of women at William and Mary is not only to recognize the 24 women in the class of 1922, but to recognize the achievements and challenge the limitations of women in general in the sphere of higher education.

-Irene Davidson

Then and Now, part 2: GOOOAL!

2008-10-23T18:17:00.006-04:00

Continuing with activity regarding our documentary, I’d like to divulge into another topic I found interesting about the women at The College of William and Mary; sports!
Ever since women started arriving on college campuses, their desire to play sports does not shy away from male participation, although many women did not participate as it was unbecoming of them to partake in such vigorous activities. (pink think!) Most sports teams were left to the boys on campus while the women students watched and supported.

“Women’s athletics, first initiated in the oldest women’s colleges, became routine. Yet they did not inspire the same fervor they had from the pioneers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Athletic competition in team sports did not have as much appeal for women as for men, nor women’s sports receive the same kind of public attention. Still, intercollegiate tennis, field hockey, swimming, and basketball had moderate vogues, with the approval and encouragement of educators who saw organized sports as safe outlets for their charges” (Solomon 164)

Women’s sports have always had a place at William and Mary. A couple of the first active teams upon our campus were basketball and fencing. Because the school didn’t provide funding or participated in any conference involving school sports, many of the female students on campus formed their own teams and played against each other. One of the infamous, if not most remembered, female athlete on our campus is Martha Barksdale. Martha participated in the women’s basketball program and was known around campus as one of the best players around, even easing up her game at times to let other teams win! Martha would go on later to coach women’s sports at William and Mary and has a sports field off of Jamestown road named after her, Barksdale Field. (Go visit and see the monument!)

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The next big step in women’s sports was the enactment of Title Nine, an amendment that made it mandatory for public universities to provide equal funding and/or opportunity for women’s sports on campus as men’s sports. William and Mary, being a public school, acted in this new law and the students saw its first swimming, gymnastics, softball, etc. sports programs for women. My mom even played on the first women’s volleyball team at William and Mary in the fall of 1976, her freshman year! This opportunity opened many doors for women’s rights and have taken many women into sports careers becoming famous and making millions.

Women’s sports have continued to develop in society and have become a common place among today’s customs. Any school or university in our country that has men’s sports teams have women’s teams and give the appropriate funding to them. Many girls participate in sports at a young age and have made active lifestyles popular American culture. Recently, we’ve also seen many popular films involving women athletes, such as “Love and Basketball”, “Stick It”, and “Million Dollar Baby”; making sports all more common among girls today. Women’s sports play a large, positive role on our campus now and I hope it continues to do so!

-Laura Condyles

Flappers and Rebellion

2008-10-23T18:14:00.002-04:00

This afternoon Irene and I interviewed Dr. Carolyn Whittenburg, Director of the National Institute of American History and Democracy (NIAHD) at the College of William & Mary. Dr. Whittenburg did her dissertation on coeducation at William & Mary and is certainly one of our best resources here on campus. What I found incredibly interesting about our discussion was the way that Dr. Whittenburg’s comments on coeducation at William & Mary really mirrored the general history given by Barbara Miller Solomon in her book In the Company of Educated Women: A History of Women and Higher Education in America. Both discuss how the flapper ideal of the 1920s was at odds with the traditional rules and regulations for female college students. Solomon notes that “the 1920s marked a new vogue for the college girl who entered school in the age of the flapper” (Solomon 157). It is interesting to consider that while Solomon is writing from the perspective of women having been in college before the age of the flapper, the very first women to enroll in William & Mary did so as this icon was on the rise – there was no pre-flapper William & Mary woman.

While some of the images available in Swem Special Collections’ online exhibit on women, The Petticoat Invasion, reflect a flapper trend, it certainly was not universal on campus. Dress does not appear to be particularly forward-moving, although some of the women in this picture of the J. Lesslie Hall Literary Society are wearing dresses that exhibit the typical asexuality of flapperwear. Janet Coleman Kimbrough, a member of that first class of women, noted that “girls’ skirts were going up; of course, the flapper and jazz and the type of dancing” (Kimbrough), so they certainly were not immune to outside cultural influences.

Solomon discusses how the college students of the 20s were more rebellious than their foremothers, noting that “rebelliousness typified each particular peer culture; students resisted any interference with personal and recreational aspects of college life” (Solomon 159). Dr. Whittenburg described extensive rules to us governing the social lives of William & Mary women, and did not mention a serious resistance effort. Furthermore, , outlines the ways in which students, while they may have resented President Chandler’s rules, did not overtly subjugate them. Kimbrough said that “dancing every evening gave the college rather a bad name from Dr. Chandler's point of view. He said that it was giving the state the impression that they

were spending their state money in riotous living for the students, and so he did away with the social hour, which I thought was a pity. It [dancing] went the first year and about halfway through the second year, then they were forbidden to dance in the dormitory at all” (Kimbrough). She does not mention a serious effort to change the rules. She does note, in reference to “lights out” times, that “you weren't supposed to stay up, but you could get up as early as you pleased, and we would very often go to our rooms and go through the formality of going to bed, and then get up and sit on the stairs and do our studying and also talk to each other” (Kimbrough). Perhaps it was because these women considered themselves lucky to finally be admitted to William & Mary, but while they experienced many of the same restrictions as their peers at other institutions, they were more content to let things be and not rock the boat.

-Cate Domino

Then and Now

2008-10-23T17:25:00.004-04:00

A large part of our class is the creation of a documentary. We have been working hard at interviewing alumnae and piecing together historic facts to create a small film that briefs the history of women at the College of William and Mary. Recently, I found a rather interesting topic; the governing rules over previous William and Mary students.
These rules were strict and not to be broken without consequences. All qualified students had must obey them or come into close encounters to being expelled from the College. Most of these rules were bounding and kept students limited to what they could and could not do with their small amount of free time left over from the difficult and rigorous classes. Who were these qualified students? The female population.

A Guide of Appropriate Female Behavior >>>

One small piece of information comes from a blog in the archives of Swem Library and speaks about the rules previous William and Mary female students had to abide by to be in good standing with the College. The example rules are recalled by Janet Coleman Kimbrough, one of the first female students at The College of William and Mary and can be found at: http://womenatwilliamandmary.blogspot.com/2008/10/rules-for-women.html
Some of the rules are as follows:

-After dinner, the women had to stay in their dormitory, Tyler Hall, until all lights went out at midnight.

