I’ve loved your content all week on IG! Truly doing the Lord’s work so that I don’t have to rejoin TikTok.
As to the last question of why you’re so interested - one of the reasons so many of us love your content is because you treat “feminine” content with the seriousness it deserves. This is your wheelhouse! So many of us who follow you either were in sororities or had friends in sororities and I would venture to guess no one subscribing to this newsletter (or following you on social) is a silly or not a thoughtful person. Thank you again for bringing nuance and legitimacy to a topic that is traditionally dismissed as unserious or ridiculous.
The thing that has been on my mind throughout watching Rushtok, this year and last, is that the culture of performative femininity is fascinating as it pertains to its existence in a state where some aspects of women’s health care and all gender-affirming medical care were until last year unreachable for most and after last year 100% illegal.
Not criticizing anyone’s personal decisions on where to attend college, what to do with that experience, or anything at all, it’s just something that has lived in my mind rent free simultaneous to witnessing this phenomenon.
I have been appalled but not shocked how so many obviously saavy women have chosen to attend a school in. A state that they cannot get healthcare in. Especially since sexual assault in Greek life is not infrequent. (I say this as a former sorority girl who saw it up close.) what are you getting in return as you are performing high femininity while being a second class citizen?
I think it fits right in very nicely, unfortunately. This is a place where abortion has been so couched in euphemisms (ectopic=removing abnormal growth, abortion for abnormalities=early induction) that there’s already such an innate sense of performance to begin with.
I’m a Greek-American and still throws me off for a second hearing about “Greek life” in the context of sororities/fraternities 😂The real Greeks are not claiming this one lol
My first week in college a professor asked who was was Greek which I thought was odd - I raised my hand and then suddenly realized most of the class had raised their hand too! I quickly and sheepishly put my hand down when I realized lol
Aug 20, 2023·edited Aug 20, 2023Liked by Anne Helen Petersen
I went to Cornell, which has (I'm guessing) the biggest and most active Greek system of the Ivies, or at least it did when I was there in the early aughts. A lot of what I'm seeing in AHP's (fascinating! immaculately curated!) Rushtok observations/commentary is surprisingly familiar despite Cornell not being a state school in the South. One big difference: rush happens at the beginning of second semester there, which effectively means going back to campus two weeks early in January, and trekking from house to house when there is a foot of snow on the ground. So you have to *really* want to do it.
I didn't rush, but some of my close friends from my freshman dorm did. One of them looked like a shoo-in on paper: she was (is!) a genuinely warm, kind, intelligent, compassionate, and deeply good person -- and on top of that, she was a high school cheerleader/dancer, got straight A's, and was from a wealthy NYC suburb. She did not get ONE. BID. Not even from the "less desirable" sororities. And she was crushed. And I was so angry at those clique-y, catty girls in their big houses for doing that to her. I also suspect it had a little bit to do with the fact that she had an "ethnic" last name that marked her as not 100% all-American (one side of her family was Irish catholic, the other was Middle Eastern). Our friend who got in played polo. HMMMM.
Given that this is my personal lens on sororities, I am dismayed that we still do this as a culture. I thought Gen Z was supposed to be more socially aware and less susceptible to this kind of exclusionary, performative, cringe-y white supremacist BS. And yet, the Tiktoks and the drama of it all do have this reality-TV-esque entertainment value and allure that even I, a true hater, find myself drawn in by watching. It is, as AHP noted, deeply American. And that is so embarrassing.
As someone who works with Gen Z as an educator… I feel like there’s a continuum of Gen Z expression between what AHP calls “high femme” and what her interviewee calls “non-performing as a performance,” and the endpoints of that continuum are still very much constrained by the societal forces outlined above. If the white male gaze inherent in all of this hasn’t changed much since the 90s, and those holding that gaze still have the power to let some people through the gates of traditional success (money, opportunities), then some Gen Z kids are understandably going to choose the performance that gets them through the gates vs. one that is likely to result in exclusion. As AHP notes… it’s the lack of evolution on the part of the (Millennial/Gen Z/Boomer) gatekeepers that is constraining the expression of the (Gen Z) kids trying to navigate the gates.
Darn it. I feel like, as a Gen Xer, that I and my personal cohort have been pretty evolved but as soon as I start thinking about many other people I’ve known (Gen X and Millennial), I realize, “oh. Right. We’re not all winners.” (Uh not that I feel I’m a winner or exemplary, mind you. )
Well, and, we too have had our pendulum swings. Consider that Bikini Kill’s first breakout album on Kill Rock Stars dropped in 1993… and Britney’s “Baby One More Time” dropped in 1999. Same continuum. Almost the same endpoints.
I agree and would add that all generations have these points and outliers (hippies are also boomers, for a shorthand example), which is fine! but which also makes all of the "the youngs are going to save us" so cringy to me; if we aren't careful we spend so much time in the (often useful) generational shorthand that we forget that all groups have their complexities
Interesting comment that GenZ is stereotyped as being more socially aware. I would have said this too but here we are with a perfect example of how generational stereotypes are simply just that. There are always those who defy them (for better or worse).
I mean...it feels like 95 in Tuscaloosa right now and it’s 10:30, so it’s the same for these girls (they walk from house to house and stand in front of the houses before they can go in--sometimes for really long stretches)! And god forbid anyone complain about how hot they are or smell from sweating...
Fellow Cornellian and the idea of Fall rush is very, very strange to me as well. I also didn't rush, but I decided that *after* having a full semester to get sense of what role the frats and sororities played on campus, make some friends and discuss their plans with them, and just generally get a sense of things. I can't imagine trying decide something like that essentially sight unseen.