-While in their dorm, the women had a mandatory study hall from 8pm-10pm. During this time, they were not supposed to leave their rooms and they had to be quiet.

-At 10pm, the women were allowed to wander between rooms and talk.

-At 10:30pm, all women students were required to go to bed, unless they got special permission to stay up and study until midnight.

-If a woman received special permission to stay up until midnight, she had to study in a different room than her own, so she would not disturb others.

Mind you, that male students did not have to abide by these rules. Many of these rules were put in place to keep the two sexes from being together and preventing alone time in private places. Males were allowed to roam campus whenever they felt free to while girls were shut up indoors immediately following dinner.

William and Mary wasn’t the only school following these strict codes for girls, these codes were placed in most schools and had been running for many years, back from the nineteenth century when women first entered institutions for higher education. “Parents expected colleges to keep young people within the accepted boundaries of morality. Some colleges instituted formal dress codes, and others had regulations on proper appearance, in an effort to uphold earlier standards.” (Solomon 159)

These standards also were in place at more concentrated schools, such as religious and Historically Black Colleges. “Catholic and black schools demanded the strictest behavior both on a off the campus. Catholic schools extended their supervision and rules to the hours that students were not on campus. The discipline of women at black colleges reflected a special determination to obliterate a presumed inherited taint of impurity often associated with the female slave in minds of black men.” (Solomon 159)

Obviously, many of the strict rules of the past have faded away and given light to the college culture of today, often portrayed as one large party in the media with students who are completely out of control. Maybe one day we’ll be able to find a happy medium…

-Laura Condyles

Career or Marriage? The Eternal Question.

2008-10-23T16:46:00.003-04:00

“The new element in the approach of young college graduates in the 1920s was freedom of choice; whether to marry or not, whether to have children or not, were matter to be decided by the individual, and no judgment was passed on these various options.”

-Barbara Miller Solomon (175)

The idea that educated women are forced to balance between work and marriage, between careers and children, is certainly prevalent today, as it also was back when William & Mary began educating women. Popular culture tends to embrace the existence of “choice” that Solomon discusses in the epigraph, but rarely does it turn this dichotomy between home and public life on men. Advertisements, political punditry, and other elements of pop culture are often obsessed with the idea of woman as balancer: cooking dinner and excelling in the workplace, giving the kids a bath while her Blackberry buzzes in the background. This commercial for Crockpot fits the mold perfectly, with the family coming home after busy days at work for Mom and Dad and school for the kids. The mother has taken it upon herself to prepare dinner before leaving for work, picked the kids up from school, and served the food to her family, while her husband merely shows up for dinner. The old concept of the double day, of women working in the public office and in the home, is very present in modern advertising.

Still, Solomon notes, “always the problem persisted of justifying women’s new options” (Solomon 173). This can still be seen today, especially in the current political environment. When the women of The View discussed Sarah Palin’s candidacy, it was her experience as a mother, not as a governor or mayor, that these women kept coming back to in order to justify her candidacy. At the beginning of the clip, when Elisabeth describes her friend’s reaction to Palin with her identity as mother and “now we have a woman who I really feel has a realness to her” it is incredibly interesting because in the act of choosing to have a family and a career, Governor Palin’s choice of motherhood is still the one that we as a culture choose to embrace and we push her career to the fringe. I can name all of Governor Palin’s children, but never in a million years could I name the three male candidates’ children. It is not because her children are young – Senator Obama’s are in the same age range – it is because she is a woman and therefore seen as their natural keeper over their father.

This tension the crops up time and time again has really raised questions for me as we complete the documentary portion of our independent study. During our interview with Dr. Carolyn Whittenburg, she described Martha Barksdale and how she went to work for the College after graduation and continued to do so for the rest of her career in education. I don’t believe that Barksdale ever married (there are no internet records indicating marriage and she did not change her name during her career at the College), which places her as an interesting example of those who made the choice to have a career over a family. Our culture tends to consider women who do not rank motherhood as the be-all to end-all experience of life somewhat confused, as advertising and punditry demonstrate, yet William & Mary women were making strides when the first class of them graduated. Go girls.

-Cate Domino

What is this? The 50's or something?

2008-10-22T21:52:00.003-04:00

One of the many components of our commemoration of the 90^th anniversary of the first class of women at William and Mary is a short video documentary. We are interviewing several alumni about their experiences at the College and providing a brief history of women in higher institutions of learning, specifically, William and Mary. Nancy Johnston, an alumnus that was interviewed, made the interesting point that women could not realize or identify their limitations at universities because the tools were not available for them to do so. To use the words of Nancy Johnston, “You only know so much at the time. I was young.” While the members of this group are young, we believe our project creates a dialogue to identify limitations and marginalizing efforts throughout history that have affected women at William and Mary.

In the interview with Nancy Johnston she mentioned that Williamsburg, and William and Mary specifically, could be a “bubble”; or an environment somewhat cut off from national and world events. She credited this “bubble” with the fact that minimal conversation and action was made for or against the Civil Rights movement, the Women’s movement, and the Vietnam War. Johnston explained that a few protests took place at Confusion Corner, the beginning of Duke of Gloucester Street, but this was the extent of activism. This possible separation from the Women’s movement could possibly be a reason that a dialogue was not engaged in on campus concerning women’s limitations. Although the Women’s Movement may have sparked some discussion, the debate concerning the role of women in the university was as old as the first female class at any college.

The birth of women’s education colleges in universities is grounded in the expectation that women are being educated, yes, but their primary duties after graduation will be to their husbands and children. Many participants in the controversies over a female’s curriculum “…insisted that women’s lifelong domestic responsibilities be addressed in their undergraduate education” (Solomon 150). Some educators insisted that all topics and degrees of study include aspects related to domestic life that would assist a woman in her wifely and motherly responsibilities: “Domestic relevance reached absurd levels when some educators tried to codify every subject in the curriculum to fit the peculiar needs of female students, as if to guarantee that all would acquire knowledge solely for the purpose of domesticity” (Solomon 150). Critique of any institution must be examined to some extent through its history. Perhaps the history of women’s education so heavily influenced by domestic expectations has affected the way women relate to and talk about their options after graduation and the options available to them.