I've found this to be bewildering enough that I've actually talked about it with a few people that went to other schools (who are usually equally bewildered by the idea of Spring rush). My half-baked theory is that the difference basically comes down to how diffuse the Northeastern elite is education-wise compared to what happens at a school like Alabama--rich kids in New England or the Mid-Atlantic go to any one of eight Ivies, a dozen SLACs (Williams, Amherst, etc.), and a whole array of only slightly less exclusive privates, fancy publics, and/or preppy safety schools (Tufts, UVA, and Hobart, respectively, are the examples in my head). Even if you went to an elite prep school, unless there's a building at Harvard named after your grandfather, you don't really know where you're going to college until shortly before you go. Andover still sends a TON of people to Yale every year, but that means 5% of their class, not the numbers you would see at a fancy private school in Alabama or Georgia and their respective state flagships (they send half as many kids UMass and none to UConn). All of that means that you simply can't learn the intricate details of the social structures of every relevant school before you go; even for the children of the elite you're not going to be able to chat up your best friend's mom about what house or club to join, after all you're going to Penn and she went to Wellesley. And when you show up on campus you'll *maybe* know a handful of kids from your class or that preceded you by a year or two, but the networks are just very, very different.
On a lighter note, it's funny to me that Kappa is Kappa everywhere apparently, even if at UA that means blonde rich girls from Mobile and in Ithaca its brunette St. Paul's grads driving Audis (dying your hair is (was?) for new money and southerners, they would never).
I don't remember having a particular impression of Kappa, haha. I only had one really good friend in the Greek system and she was a Tri Delt. None of my close guy friends were in frats (except the boyfriend/now husband of the woman I referred to above). Frats were really a means to an end: places we could get drunk before we had access to house parties with alcohol. I feel like I had a sense then that frat culture was problematic/gross but my friends and I went to the parties anyway because free booze and dancing and beer pong. We called SAE "sexual assault expected" (how readily we accepted rape culture on campus back then is a whooooole nother topic). We made fun of Sig Pi for allegedly having a tanning bed in the basement while standing in line to get into parties at Sig Pi. And it seemed like every handful of years, there would be an alcohol-related tragedy at a frat, and that chapter would disappear from campus or go quiet. But the sororities didn't have parties in their houses, so they were a different animal (at least to an outsider).
Oh for sure, I never really even considered rush but some very large percent of my Freshman and Sophomore year social life was bouncing around frat parties on Thursday or Saturday nights. I did have some close friends that rushed North Campus frats, which always seemed a little less stereotypically "fratty" (TEP were stoners, KDR were nerdy engineers, I couldn't tell you anymore what Acacia's deal was but they threw good dance parties, etc.) but even those houses were Not Great when it came to a lot of the negative issues I associate with Greek life in general. But, like, none of our friends had off campus houses to throw parties in yet, so...
It’s hard to be “so much better” than the generations before you when they still run the world and set all the rules. (It’s also a way for adults to abdicate from their responsibilities: to say oh, well the kids will fix it all!)
I attended a college that did not allow sororities or fraternities AT ALL. When I worked at Cornell, I was pretty astonished at the size of Greek life and had a chance to dig into the history there. A couple points (and you may already know this): the fraternity system emerged early at Cornell and was hugely popular from 1880s onward, partly because it took Cornell so long (not until WWI) to build male dorms on campus and partly because there were not enough boarding houses in town for the growing student population. The administration essentially endorsed the rise of fraternity lodge culture at that time. The female students were all mostly living in Sage College under the "watchful" eye of the administration. There were a remarkably large number of fraternities by the 1910s. Sororities developed on campus later and historically there have always been not as many sorority houses as fraternity lodges. This became a real problem once female undergrads started outnumbering male undergrads. From about the 1980s onward, with an increasingly large group of female students wanting to be part of Greek life there, the situation got worse - the sororities were hard to get into and couldn't take lots of new members. And, of course, they were/are cliquey, as you rightly note! It's only recently that they have increased the number of sororities allowed on campus, but it is still an entire exclusionary BS system. And they extract sooooo much cash from the sorority members because they pay all sorts of dues and merchandise and you HAVE to live in the house in your second year and it is expensive and you share a room, etc.
I cannot stop watching/reading about this content, and find all of these things to be true: (1) all of these women are REALLY impressive, are far more so than I was at that age, and also (2) this feels like a giant step backwards/in the wrong direction for such a capable group of young women.
I am very close to all this, both geographically and professionally, and have long thought 'oh AHP really needs to walk us through all this' so thank you for granting my wish!
All your points about why frats don't have the same social media presence for recruitment are spot on; I'll just add that I've been told, with complete seriousness, 'the boys aren't responsible enough to move in and be on campus early.' (Their recruitment happens halfway through the semester instead of in August.) So I'm fascinated by who gets infantilized when, and how.
Performative masculinity is more tied to the power infrastructure, so it is less visible. It intentionally plays down appearance almost in opposition to feminine performance. Look more closely at that fraternity rush. The young women compete on one set of terms for entry into the class structure, the young men compete on another.
The fraternities have their own view of what makes a good fit, who can be seen as a member. They are just as much about preserving and extending existing power structures. Athletics are part of it, but the school football team isn't a social club and I doubt the players, the ones on the field for the big games, have time for fraternity life. They're there for a chance with the NFL.
The fraternity Rushtok, if it were to exist, would be superficially boring. There would be no flamboyant plumage to admire or criticize. Still, I would love to say AHP's take on it. The entire idea of an organizationally based social life is completely alien, but I'll bet what is visible of the fraternity rush process would be fascinating in its way.
Your line about boys who ‘aren’t responsible enough to move in and be on campus early’ has really haunted me. I am guessing that doesn't refer to an ability to remember to shower and wash their dishes? And if it means they can't be trusted with the girls on campus out of term time, what changes in term time — and for whom? So. Many. Questions.
Absolutely. I think the primary concern from the people making those statements has been about alcohol, and liability--the idea that frat recruitment involves a lot of drinking, and therefore holding it during the semester when there's more people around, and when the houses can require 'study hall' for new members in some theoretical resemblance of paying attention to coursework, might provide some sort of guardrail against the worst excesses...But yes. The unspoken thing here about separating frat and sorority rush, along with the different codes of comportment, who has access to alcohol and controls that access for others--it's all really troubling.
it's interesting that you said "I'm jealous of your strong sense of self" re: people who had no interest in sororities, I know that was just a casual comment so I'm not critiquing but it made me think. I've known for most of my life that I couldn't access this kind of female social category if I tried (fat, queer, disabled, raised by mom who actively kept me from learning these skills and scripts) so it didn't ever feel like a choice. those girls saw me and instantly knew I wasn't one of them. but i think it still did result in me having a stronger sense of self, since I was forced to define my own and couldn't rely on the cultural consensus to tell me who i was.