Coupling the infusion of women’s college courses with strong undertones of domesticity and media images depicting females as perfect housewives and mothers, it is not surprising that Nancy Johnston believes that young women in college are not always cognizant of marginalizing efforts. Uncanny parallels can be drawn between the 1950s picture of the perfect housewife and Kelly Ripa’s commercial for Electrolux: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDBMHz1Dthw . Kelly demonstrates that any woman is only one step away from being the perfect housewife. All she needs is Electrolux appliances: “You can be even more amazing!” Can we, Kelly? No wonder that discussions concerning the limitations posed to women in college are not occurring; with role models like Kelly Ripa, who needs a college degree to make a perfect roast and be the perfect host?

The lack of recognition and visibility given to female student and alumni accomplishments, in history and the present, needs to be seriously questioned. Hopefully our short documentary will aid in creating an open dialogue that educate and encourage a critical look at William and Mary’s treatment of its female students and alumni.

-Irene Davidson

Back To School Sale = Pink Think

2008-10-09T19:53:00.004-04:00

This week we read chapter three of Lynn Peril’s book College Girls, “The Collegiate Look”. Peril describes the importance of dressing right for the college girl of the past in this chapter. Looking the part is not a new idea for women on college campuses. Ever since women arrived on college campuses across America, the idea of fitting the perfect college image has been a must for all students. Peril explains that “clothing marks the passage from schoolgirl to adult, when we don the ritual outfit of graduate’s gown and cap. Long before manufacturers sold a ready-to-wear college girl look, new clothing and new endeavors were firmly entwined.” (College Girls, page 106)

Unlike today where it’s almost impossible to avoid marketing campaigns of the perfect look for school, college girls of the early twentieth century were encouraged to write to their schools and find out! Peril describes this process; “lacking the guidance of mid-twentieth-century teen magazines and their back to school issues stuffed with copious pages of fashion advertising and editorial, the best way for the turn of the century college girl to find out the clothing fads and necessities at her campus of choice was to simply write ahead and ask. “Be sure to write such a letter of inquiry before purchasing your fabrics unless you are perfectly certain of what to wear and when and how to wear it” New York Times” (College Girls, page 107) The pressure of looking the part was intense for students, particularly females since they were just beginning to make their mark on developments of higher education along with their male students.

There were often consequences with not dressing the part of the perfect college girl in the early years of the university. Any girl who so desired to dress ‘mannish’ was termed with the name “Freak” and was feverishly tried to change by her fellow classmates to fit in better as a girl. Peril gives an example of this from Ladies Home Journal essay titled “How a Case of ‘Mannishness’ Was Cured” in the series “College Girls’ Larks and Pranks” in 1990: “The ‘Freak’ was enough to handicap any self-respecting Freshman class. What were the girls to do with a girl who set about in bloomers, had her hair cut short, and who doffed her fore-and-aft cap like a man when she met her classmates? “Something must be done,” said the President of the Freshmen.” (College Girls, page 115) There was an obvious difference between wearing a couple of male items to create the ‘collegiate’ look for a stylish outfit, but severe consequences existed for the girls who took it too far as to identify themselves as ‘too mannish’. The desire to fit in was huge and the appropriate clothes were essential.

This idea of the perfect look continued well into the mid twentieth century when slacks became more and more popular on college campuses as attire for women. This was called the “slob” look and was often discouraged by society. Peril reports the consequences for women dressing in comfortable slacks on school grounds; “outside criticism of dress standards nonetheless sometimes stung. In 1940, the same year it ushered in the “boyish” look with such great fanfare, Mademoiselle reported that the undergraduates at what was then the all-female Skidmore College…had undertaken a campaign to reverse their status as the “worst-dressed college in the East”” (College Girls, page 126) all due to the fact that slacks were popular on their campus for females.

The pressure to look right didn’t subside by any means. “Appearance even played a role in whether a girl got into school or not. Girls were instructed to “make sure your nails, hair, and complexion reflected good grooming at their college interviews.” (College Girls, page 127) This intense influence to be the perfect college girl took away from the whole movement of women in higher education. Where once women fought for education to free themselves from the “Pink Think” ideals of keeping them in the house, raising children, and uneducated, society’s standard for the perfect woman was not erased when women were allowed to be educated at institutions of higher learning. Many women felt empowerment by being able to achieve the same knowledge status as men and work side-by-side in fellow jobs, but they still let society hold them back with the idea that they were still supposed to represent themselves as ‘women students’ in the way they dressed instead of just ‘students’. If women did not look the part of idea of the traditional, properly dressed college girl, then they were shunned just from these premises of outwardly looks. These women were even being denied admission into the universities that were supposed to be freeing them from the ideals of “Pink Think’s” uneducated woman, just on the basis of their appearances.

The idea to look right has not stopped. The perfectly dressed school girl is revealed every mid-summer in endless of advertising campaigns by every major and minor clothing store in the country. These ads feature pretty girls dressed in the most stylish, expensive clothing and becoming popular, getting A’s, and getting the attention of the boys all due to dressing the right way. Companies advertise these “Pink Think” messages on TV, in magazines, movies, music videos (see Vanessa Hugdens) and mall across America, trying to influence girls on how to look perfect with their “Back to School Sales.” Unfortunately, these ads work and is what fuels the billion dollar industry each year. But not only do companies win by being able to take girl’s dollars in return for the best looking clothing, they also win by selling “Pink Think” look. Back to school sale? Back to school “Pink Think” sold.

http://www.popcrunch.com/vanessa-hudgens-sears-back-to-school-commercial-video-dont-just-go-back-arrive/

(Vanessa Hudgen's back to school music video = PINK THINK)
-Laura Condyles

Money, money, money, MONEY!

2008-10-09T19:34:00.005-04:00

When asked to think of an establishment driven solely by profit and gaining the most amount of work for the least amount of expense, I am sure the university is not the first institution to come to mind. Unfortunately, America’s universities are not exempt from our increasingly commercialized society. Marc Bousquet explores this idea in his book How the University Works.

In his introduction, Bousquet writes that the modern university has become a vehicle to gain profit, with a shrinking percentage of tenure or tenure-track faculty and an increasing percentage of handsomely compensated administrative and management personnel (7). This division has also become disturbingly gendered with “…the typical faculty member [being] a female nontenurable part-timer earning a few thousand dollars a year without benefits. [And] the typical administrator [as] male, enjoys tenure, a six-figure income, little or no teaching, generous vacations, and great health care” (6). The university-administrative sector increasingly encourages faculty to adopt “…academic-capitalist values and behaviors…” such as “…the commercialization of research, the enclosure of intellectual property, market behavior such as competition for scraps of “merit pay” rather than a collective demand to keep up with the cost of living…” etc (12-13). The values and ideals embedded in higher education have been replaced with capitalist goals and the exploitation of academic labor all the while tenure-track jobs for Ph.D.’s become increasingly scarce (24-25).

Although the film “Mona Lisa Smile” takes place fifty-some years ago, there are similarities between the function of Wellesley and the modern university http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E38gP5460Qw. One of the early conflicts in the film develops between Betty Warren, a student whose mother is the president of the Alumni Association, and Wellesley’s nurse, Amanda Armstrong. Ms. Armstrong is publicly accused of distributing contraceptives and promoting “sexual promiscuity” in an article written by Betty Warren in the school newspaper. Under significant pressure from the Alumni Association, Wellesley’s president fires Ms. Armstrong. One can only assume that financial donors to the school included those members of the Association as well as wealthy alumni who were clearly uninterested in promoting “sexual promiscuity”. Ms. Armstrong had worked as a faithful employee for twenty-one years, yet her loyalty to Wellesley was no match against financial motivations.

Blatant financial motivations can also be observed very clearly here at William and Mary. I do find myself wondering where my tuition money is going especially when the yearly budget for more unconventional departments like Black Studies are roughly only 15% of one student’s tuition (not including room and board). Money is poured into our sports teams as can be seen from the new Jimmye Laycock Football Center for the football team otherwise known as Football Mansion. This new facility cost the College $11 million. Yet few staff enjoys any benefits at all for their work done on campus. Tuition has also continued to increase steadily concurring with Bousquet’s more general statement concerning the cost of higher education: “Tuition soared 38 percent between 2000 and 2005, outpacing nearly every other economic indicator” (4).

At first glance, universities are assumed to be places dedicated to the values of education and knowledge. Unfortunately, these values have fallen by the wayside in light of more attractive financial motivators and gains.

-Irene Davidson

We’re Here For You [money] !

2008-10-09T18:32:00.002-04:00

In reading this week’s assignments, what struck me the hardest is how the university system has highly changed over the course of its existence, particularly since the days of Martha Barksdale. Many universities across the country have seemingly gone from focusing on the students and their education, to focusing on the marketing of the university. The problem, like stated in Marc Bousquet’s How the University Works: Higher education and the Low-Wage Nation, is that universities have become corporations. This corporation idea has taken it’s priorities from the students and to the development of the campus as a whole in order to keep up with expansion of other institutions of higher learning.

Bousquet explains this idea on page nine of his introduction, “There are many ways of understanding what we mean when we speak of the “corporation” of the university. One valuable approach focuses on the way campuses actually relate to business and industry in quest of revenue enhancement and cost containment: apparel sales; sports marketing; corporate financed research, curriculum, endowment, and building; job training; direct financial investment via portfolios, pensions, and cooperative venture; the production and enclosure of intellectual property; the selection of vendors for books, information technology, soda pop, and construction; the purchase of provisional nonstandard labor; and so forth..”

Universities have found a way to sell themselves. From clothing, to overpriced meal plans, to thousands of extra dollars in college tuitions just to pay for the athletics programs so it, in turn, will bring in extra money, the university system these days surely has devised a way to receive all the money they need. It even reaches to the professional degree programs. At many universities, in order to receive a doctorate degree, the graduate student must fulfill the requirements of teaching a few classes in that subject to undergraduate students. Students paying to be professors, what a way to save money! Bousquet examines this idea in How the University Works on page 23; “Postsecondary educators usually fulfill the service mission that constitutes their half of the bargain; in return, society continues to grant them monopoly control over degrees…Degree holders frequently serve as university teachers for eight or ten years before earning their doctorate.” (pg 23) Seems like another hidden characteristic that make the university into a corporation.

From this, it’s quite obvious to tell that the university system has changed over time, especially since the first female students stepped foot on our own campus. Speaking of William and Mary, I noticed very similar circumstances of our university becoming the coined “corporation” has stated in How the University Works.

It’s hard to tell the real motive of universities anymore. Even as I walk around my own campus of William and Mary, I have to ask myself who the expansion and development is really for. Our campus has made many changes recently; two brand new dorms, a new science building, a new business building, a new football building, and a new education building. I applaud our campus’ efforts at expansion to more modernization and capability to better educate its students, but are these the only motives?

Our bookstore has become a huge ‘corporation’ monopoly after William and Mary signed the text book selling rights away to Barnes and Noble. This recent change in the past years has become a practical monopoly on our campus, being able to charge students a few dollars less on text books as opposed to the older, historical mom and pop text book shops – running them out of business. And on top of it all? The fraction of money returned to the students when selling the books back; pennies on the dollar.

Another recent pride and joy is the new business hall our campus is in the process of building. Whenever I hear students or staff talking about it, all they seem to mention is the fact of how nice it will be, so in return, William and Mary national rankings will go up, more students will apply, our school will become more notorious, and eventually, everyone will somehow receive more money. Even on the business website, they describe the new building to burst our university scores up...not educate better – and isn’t that the point of the whole building?
All in all, it is inevitable that our universities will become those of corporations living in the money run country that we do, but can we try and remember the education for once?

-Laura Condyles

Alma Mater Hail?

2008-10-09T16:06:00.002-04:00

In the introductory chapter of his How the University Works: Higher education and the Low-Wage Nation, Marc Bousquet notes that, since the 1960s, “campus administrations have enjoyed a massively increasing sense of solidarity…More than just ‘apart,’ management is often aligned against the faculty (say, when the faculty seek to bargain collectively or to make ‘shared’ governance meaningful),” (Bousquet 11). Lack of shared governance and the faculty’s tenuous job security when they counteract management was demonstrated very clearly here at William and Mary last spring, when the Board of Visitors (BOV) did not renew popular president Gene Nichol’s contract and the faculty rose up with their students.

During the strikes, sit-ins, and teach-ins that followed Nichol’s resignation, it was difficult to escape the sense that what the faculty were doing by not teaching and by speaking out was dangerous. During a town hall meeting on one of the strike days, Professor Leisa Meyer explained that “it has been made clear to us that the Commonwealth has informed the administration of rules concerning work stoppages. That if two or three state employees collude to engineer a work stoppage they can be terminated immediately," (full video here). Our professors had a sense of solidarity, yet they could not act on it without endangering jobs that, as Bousquet notes over and over again, would be incredibly difficult to replace with another tenure-track position. As Professor Meyer noted, they could not even say the word “strike” for fear of losing their jobs.