Relatable! I wasn’t allowed to wear the kinds of brands some of the girls at my high school did, so I had to develop my own sense of self in opposition to that. I desperately wanted to fit in but it just wasn’t an option.
exactly! I wasn't allowed to wear makeup or buy clothes that had the brand's name visible, and I wasn't taught how to do anything to my hair besides wash and brush it. by the time I had my own money and freedom to buy whatever I wanted, I had already internalized that i was different from girls who did these things.
Yes! I didn’t understand how the other girls had these curtains of glossy straight hair that ended in a straight line across their backs. (I now understand that this was heat styling, products, and regular haircuts). I just assumed they were better at ‘girling’ than me.
Omg yes, the immediate assumption that I wasn't "good at being a girl" and wasn't doing it "right" instead of being able to understand that others were buying products and spending lots of time on it!
oh my god, yeah! I was so frustrated with my hair but I didn't understand that getting regular haircuts was what could make it look better. I also assumed I was naturally worse and different somehow. I didn't get my hair cut at all until 8th grade when a friend took me to the mall to try and "make me pretty" lol
as a zillenial who was bi and very online, I was exposed to queer culture and this feeling was narrativized as gender dysphoria, although I identify as female again now. I am curious how it felt to have a similar experience without that narrative, since even though I felt isolated I did have a way to understand myself and a sense that I wasn't alone (starting around middle school when I discovered the concept)
I’m a Gen-Xer and was a secular homeschooler, first generation college student, so totally outside of this world as well, I went to private university that did have a Greek system but never even considered joining. I truly felt like I just didn’t fit in those circles either because it was too outside my understanding. I think in some ways not “belonging” has allowed me to follow my own rules in a lot of other areas which at this point I’m pretty grateful for. I do find it fascinating though.
it's super fascinating! one thing I've learned through reading our discussions on culture study is that everyone has a moment where they break from the narrative, and a lot of women had it when they were older (not getting married, not having kids, becoming disabled or having some unusual life event) and it was a big identity crisis. in a way people like us have it easier since we had that crisis as children and have constructed our lives outside of the rules already. it's not like I don't have trauma from being left out and feeling like womanhood wasn't accessible for me of course, but on the other hand I'm spared having to rethink my identity as an adult since I already made up one that fits me and has room for change
Another Gen-Xer here, exvangelical who was homeschooled in a religious environment and went to a small private college with no connection to the Greek system. For me, watching these rush videos is like watching a documentary about another planet.
I also think “not belonging” has allowed me to follow my own rules, and I’m grateful for it. I’ve even reached a point of gratitude for the double not-belonging I went through: at first not belonging in “normal” life (like Greek systems), then later not belonging in church either. Just finding my own way over here, lol. As shitty as many parts of that story were to live through, I now realize there are upsides to having no choice but to develop a strong sense of self.
I think it would be interesting to explore how VERY active parents are in this whole process. I grew up and and now live in an SEC university town, and I have peers who have daughters that have gone through rush. It consumed their entire lives for about a year, trying to get letters of recommendation for their daughters, making sure they had the right wardrobe...it was never my thing, but it’s fascinating to watch, as are most things about southern Greek life.
I got a call from a family friend yesterday--someone I haven’t been in touch with in years, mind you--asking me to call a sorority national office to “put in a good word” for the granddaughter of a friend of hers who’s rushing right now (at an SEC school). I don’t know her friend OR her friend’s granddaughter.
All I could think was WTF?! Luckily for me, she was mistaken about the sorority that I was in in college, so it was easy for me to say no. But I was literally so shocked that she would even think to call me! The whole thing struck me as totally ridiculous. I guess it’s not just the parents who are overly invested in this.
Oh, for sure. U Arkansas had their bid day yesterday, and all PNMs gather in the Chi Omega greek theater on campus to open their bids...and ALL the parents stand in the grass behind the theater to watch. And there are all sorts of stores that cater to the Greek system doing events and sales all weekend. Targeting those parents’ wallets is a whole thing.
Wait, what? So there is a public bid opening with the students who don’t get bids or not the ones they want being forced to attend and get their hearts broken in front of an audience? That is a thing?
Ugh parents week in the spring where I worked was the worst. Highlights (lowlights?) include a woman telling her daughter she couldn’t buy a romper that looked great on her because the tag said “Large”, and another mom telling me I should be folding stuff to move the line along when I was busy being the anti-theft person. (Which, admittedly does look like messing around, but if you’re talking to customers, it’s harder for them to steal stuff. So I just wandered around talking to people.)
I’m also pretty sure I heard somewhere that U Arkansas has one of the largest pledge classes this year... it I could be making that up. Sure feels like a lot.
I commented down thread about UT-Austin, but I think this is a case of "everyone else does it" so it becomes something moms add on so their daughters can "keep up." UT itself has gotten really hard to get into for many kids (top 6% of HS class, generally), and there are a lot of moms in Texas who went to UT themselves (and found their partners). Austin is new Texas but there are definite pockets of old Texas in some of the Greek. Texas girls who can't get into UT are at flagships at Arkansas, Ole Miss, LSU and Alabama, sometimes Oklahoma, and sometimes Texas Tech. It's a weird ecosystem.
Funny you mention the Texas girls are at Arkansas, because the “Texas invasion” is a FREQUENT topic in Fayetteville, both from locals and from local job recruiters trying to hire from UArk who run into a hundred candidates who want to move back to Dallas.