During the controversy, we as students were often told that Nichol’s contract was not renewed because of his “management” problems, which we translated (without correction) as his failure to raise as much money for the College as the BOV had hoped. This also speaks to Bousquet’s overarching point about the corporate university basing success on profit margins rather than the accumulation of knowledge, that higher education has “been increasingly marketized – transformed into sites of unprecedented capital accumulation by way of the commodification of activities and relationships,” (Bousquet 1). Gene Nichol challenged assumptions about church and state when he removed the Wren Cross, even though it lost him donations. Gene Nichol took a stand for free speech when he refused to block the Sex Workers’ Art Show’s performance on campus, even though it lost him donations. Through his actions I learned important lessons about the Constitution and the ideals upon which the country was founded, for which this college loves to take credit. The BOV commodified Nichol’s actions, translated them into costs to the College, and then cut off his superior teaching. The faculty was blocked from organizing against it, and students lost out.

-Cate Domino

(photos courtesy of www.wrengateblog.com)

Pink Think and Pink Panties

2008-10-09T14:16:00.003-04:00

In her College Girls, Lynn Peril notes that the “clothes make the college girl” (CG 106). The importance of fashion on college campuses, and college students as fashion consumers, is as prevalent today as it was at the turn of the century through to the 1960s and 70s, as Peril describes. It is incredibly easy to find modern-day parallels to the examples of college fashion trends and their marketing that she describes. In describing the menswear trend prevalent at the turn of the century, Peril notes that “this alternative style incorporated highly symbolic items of men’s clothing such as ties, jackets and vets…worn in combination with a woman’s regular wardrobe of dresses, skirts, and blouses,” (CG 113). These same combinations can be seen on campuses today, with women wearing fitted tweed coats in combination with lacy tops or tuxedo-inspired shirts with feminine heels. In fact, J. Crew describes their tuxedo shirt (pictured) with the tag, “Looks like you borrowed it from a boyfriend—but we're in love with the way it goes with a skinny pant.”

But what are the implications of the old menswear trend? That women in college are in intellectual drag, putting themselves in a man’s position in the academy? Modern-day menswear is particularly interesting when seen in contrast to the concurrent decidedly un-masculine, uber feminine trend that has been occurring in collegiate fashion. American Eagle’s Aerie line of women’s loungewear and underwear is framed, much like Victoria’s Secret’s Pink line Peril discusses, as especially for college women. The sexualized imagery that goes with the marketing of these brands stands in stark contrast to the buttoned-up menswear trend of yesteryear. Both Aerie and Pink sell “collegiate” underwear, and Pink even prints collegiate sayings across the back! Aerie’s line of “dormwear” is dominated by sweatpants and sweatshirts, which, while certainly more innocuous than sexy lingerie, does seem to be a throwback to a time when “three piece silk lounging pajamas” were on a college girl’s list of necessary fashions (Peril 138). In the age of the co-ed dorm, it is pretty easy to convince college women of the necessity of nice pjs.

What is truly bizarre is Pink’s new attempt to market sexy school spirit with their new collection of clothes with real colleges’ mascots and teams on them. While the collection does include the usual sweatshirts, sweatpants, and tote bags, it also includes “undies” for a whopping $29.50 (not pictured online). I love William and Mary, but no way do I want or need our logo, feathers or not, plastered on my underwear. These items are covered in pink and hearts that do not match these colleges’ mascots or colors, but rather, like Peril notes in Pink Think, helps “those women engaged in activities not traditionally associated with their gender to maintain an aura of femininity,” (15). Girls who are interested in sports is potentially threatening, but when pinkwashed is perfectly nonthreatening. I particularly enjoyed Florida State’s line, with their certainly racist Native American mascot’s faced emblazoned over a bed of pink hearts.

Today’s college girl’s fashion is certainly still a staple of the clothing market, and companies are all too willing to embrace their perception of what the collegian wants in her closet to make a few bucks.

-Cate Domino

Beauty and Brains? Too Good to be True!

2008-10-08T19:37:00.009-04:00

The confines of Pink Think stipulate that a woman must adhere strictly to “proper female behavior” and the construct of femininity which “…is sometimes used as a code word for this mythical standard, which suggests that women and girls are always gentle, soft, delicate, nurturing beings…” (Peril, Pink Think 7). The emergence of the college girl brought many stereotypes to the institutions of higher education surrounding what constitutes as “proper female behavior”, most of these stereotypes being grounded in the tenets of Pink Think. Among these beliefs laid the idea that college women must down play their intelligence and defy “…the stereotype of the intelligent-but-unattractive woman” seeing as “wasted looks [were] a betrayal of [oneself] as a woman” (Peril, College Girl 126-128). So began the preoccupation with appearance, beauty, and wardrobe in hopes of proving that women did not have to lose their “feminine charm” in pursuit of higher education.

“Attention to appearance was seen as a positive step away from the negative stereotype of the college girl as a horn-rimmed-glasses-wearing-spinster-to-be, a modern improvement that showed just how far the college girl had come” (Peril, College Girl 127). One of the worst insults that could be thrown at a young woman was that of a spinster. Since part of a woman’s worth laid in her approval from a patriarchal, male-dominated society, rejection by men due to failure to look attractive was a terrible fate indeed. This rejection stung even more if the female in question had shirked in her duties to femininity because of her pursuit of knowledge at an institution of higher education: “…it wasn’t enough for a woman to be smart – she needed beauty too” (Peril, College Girl 127).

This problematic message begins at a very young age as can be seen by the WalMart commercial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJHWJHYH_bk . A mother speaks of her daughter’s first day of school and her insecurities at sending her child into an unknown environment in which she cannot accompany her. But this mother can “…give her [daughter] what she needs to feel good about herself, without breaking her budget”! What could this woman possibly be alluding to? Is it her daughter inheriting her mother’s aptitude for chemistry? No, of course not. Obviously what this woman’s daughter needs to feel good about herself are cute clothes that gain the approval and friendship of fellow classmates. This theme goes on to present itself in several college movies including “The House Bunny”.

The entire premise of the film “The House Bunny” rests on the audience’s assumption that it really is not enough for women to be intelligent; they must be attractive as well and adhere to the accepted notions of beauty: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5r9j1s8iSnY . The film depicts a former Playboy playmate becoming the house mother to the “loser” sorority at a university. The sorority’s members are made up of smart, yet unattractive (by society’s very narrow standards) and socially awkward. Their new house mother takes it upon herself to socialize these young women to not only be book smart, but, in effect, street smart. The sorority women undergo drastic changes in appearance and presentation and become “better versions of ourselves”, to take a direct quote from the film.

“The House Bunny” very clearly relays the belief that if women are going to go out on a limb and be smart, they had better be hotties to prove that they are still female and worthy of male attention. “The House Bunny” also enforces accepted notions of heteronormativity, assuming that the women in the “loser” sorority are all in the pursuit of acceptance and adoration from men. The absurd and unattainable beauty standard is also set by the girls’ new house mother, a former Playboy Bunny! I have news for you: no one looks like the Playboy Bunnies!

It is unfortunate that standards of beauty set the majority of women up to feel inadequate. What is even more unfortunate is that these women are taught by popular culture starting at an early age that their self worth rests in their physical appearance. Even intelligence must be coupled with an hourglass figure because: “…wasted looks [are] a betrayal of yourself as a woman” (Peril, College Girl 128).

-Irene Davidson

Virgins and Whores

2008-09-26T01:38:00.003-04:00

“Any girl who lets herself forget the fact that one important use of an education is to help her toward achieving a happy marriage, a home, and family – the things she really wants – is being a very foolish virgin indeed.”

– Wainwright Evans

The College Girl’s sexuality has always been strictly scrutinized. From early logic against coeducation because it would lead to premarital sex (as Lynn Peril discusses in College Girls) to the supposed shame of arriving at college with virginity intact (as portrayed in films like American Pie and Superbad), there has always been a high level of cultural concern for the college girl’s sex life.

American Pie and Superbad have the same basic premise: average high school senior boys racing to get laid before they head off to college, lest they be forced to bear the humiliating label of “virgin.” I think it’s really interesting that both of these films focus more on men’s virginity than women’s. I don’t think this demonstrates a cultural implication that women should still be pure upon arrival at their alma mater (after all, these presumably heterosexual guys must be having sex with someone). American Pie does devote some attention to female sexual pleasure, even though the emphasis is overwhelmingly male. Female sexuality is being displayed in the media: ABC Family’s “Greek” includes key story lines involving sorority sisters sleeping with numerous frat boys, while the CW’s “Gossip Girl” discusses high schoolers taking the SATs in the same voyeuristic tone she uses to describe their overly active sex lives.

At W&M, The Flat Hat includes a regular sex column, condoms are freely distributed, and sex workers do performance art. Today’s college culture is certainly more open about sex than it was in the early years of coeducation. However, portrayals of college students, especially girls, in over sexualized situations objectify women’s education by explicitly linking education and sex. Just as the original coed was looking for more than a husband at college, today’s college girl is looking for more than between-the-sheets action.

-Cate Domino

Pink Think? Think Again...

2008-09-26T00:29:00.003-04:00

It’s hard not to think about my Feminist classes from Professor Hilary Marcus when I view the media. Almost every time I open my laptop or turn on the television in my room, I’m bombarded with images of ‘the perfect people’. Though most people would never recognize it directly, we have pretty high gender standards to meet in our society. Though women have come to new feats, even a possible place as Vice President of the United States, there are still rigid gender boundaries that women are supposed to stay. This goes from social standards, to education to etiquette, to body language, to speech, and beyond. You name the factor and there probably is a ‘correct way’ to do it as a man and a ‘correct way’ to do it as a woman.

Lynn Peril addresses this in her book Pink Think. We are reading this for class and it is excellent! The ideas I listed above, the correct ways of life for women, are analyzed in Peril’s Pink Think. Peril defines Pink Think as “a set of ideas and attitudes about what constitutes proper female behavior…it assumes there is a standard of behavior to which all women, no matter their age, race, or body type, must aspire.” (Peril, Pink Think, page 7)

Many might claim that Pink Think ended with the 1950s and women are out of the kitchen and are independent, successful people without men and that all is equal. On the outside this may seem to be true but with a closer examination of our culture, we can see that Pink Think is very much still alive.

If you look hard enough, it’s almost impossible to miss Pink Think in our media. While watching TV yesterday, I saw two Pink Think examples within a time span of 5 minutes. The first I saw was a commercial for DiGiorno’s pizza. In the commercial, the husband basically bids his wife into the kitchen to make him a pizza because he is hungry. This may seem innocent enough, but the fact that he is too lazy to get up and make it himself and deliberately placing his wife to do his work instead because ‘she belongs in the kitchen’ is a red flag immediately. Peril supports this idea of Pink Think with “in the pink-thinking past homemaker was considered the only ‘true’ career for a woman.” (Peril, Pink Think, page 38) Though that idea may be something of the past, the commercial easily proves that it is an anti-feminist theory that still exists today.

Another example was in the popular show, “The Hills.” Lauren Conrad, the main character in the show, is upset that her ex boyfriend and her friend go on a date together. She vents about this to a friend and he states, “Boys will be boys”, implying that none of the wrong was done by the male and any wrong was created by the female. This idea from the past believes that males have the sanction to see whoever they want, despite any social cues or hurt feelings and that it is the female who takes any negative blame for being a ‘slut’. That doesn’t seem equal to me…

A last example I saw was in my latest issue of Cosmopolitan. I have been receiving the issues as a birthday gift from a friend and usually look forward to the beauty and clothing tips in the magazine and avoid the sex and how to please your man pages. This issue’s captions, though, caught my eye. When looking at the front of the cover (which is blue for a boy, by the way) every single phrase/word on the cover is related to men in some way and how to please them. This number one selling magazine for WOMEN is all focused on men. Pink Think?? I think so.

Anyone who tells you that Pink Think doesn’t exist, tell them to come and talk to me for an education.

-Laura Condyles

Soror-itute? Sorority!

2008-09-26T00:27:00.001-04:00

As I flip through pages of magazines, browse the web, watch television, etc, it’s hard not to notice the media’s infatuation with the college years. By means of insanely popular TV shows, multi-million dollar movies, and the false idea of hard partying at all times while looking perfect AND scoring the guy, it’s pretty easy to get sucked into the black hole of the created image of the modern day college girl.