Just wanted to say thank you for all the work you did bring the Rush Tok videos to instagram. I can’t have that app on my phone because it just sucks me in and becomes all consuming in a way that other social media doesn’t quite manage to do. It was so interesting to watch and get your analysis
Yes! I stay off Tik Tok which is only possible bc generous hearts like AHP curate to other platforms, otherwise the fomo would consume my soul. I feel like there should be an extra tip jar just for AHP’s bama rush curation.
Ditto. TikTok exhausts my brain and my faculties extraordinarily quickly. I try to go there only for truly compelling reasons. Ha! Of which there are relatively few, thankfully.
I’m fascinated by this whole thing. I went to a medium sized nerd school that had greek life but they were heavily regulated (someone died of alcohol poisoning in an 80s frat rager on campus): no Greek housing allowed, rush was in the second semester and freshmen were heavily discourage from rush, so those that did usually did it second semester of their sophomore year and the residential side of it wasn’t a factor. Most of the kids who did it were children of members. (One of my roommates rushed and didn’t have any Greek connections and we were all Very Concerned--she seemed to have a good experience, but that’s how unusual it was.)
Basically, it’s so interesting to me because it’s so far outside my own experience.
The thing that gets me the most is the woman who’s the rush consultant. Her aggressive “stay quiet, conform” message reminds me of the women who worked in HR at various employers who always carried that message. “Are you sure you want to file that workers comp claim? It will label you as a problem.” Not really different from “Don’t make rush about you, it’ll label you as attention seeking.”
I hope these girls have a great time in their sororities but I do worry about them and the pressure to conform, stay quiet, not rock the boat and how that’ll impact their futures.
I think she actually works in HR for her full time job so that totally tracks - and someone on Insta this week in the the stories I think mentioned the sorority to HR pipeline.
I have so many thoughts about the gender expression of it all. I’m intrigued by all the drag happening with the girls lip syncing as boy bands— is this happening at the same hyper feminine sororities or are these videos from sororities that are generally more lax with their gender policing? It’s fascinating how queer-coded they are in those videos and how much they’re leaning into it in a way that I imagine they might not usually be able to in sorority contexts.
Also I would argue that high femme is not the right word to describe these women’s aesthetics, that word comes from lesbian butch/femme culture and would certainly apply to a lesbian/non-binary person/trans femme or drag queen dressed exactly as they are dressed, but “femme” as a gender expression is a specifically queer identifier and involves much more subversion and intentionality than straightforwardly buying into the gender performance requirements of white heterosexual hyper femininity.
I feel like my brain is still trying to figure out the drag (how much of it is being at once jealous of male rush and also repulsed by the men themselves, or repulsed by patriarchy?). And thank you for the high femme clarifier note - a few people had used it in my DMs to describe a look but I should’ve thought more about my own usage here. Intense femininity?
Hyper femininity? I really don't know what the right word to use is here and honestly some of it is campy enough to be high femme, but I guess I would only use high femme as a descriptor when it is performed with a certain kind of self awareness. Also I saw "competitive femininity" used to describe rush which feels very accurate and funny
There’s something here too about the immature vs mature feminine. These videos are heavily coded “little girl.” It’s in contrast to, for instance, the rooted or mature feminine you might observe in a 70yo woman who’s seen some shit and is deeply confident in who she is.
thanks for this! I also have questions around this/these theme(s). I do think that cis-opposite expression has a long history in greek life and most other american systems that are more coded for cis women or cis men that this connects in to
another big question that I have is: why are so many folks watching these assuming these folks aren't queer (question 6)? the points ahp & other commenters have made about queer -ish performance and co-opting are valid, but isn't one of the main arguments that many are making that we cannot assume gender identity or queerness (which I intend as to separate but overlapping categories) based on someone's gender expression?
I went to a small school and we didn't have any Greek life on campus. It was a point of "pride" that we didn't participate in that life, which is obviously just as performative as fully participating in all of it. Even if you're not in Greek life, you're still influenced by it.
Heck, I never experienced Greek life but I was a college radio DJ in the late 80s/early 90s when the performance of "cool" could be just as demanding - did you listen to the right music, attend the most underground concerts, did you find the right thrift store clothes? Did you write a zine or draw an indie comic? There was absolutely a "male gaze" a la boys club: maybe different aesthetic requirements, but still those who fit in and those who were "posers" or "wannabes". Youth is exhausting.
Great comment, I was also trying to think through this. My experience of it was more in the aughts but it was absolutely still in play, specifically regarding male gaze (peak manic pixie dream girl era, direct line to “cool girl.”) It brings to mind this piece I read recently through a links and recs rabbit hole, and very much identified with: https://therumpus.net/2017/08/03/mimesis-of-girlhood-in-three-acts-featuring-bright-eyes/
Anyway … there are different ways of enforcing conformity or performing, and they can also come at a personal cost, and I’m not sure “hyper femininity” is actually so much worse than others? Potentially more expensive and time-consuming, I guess, those seem plausible, maybe worth singling out.
Thinking through my comment more. I mean I guess obviously the difference between these older aspirations/archetypes and rushtok is … the vast exponential shift in the scale of visibility and audience, no matter what type of “cool” you are. So yeah ... I didn’t mean to suggest there’s nothing distinctive about rushtok or that all things are the same as all other things have always been. But as someone else said, treating feminized pursuits with curiosity and respect is a strength of CS! So although my comment kinda feels like a tangent rereading it now, I was sort of reminding myself of the value of pausing to consider common threads, vs just kneejerk writing all this off as strange, alien, or sad, just because it’s of a different generation and with a different presentation.
Same, same! I was very drawn to the fact that my SLAC didn’t have Greek life (partially because I felt like I would feel some draw to participate if it was there but they gave me icks), but parties and traditions and conformity and exclusion find a way. Upon hearing we had no Greek life, somebody once asked me, then, where are all the parties? And I was like… In the ultimate frisbee players dorm rooms?
I went to a school with no sorority/frat houses, we just went to bars. My orientation leader took us for fake IDs on Day 4 when we finally allowed off campus (this was 1993 in NYC).