College girls in the twenty first century are to be smart (but stupid acting), rich, pretty, either friendly or completely snotty, and… did I almost forget? … in a sorority! (Though Irene, Cate, and I cannot completely laugh at this stereotype considering we are all associated with social sororities on our campus) The American world we live in does not associate the college girl with hard work and big goals. The American idea of the college girl is a sorority sister in all her stereotypical glory. The money, the looks, the status, the fake; it’s all very real in our bubble world of college towns. It extends from reality to the silver screen in movies like “House Bunny”, “American Pie”, “Animal House”, and countless others. It extends to the small screen with shows like “Greek” and even the horror based plot of “Sorority Forever.”

One thing that all of these examples have in common is that it supports the negative ideas of sororities. While fortunately for the students of William and Mary, Greek life on our campus does mainly represent the bond of sister and brotherhood between common students, but it is a different story on other campuses. The parties, the hook-ups, the hazing, and the money are very real. This fact does not only apply to modern culture today, but sororities have always a darker side, even from their beginnings.

Lynn Peril supports this claim in her book College Girls. There has always been debate over this, even in the foundations of the sorority system. She supports this claim with, “Long-standing and heated debate has always surrounded the nature and influence of the Greek letter societies. Sororities were not democratic…the admitted girls based on social position and wealth, excluded others because of racial and religious prejudices, while the rushing procedure itself made for hurt feelings.” (Peril, College Girls 80) Sororities have never had a clean reputation and I doubt they ever will.

Another issue visible today on college campuses is the racial divides. While public schools were desegregated decades ago and pride themselves now on how racially diverse they can make their campuses, students still seem to divide themselves into different colors. On most campuses, students of the same race tend to attract to each other and separate themselves from others. While it’s hard to pinpoint exactly why this happens, it’s not hard to imagine that it could come from is history. In College Girls, Peril describes the negative actions taken towards black students in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. (pages 65-69) White students protested the desegregation of their schools and refused to associate with them on campus whether it be in the dining hall or dormitory.

This history makes it understandable why there might be tension between races on college campuses today. Often times, the tension is made into a joke, such as in the popular youtube video of a mom’s reaction when her daughter first moves into her college dorm and her roommate is black. The video highlights racial stereotypes and uses it for humor. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmiV_K98b7I&feature=related) Popular clips like this keep racial tensions alive among our youth. We must stop these sorority and racial stereotypes!!!

-Laura Condyles

"Dude...lesbians!"

2008-09-25T20:43:00.004-04:00

While not experiencing this discrimination myself, I am aware of the legal and social obstacles posed to lesbian individuals in American society. With this knowledge I was surprised to read the section in Lynn Peril’s book College Girl entitled “Crushes, or Making the Appropriate Adjustments” (87-92). Peril writes of crushes that developed between women at all-female institutions spanning from the 1850s to the early decades of the 20^th century (Peril 90-91). A crush was defined as an intense affection, which may or may not include romantic feelings, toward a close female friend (Peril 87-89). These same-sex relationships were widely accepted “due in part to the long-accepted ideal of romantic friendships among women…Women filled in the empty emotional spaces in each others’ lives, even after marriage and motherhood” (Peril 89). Still, these friendships were prevented “from going further than what was deemed socially acceptable” especially with the psychological developments of Freud and early sexologists who deemed “certain feelings and preferences that had before been within the spectrum of ‘normal’ female [experience]…outside the pale of acceptable female behavior” (Peril 88, 91).

With that historical basis, the pseudo-lesbian and college girl-on-girl action has become increasingly sensationalized in current films, television shows, and music. I use the term pseudo-lesbian because two females engaged in a physical relationship are only acceptable as long as it is pursued publicly and in the presence of heterosexual men. Actual homosexuality is one of the main enemies of True Womanhood and Pink Think, “…a set of ideas and attitudes about what constitutes proper female behavior” (Peril 7). If a college girl dabbles here and there in same-sex relationships, it is assumed as college experimentation and even at times encouraged or seen as “trendy”. Alice Pieszecki, a character from the popular Showtime television show “The L Word”, retells her coming out story (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnWX0itv-C8 ). This includes Alice making out with the other female member of her rock band while on stage at a show; Alice’s now former boyfriend watches this public display of affection and nods his head in approval. He is neither angry nor upset that his girlfriend is engaging in a physical relationship with someone else; this displays perfectly the way lesbian relationships are discredited in popular culture, especially those that occur or develop in college. As long as the relationship is short-lived, performed in the company of others, and not continued after graduation, a woman is still adhering to Pink Think (Peril 7).

I would be shocked if even one person in college has not heard Katy Perry’s song “I Kissed a Girl”; this song is another prime example of how lesbian relationships are not considered actual romantic relationships (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAp9BKosZXs ). Perry sings: “I hope my boyfriend don’t mind it/ It felt so wrong/ It felt so right/ Don’t mean I’m in love tonight/ I kissed a girl and I liked it” (http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/k/katy_perry/i_kissed_a_girl.html). Clearly, Katy Perry is not a lesbian, referencing her boyfriend, and understands that her actions are deviant. Author from the late 1800s, Mrs. Mary Wood-Allen, who discouraged overtly affectionate female friendships, would most likely describe Katy’s actions as a sign of “a sort of perversion, a sex mania, needing immediate and perhaps severe measures” (Peril 91).

Unfortunately, opinions similar to Mrs. Mary Wood-Allen’s still exist. Lesbian relationships are either seen as mere college experimentation that a woman will mature out of or are seen as a “perversion…needing immediate” attention, read: correction (Peril 91). Romantic female relationships are, to an extent, accepted, but only confined to the college campus.

-Irene Davidson

Femininity

2008-09-25T20:43:00.003-04:00

“Being feminine was the cornerstone of female success and happiness…and the sooner girls learned its rules, the better” (Peril, Pink Think 45). For countless years, femininity has been considered one of the most important aspects of being female. This explains why the first educational institutions for women in the United States were dame schools or finishing schools “that “finished” aristocratic young ladies for a life in society” (Peril, College Girl 18). Originally, educational institutions were intended to teach women the “rules” of femininity; while these institutions eventually offered academic courses of study, compulsory femininity was incorporated into many college practices. Two words: sorority rush. Because everyone knows “feminine girls [are] popular girls” (Peril, Pink Think 45).