Perhaps similarly, I went to a small New England college that had had a very dominant Greek scene until they abolished it in the 80s. It continued underground in some form when I was there in the late aughts, but it was never clear to me how formalized the underground system was, and whether it was a true club with clearly defined membership and rituals or merely series of normal elite college cliques defined by class/performance of class, legacy, and sports team affiliation. Regardless, it was the source of endless gossip, rumors and fascination.
Yes! I was at the same school a few years back, and also very drawn to not having the pressure and drama of Greek life organizations around. But then the definitely-not-Greek-life group of students that planned all the biggest parties got busted for hazing. You can have parties without Greek life, but I guess you can also end up with the same kinds of exclusion and drama of Greek life without a national organization, too.
I have been waiting for this!! I have so many thoughts because 1) I went to another huge SEC school (the one that beat Bama in the national title game last year) and dropped out of rush and 2) my family and I lived in Mobile for many years and were connected to one of the two expensive private schools that is a huge feeder to Alabama, so we knew and know a lot of young women who were in sororities.
I should say first that my 16 y/o follows a lot of girls from her old school who are presumably going through recruitment right now and haven’t posted a word to their socials, but as far as I can tell, neither have the sororities they would most likely pledge. The “top tier” ones at schools like UA don’t need/want to advertise; they also most likely already know who they’re choosing before recruitment starts. I know at UGA when I was there every top sorority had sort of a known pool--i.e. if you were a debutante from my hometown, you pledged Theta.
I was also thinking about how sororities are judged top or not and it occurred to me that so much is in relation to which fraternities they’re having parties with. A sorority having a joint party with, say, SAE at UGA, is going to be considered a good one. In thinking about this, I distinctly remember my freshman roommate worrying about the fraternity her sorority most often paired with because she didn’t perceive it as desirable as KA (which has terribly racist and problematic traditions!), and thus the perception of her sorority would be judged on that distinction.
I’m also so curious about the role The Machine at UA is playing now that so many out of state students are attending. I wonder how many end up staying in Alabama--I can think of a handful of women I know who weren’t from Alabama and married men who were and ended up staying, but I can also think of a lot of recent grads who have moved to Atlanta. I think about young women like Morgan or Bella Grace and am curious how they’re perceived by power brokers at the school. I could see either of them doing great things at UA without needing a sorority behind them.
Yes! I grew up in a mid-size Alabama town (with both an active debutante scene and pretty gnarly high school sororities) and went to that Other Alabama School semi-recently. I really think the sorority/fraternity associations and how they contribute to rankings gets missed a lot. For most of the girls I grew up with college is still very much about finding husbands. A sorority with a Known Connection to the most prestigious (and rich) frats, or the frats that the “good families” in your hometown are legacies of, is worth its weight in gold. Especially considering a lot of the true legacy kids in the south will move back to their hometown to take over whatever lucrative business that has kept their family in its social position for the past couple of generations.
Anecdotally I lived in a good sized southern city after college and joined a civic organization with the city and one of the first questions always asked at the mixers are what sorority/fraternity you (and your partner) were a part of at what school, it continues to be a shortcut to business contacts for life!
My (very much outsider) understanding is that the Machine is a little blunted by recent non-Machine wins in SGA, although it's still very much around and, I suspect, just a more underground org than in the past. And yes I think a lot of OOS students leave after graduation, if not for their home states, for Atlanta, Nashville, Charlotte, Austin--big Southern economic centers.
I grew up in Austin ( and live here again now) and lived in Nashville for three years ( and go back frequently for visits) - and while Austin is in the south of the country, I would not classify it as Southern ( capital S) in the same sense as the other cities. It was honestly a bit of culture shock to us when we moved to Nashville.
Austin it is a big tech city and really just its own thing all together even in Texas ( “keep Austin weird”). Im sure there are pockets of that UA culture here, as is most places, but it’s not the predominant one.
I’d be really curious to know if those UA people are moving here because I don’t see it being as welcoming to them as Nashville.
That's totally fair--I was thinking of places that seem to be within a broad 'southern' orbit, versus, say, NYC/Boston/Philly, which were the epicenters that drew my college classmates after graduating from a NE SLAC. UA has a lot of Texan students. Many, in my anecdata, from Houston--so maybe they are heading there instead of Austin, I'm not sure.
That makes sense - Houston is much more of an ‘old money’ feel ( as much as that can be in Texas) than Austin and it’s is likely due to Oil & Gas which is still prevalent there. Or even major financial institutions like Goldman - they have offices in Houston, but not Austin. Even the culture in Houston is different from Austin - I was born there and we moved to Austin in 3rd grade - my parents who worked in tech in both places and at the same company, went from wearing suits to basically athletic wear/ jeans. This was in the early 90s but I’ve found it’s still held true.
I also think Austin, and Texas in general, has its own feeder school for new employees with UT and A&M even - there isn’t as much of a need to seek people out of state and if they do, it’s more likely to get people with degrees from universities with unique reputations in those fields. So wildly speculating, but I think there’s just less opportunities as our state schools are massive and good. Not to mention they have a built in rivalry with UA.
I’ve got two girls though and they’re pre-device ages right now but I’m watching this with a lot of intrigue and also fear!
I’m from Houston and many of my mom friends/acquaintances whose daughters rushed at UT got hotel rooms near campus during rush. They were support, a place away, and a last minute wardrobe shopper.
I’m not sure it’s exclusive to OOS students. I went to a big state SEC school, and plenty of in-state people (particularly the ones from smaller towns) migrated to the big cities. These schools inherently feel like big cities, so it seems like a natural progression.
"But it should also be natural for us to think more — like, a whole lot more, a whole newsletter or hours of Instagram Stories more, the rest-of-our-lives more — about any system animated so thoroughly by exclusion." ● Mic drop
This is so important: after all, if sororities weren’t exclusive, there would be no drama and therefore, no Rushtok. But the decisions about who is included and who isn’t included — not to mention the many college women who can’t or won’t even try to play the game — are so rooted in American attitudes toward race, class, and gender that we absolutely need to think more about the entire phenomenon.