As a sorority girl myself, I understand the ins and outs of going through formal sorority recruitment. There is a strict code involved in formal recruitment including expectations concerning appearance, dress, and conversation. Women are encouraged to wear sun dresses, but make sure not to show too much skin. Make-up for sure, but not too much: “…a girl who “really overdoes both make-up and the too tight-sweater bit” appeared “easy” (Peril, Pink Think 47). Don’t talk about boys, politics, religion, after hour activities, basically anything of substance. Women who do not adhere to these expectations may be identified negatively. Sororities have “admitted girls based on social position and wealth, excluded others because of racial and religious prejudices” (Peril, College Girl 80). Since feminine girls are popular ones, the more feminine a woman, the more likely her chances were for receiving a bid from a sorority.

Luckily for the current college co-ed, role models like Elle Woods exist. President of her sorority and a 4.0 fashion student, Elle incorporates the color pink, an immediate signifier of femininity, into all her many commodities including wardrobe, car, dorm accessories, and outfits for her tiny dog. Elle is (tragically) dumped by her boyfriend as he pursues a degree and a more serious female partner at Harvard Law school. Undeterred, Elle aces the LSAT and receives acceptance from Harvard! Elle eventually proves that she does, in fact, have a brain during a case in which she must defend one of her sorority sisters on trial for murder. Elle wins everyone over with her commitment to sisterhood (she refuses to disclose her client’s scandalous alibi) and her feminine charm. While Elle achieves academic success, she never impinges upon the rules of sorority sisterhood and femininity.

“…proper feminine behavior [requires] constant, vigilant reinforcement. Women who [don’t] follow the experts’ rules… [are] often assigned to the gulag of gender nonconformity as malcontents and deviants” (Peril, Pink Think 20). The message is simple and clear: adhere to the rules of femininity and pink think and you will be successful in your social and academic endeavors. Betray those norms and you’re doomed.

-Irene Davidson

What Decade is This?

2008-09-25T18:16:00.001-04:00

We have been reading Lynn Peril’s College Girls for our independent study, a fascinating and often hilarious look at the social construction of female college students. Her examples of the kinds of media that the new Coeds were exposed to seem like total relics to modern college students. I, for one, would be appalled if the mainstream media implied that my worth is measured in the skills that will make me an awesome housewife when, inevitably, I get a man to wait on.

So, suffice it to say, I was more than a little shocked/perturbed when I discovered that The Virginia Informer, part of the mainstream media right here at the College of William and Mary, was publishing a column that does just that! The headline of Jennifer Souers’ first entry of the year in her “Finer Side” column, “Happiness can come from refinement,” seems to be out of place anytime after the Johnson administration, at least. Souers notes that her column was “created especially for The Informer’s own ‘finer side’: its female reading base.” She later states that she focuses on “three main areas in this column: consumer-related advice, manners and etiquette, and fun fashion stories” and that she “wanted to offer the tools to help people be successful in their future lives.” Now, sure, everyone is a consumer, should have a basic grasp of how to behave themselves, and must, at some point, get dressed. I don’t specifically take issue with the existence of a column about these things. It’s the fact that Souers states repeatedly that she’s writing for a female readership and the implication that they (and not males) will need to know these things to be “successful” in life that is a direct throwback to the early years of women at the College, when everyone was presumed to be getting their MRS. I seriously question the logic that only women want to know “this history of the popped vs. unpopped collar trend,” “what to wear to an interview,” and “what Master Craftsmen offers at Christmas.” After all, men shop for the holidays, go on job interviews, and wear polo shirts.

Our independent study’s activist element aims to critique and change the College’s male-centric culture, which celebrates the men that came before us, but rarely the women. Fortunately, we hear stories of today’s “college girl” in leadership positions in all parts of campus life – we are moving forward, however slowly. It is, however, essential that our college media recognize and reflect these changes in their writing, lest we reinforce the old idea that women are primarily consumers.

-Cate Domino

"The Finer Side" column discussed can be accessed here

Welcome

2008-09-20T21:17:00.000-04:00

This blog will follow our independent study, which aims to reveal how the social expectations of women have limited them in academia and continue to create barriers in higher education today. Using women’s experiences at the College of William and Mary as a case study, we will examine the evolving cultural construction of the “College Girl” leading up to coeducation at the College through to the present day. We will conduct research in the College archives to better understand the W&M woman’s experience and will use texts, novels, film, music, and other forms of media to analyze and contextualize our findings.

Because of sexism and cultural norms, like many of those in conceptions of the “College Girl,” women still face many barriers to recognition in academic environments. To educate fellow students about how constructions of the “College Girl” can be both liberating and constraining for college women today, we will produce a short documentary outlining the history of the “College Girl” ideal and it’s applications at the College. The documentary will allow us to share the findings of our general and archival research as well as demonstrate what can me done to improve the College’s culture, including information about our activist project. This will allow us to raise awareness about the memorial project and solicit help and donations. To more permanently affect the presence of women in the College’s culture, we will erect a permanent memorial to the freshman women of 1918 in a prominent campus location. By adding female narratives to the ever-popular stories of Thomas Jefferson and the College’s other male revolutionaries, we hope to contribute to a more women-friendly College culture.

Looking forward to a great semester!

-Laura, Irene, and Cate

90 Years of Women

The *Idea*l Woman

sex (mis)education

I'm a Beautiful (but dumb) Bride!

A Woman's Place?

Sadie Hawkins Dance, In My Khahi Pants, or, the Tri-Polar College Girl

Women’s Studies Students – the New College Girls

Come one, Come all

And I pay for this how...?

Can't Even Afford a Tweed Jacket

Gina Barreca's Unique Voice

White Male Upperclass Privilege

Rewriting Tradition

And you are...?

There is an Image to Uphold

The Well-Dressed Sorority Girl

Mixed Review: In Defense of Greek Life

But I'm so much cuter!

The Color of a Sorority

Rules and Restrictions

Then and Now, part 2: GOOOAL!

Flappers and Rebellion

Then and Now

Career or Marriage? The Eternal Question.

What is this? The 50's or something?

Back To School Sale = Pink Think

Money, money, money, MONEY!

We’re Here For You [money] !

Alma Mater Hail?

Pink Think and Pink Panties

Beauty and Brains? Too Good to be True!

Virgins and Whores

Pink Think? Think Again...

Soror-itute? Sorority!

"Dude...lesbians!"

Femininity

What Decade is This?

Welcome

The Ideal Woman