Would love to do some dissecting on class and the “college experience,” specifically what kind of college experience is prioritized— my parents are like the definition of New York “liberal elites” and they were much more focused on the epitome of the college experience being a small private liberal arts school in the Northeast with beautiful brick buildings and great autumns and very competitive admissions (think: Dartmouth, Williams, Amherst, etc). My alma mater (small, public, liberal arts) didn’t even have a football team, let alone a big one! So it’s fascinating to think about who is prioritizing this big SEC experience and why.
I have a lot of thoughts about this, but it also made me wonder: do those schools not have “eating houses” or something like them that essentially function as Greek organizations? My sister went to Davidson and that’s what they had (I don’t think they had sororities at all).
Eating Clubs specifically are an analogue at Princeton, but they're all co-ed and non-residential. I imagine that some other schools have similar systems? Harvard and Yale also have big non-Greek affiliated social clubs but they're all a little different (Finals Clubs, Secret Societies). Presumably those three schools in particular get away with maintaining separate systems because of their general "we're so old school and important we don't have to worry about *other* schools" vibe.
I'm honestly not sure! Probably depends on the institution (which is another rabbit hole-- what are the differentiators among small liberal arts schools in terms of who has these types of orgs and who doesn't?) My alma mater technically had Greek orgs but they really weren't a significant presence in any meaningful way and I think in part because we were public and not private, there weren't any other groups that filled this particular niche of exclusive, pay to play, tightly bonded society.
Dartmouth absolutely has frats. (One of them was the inspiration for Animal House!) In fact, when I was there in the late aughts, the majority of undergrads were in a frat or sorority.
Also want to add, this article was so well done. Not only did I grow up in a SEC college town, but I also chose to go into higher education, and every time I thought “I hope she doesn’t leave out this part” you hit on it within a paragraph. I know you can’t go deep on everything in one essay (black sorority and fraternity life is it’s own fascinating subculture) but I appreciated the breadth you hit on. Excited for whatever is coming next!
I’ve loved your content all week on IG! Truly doing the Lord’s work so that I don’t have to rejoin TikTok.
As to the last question of why you’re so interested - one of the reasons so many of us love your content is because you treat “feminine” content with the seriousness it deserves. This is your wheelhouse! So many of us who follow you either were in sororities or had friends in sororities and I would venture to guess no one subscribing to this newsletter (or following you on social) is a silly or not a thoughtful person. Thank you again for bringing nuance and legitimacy to a topic that is traditionally dismissed as unserious or ridiculous.
“Truly doing the Lord’s work so that I don’t have to rejoin TikTok.”
Amen, and, the most millennial sentiment 😂
The thing that has been on my mind throughout watching Rushtok, this year and last, is that the culture of performative femininity is fascinating as it pertains to its existence in a state where some aspects of women’s health care and all gender-affirming medical care were until last year unreachable for most and after last year 100% illegal.
Not criticizing anyone’s personal decisions on where to attend college, what to do with that experience, or anything at all, it’s just something that has lived in my mind rent free simultaneous to witnessing this phenomenon.
I have been appalled but not shocked how so many obviously saavy women have chosen to attend a school in. A state that they cannot get healthcare in. Especially since sexual assault in Greek life is not infrequent. (I say this as a former sorority girl who saw it up close.) what are you getting in return as you are performing high femininity while being a second class citizen?
“What are you getting in return..?”
Proximity to power.
External validation is pretty powerful too.
I think it fits right in very nicely, unfortunately. This is a place where abortion has been so couched in euphemisms (ectopic=removing abnormal growth, abortion for abnormalities=early induction) that there’s already such an innate sense of performance to begin with.
I’m a Greek-American and still throws me off for a second hearing about “Greek life” in the context of sororities/fraternities 😂The real Greeks are not claiming this one lol
Same on all counts! "Are you interested in Greek life?" "No, my life is already plenty Greek, thanks." :D
My first week in college a professor asked who was was Greek which I thought was odd - I raised my hand and then suddenly realized most of the class had raised their hand too! I quickly and sheepishly put my hand down when I realized lol
Same and same!!
I went to Cornell, which has (I'm guessing) the biggest and most active Greek system of the Ivies, or at least it did when I was there in the early aughts. A lot of what I'm seeing in AHP's (fascinating! immaculately curated!) Rushtok observations/commentary is surprisingly familiar despite Cornell not being a state school in the South. One big difference: rush happens at the beginning of second semester there, which effectively means going back to campus two weeks early in January, and trekking from house to house when there is a foot of snow on the ground. So you have to *really* want to do it.
I didn't rush, but some of my close friends from my freshman dorm did. One of them looked like a shoo-in on paper: she was (is!) a genuinely warm, kind, intelligent, compassionate, and deeply good person -- and on top of that, she was a high school cheerleader/dancer, got straight A's, and was from a wealthy NYC suburb. She did not get ONE. BID. Not even from the "less desirable" sororities. And she was crushed. And I was so angry at those clique-y, catty girls in their big houses for doing that to her. I also suspect it had a little bit to do with the fact that she had an "ethnic" last name that marked her as not 100% all-American (one side of her family was Irish catholic, the other was Middle Eastern). Our friend who got in played polo. HMMMM.
Given that this is my personal lens on sororities, I am dismayed that we still do this as a culture. I thought Gen Z was supposed to be more socially aware and less susceptible to this kind of exclusionary, performative, cringe-y white supremacist BS. And yet, the Tiktoks and the drama of it all do have this reality-TV-esque entertainment value and allure that even I, a true hater, find myself drawn in by watching. It is, as AHP noted, deeply American. And that is so embarrassing.
As someone who works with Gen Z as an educator… I feel like there’s a continuum of Gen Z expression between what AHP calls “high femme” and what her interviewee calls “non-performing as a performance,” and the endpoints of that continuum are still very much constrained by the societal forces outlined above. If the white male gaze inherent in all of this hasn’t changed much since the 90s, and those holding that gaze still have the power to let some people through the gates of traditional success (money, opportunities), then some Gen Z kids are understandably going to choose the performance that gets them through the gates vs. one that is likely to result in exclusion. As AHP notes… it’s the lack of evolution on the part of the (Millennial/Gen Z/Boomer) gatekeepers that is constraining the expression of the (Gen Z) kids trying to navigate the gates.
Darn it. I feel like, as a Gen Xer, that I and my personal cohort have been pretty evolved but as soon as I start thinking about many other people I’ve known (Gen X and Millennial), I realize, “oh. Right. We’re not all winners.” (Uh not that I feel I’m a winner or exemplary, mind you. )
Well, and, we too have had our pendulum swings. Consider that Bikini Kill’s first breakout album on Kill Rock Stars dropped in 1993… and Britney’s “Baby One More Time” dropped in 1999. Same continuum. Almost the same endpoints.
I agree and would add that all generations have these points and outliers (hippies are also boomers, for a shorthand example), which is fine! but which also makes all of the "the youngs are going to save us" so cringy to me; if we aren't careful we spend so much time in the (often useful) generational shorthand that we forget that all groups have their complexities
That’s such a great point.
Interesting comment that GenZ is stereotyped as being more socially aware. I would have said this too but here we are with a perfect example of how generational stereotypes are simply just that. There are always those who defy them (for better or worse).
I mean...it feels like 95 in Tuscaloosa right now and it’s 10:30, so it’s the same for these girls (they walk from house to house and stand in front of the houses before they can go in--sometimes for really long stretches)! And god forbid anyone complain about how hot they are or smell from sweating...
Fellow Cornellian and the idea of Fall rush is very, very strange to me as well. I also didn't rush, but I decided that *after* having a full semester to get sense of what role the frats and sororities played on campus, make some friends and discuss their plans with them, and just generally get a sense of things. I can't imagine trying decide something like that essentially sight unseen.
I've found this to be bewildering enough that I've actually talked about it with a few people that went to other schools (who are usually equally bewildered by the idea of Spring rush). My half-baked theory is that the difference basically comes down to how diffuse the Northeastern elite is education-wise compared to what happens at a school like Alabama--rich kids in New England or the Mid-Atlantic go to any one of eight Ivies, a dozen SLACs (Williams, Amherst, etc.), and a whole array of only slightly less exclusive privates, fancy publics, and/or preppy safety schools (Tufts, UVA, and Hobart, respectively, are the examples in my head). Even if you went to an elite prep school, unless there's a building at Harvard named after your grandfather, you don't really know where you're going to college until shortly before you go. Andover still sends a TON of people to Yale every year, but that means 5% of their class, not the numbers you would see at a fancy private school in Alabama or Georgia and their respective state flagships (they send half as many kids UMass and none to UConn). All of that means that you simply can't learn the intricate details of the social structures of every relevant school before you go; even for the children of the elite you're not going to be able to chat up your best friend's mom about what house or club to join, after all you're going to Penn and she went to Wellesley. And when you show up on campus you'll *maybe* know a handful of kids from your class or that preceded you by a year or two, but the networks are just very, very different.
On a lighter note, it's funny to me that Kappa is Kappa everywhere apparently, even if at UA that means blonde rich girls from Mobile and in Ithaca its brunette St. Paul's grads driving Audis (dying your hair is (was?) for new money and southerners, they would never).
I don't remember having a particular impression of Kappa, haha. I only had one really good friend in the Greek system and she was a Tri Delt. None of my close guy friends were in frats (except the boyfriend/now husband of the woman I referred to above). Frats were really a means to an end: places we could get drunk before we had access to house parties with alcohol. I feel like I had a sense then that frat culture was problematic/gross but my friends and I went to the parties anyway because free booze and dancing and beer pong. We called SAE "sexual assault expected" (how readily we accepted rape culture on campus back then is a whooooole nother topic). We made fun of Sig Pi for allegedly having a tanning bed in the basement while standing in line to get into parties at Sig Pi. And it seemed like every handful of years, there would be an alcohol-related tragedy at a frat, and that chapter would disappear from campus or go quiet. But the sororities didn't have parties in their houses, so they were a different animal (at least to an outsider).
Oh for sure, I never really even considered rush but some very large percent of my Freshman and Sophomore year social life was bouncing around frat parties on Thursday or Saturday nights. I did have some close friends that rushed North Campus frats, which always seemed a little less stereotypically "fratty" (TEP were stoners, KDR were nerdy engineers, I couldn't tell you anymore what Acacia's deal was but they threw good dance parties, etc.) but even those houses were Not Great when it came to a lot of the negative issues I associate with Greek life in general. But, like, none of our friends had off campus houses to throw parties in yet, so...
I snorted at that. Every Kappa I know from
Mobile is blonde.
I thought the same about Gen Z!
It’s hard to be “so much better” than the generations before you when they still run the world and set all the rules. (It’s also a way for adults to abdicate from their responsibilities: to say oh, well the kids will fix it all!)
I attended a college that did not allow sororities or fraternities AT ALL. When I worked at Cornell, I was pretty astonished at the size of Greek life and had a chance to dig into the history there. A couple points (and you may already know this): the fraternity system emerged early at Cornell and was hugely popular from 1880s onward, partly because it took Cornell so long (not until WWI) to build male dorms on campus and partly because there were not enough boarding houses in town for the growing student population. The administration essentially endorsed the rise of fraternity lodge culture at that time. The female students were all mostly living in Sage College under the "watchful" eye of the administration. There were a remarkably large number of fraternities by the 1910s. Sororities developed on campus later and historically there have always been not as many sorority houses as fraternity lodges. This became a real problem once female undergrads started outnumbering male undergrads. From about the 1980s onward, with an increasingly large group of female students wanting to be part of Greek life there, the situation got worse - the sororities were hard to get into and couldn't take lots of new members. And, of course, they were/are cliquey, as you rightly note! It's only recently that they have increased the number of sororities allowed on campus, but it is still an entire exclusionary BS system. And they extract sooooo much cash from the sorority members because they pay all sorts of dues and merchandise and you HAVE to live in the house in your second year and it is expensive and you share a room, etc.
I cannot stop watching/reading about this content, and find all of these things to be true: (1) all of these women are REALLY impressive, are far more so than I was at that age, and also (2) this feels like a giant step backwards/in the wrong direction for such a capable group of young women.
This is what continues to feel weird for me too. These young women are so competent and skilled!
I am very close to all this, both geographically and professionally, and have long thought 'oh AHP really needs to walk us through all this' so thank you for granting my wish!
All your points about why frats don't have the same social media presence for recruitment are spot on; I'll just add that I've been told, with complete seriousness, 'the boys aren't responsible enough to move in and be on campus early.' (Their recruitment happens halfway through the semester instead of in August.) So I'm fascinated by who gets infantilized when, and how.
Performative masculinity is more tied to the power infrastructure, so it is less visible. It intentionally plays down appearance almost in opposition to feminine performance. Look more closely at that fraternity rush. The young women compete on one set of terms for entry into the class structure, the young men compete on another.
The fraternities have their own view of what makes a good fit, who can be seen as a member. They are just as much about preserving and extending existing power structures. Athletics are part of it, but the school football team isn't a social club and I doubt the players, the ones on the field for the big games, have time for fraternity life. They're there for a chance with the NFL.
The fraternity Rushtok, if it were to exist, would be superficially boring. There would be no flamboyant plumage to admire or criticize. Still, I would love to say AHP's take on it. The entire idea of an organizationally based social life is completely alien, but I'll bet what is visible of the fraternity rush process would be fascinating in its way.
Your line about boys who ‘aren’t responsible enough to move in and be on campus early’ has really haunted me. I am guessing that doesn't refer to an ability to remember to shower and wash their dishes? And if it means they can't be trusted with the girls on campus out of term time, what changes in term time — and for whom? So. Many. Questions.
Absolutely. I think the primary concern from the people making those statements has been about alcohol, and liability--the idea that frat recruitment involves a lot of drinking, and therefore holding it during the semester when there's more people around, and when the houses can require 'study hall' for new members in some theoretical resemblance of paying attention to coursework, might provide some sort of guardrail against the worst excesses...But yes. The unspoken thing here about separating frat and sorority rush, along with the different codes of comportment, who has access to alcohol and controls that access for others--it's all really troubling.
it's interesting that you said "I'm jealous of your strong sense of self" re: people who had no interest in sororities, I know that was just a casual comment so I'm not critiquing but it made me think. I've known for most of my life that I couldn't access this kind of female social category if I tried (fat, queer, disabled, raised by mom who actively kept me from learning these skills and scripts) so it didn't ever feel like a choice. those girls saw me and instantly knew I wasn't one of them. but i think it still did result in me having a stronger sense of self, since I was forced to define my own and couldn't rely on the cultural consensus to tell me who i was.
Relatable! I wasn’t allowed to wear the kinds of brands some of the girls at my high school did, so I had to develop my own sense of self in opposition to that. I desperately wanted to fit in but it just wasn’t an option.
exactly! I wasn't allowed to wear makeup or buy clothes that had the brand's name visible, and I wasn't taught how to do anything to my hair besides wash and brush it. by the time I had my own money and freedom to buy whatever I wanted, I had already internalized that i was different from girls who did these things.
Yes! I didn’t understand how the other girls had these curtains of glossy straight hair that ended in a straight line across their backs. (I now understand that this was heat styling, products, and regular haircuts). I just assumed they were better at ‘girling’ than me.
Omg yes, the immediate assumption that I wasn't "good at being a girl" and wasn't doing it "right" instead of being able to understand that others were buying products and spending lots of time on it!
oh my god, yeah! I was so frustrated with my hair but I didn't understand that getting regular haircuts was what could make it look better. I also assumed I was naturally worse and different somehow. I didn't get my hair cut at all until 8th grade when a friend took me to the mall to try and "make me pretty" lol
as a zillenial who was bi and very online, I was exposed to queer culture and this feeling was narrativized as gender dysphoria, although I identify as female again now. I am curious how it felt to have a similar experience without that narrative, since even though I felt isolated I did have a way to understand myself and a sense that I wasn't alone (starting around middle school when I discovered the concept)
I’m a Gen-Xer and was a secular homeschooler, first generation college student, so totally outside of this world as well, I went to private university that did have a Greek system but never even considered joining. I truly felt like I just didn’t fit in those circles either because it was too outside my understanding. I think in some ways not “belonging” has allowed me to follow my own rules in a lot of other areas which at this point I’m pretty grateful for. I do find it fascinating though.
it's super fascinating! one thing I've learned through reading our discussions on culture study is that everyone has a moment where they break from the narrative, and a lot of women had it when they were older (not getting married, not having kids, becoming disabled or having some unusual life event) and it was a big identity crisis. in a way people like us have it easier since we had that crisis as children and have constructed our lives outside of the rules already. it's not like I don't have trauma from being left out and feeling like womanhood wasn't accessible for me of course, but on the other hand I'm spared having to rethink my identity as an adult since I already made up one that fits me and has room for change
Fascinating perspective!!
Another Gen-Xer here, exvangelical who was homeschooled in a religious environment and went to a small private college with no connection to the Greek system. For me, watching these rush videos is like watching a documentary about another planet.
I also think “not belonging” has allowed me to follow my own rules, and I’m grateful for it. I’ve even reached a point of gratitude for the double not-belonging I went through: at first not belonging in “normal” life (like Greek systems), then later not belonging in church either. Just finding my own way over here, lol. As shitty as many parts of that story were to live through, I now realize there are upsides to having no choice but to develop a strong sense of self.
I think it would be interesting to explore how VERY active parents are in this whole process. I grew up and and now live in an SEC university town, and I have peers who have daughters that have gone through rush. It consumed their entire lives for about a year, trying to get letters of recommendation for their daughters, making sure they had the right wardrobe...it was never my thing, but it’s fascinating to watch, as are most things about southern Greek life.
I got a call from a family friend yesterday--someone I haven’t been in touch with in years, mind you--asking me to call a sorority national office to “put in a good word” for the granddaughter of a friend of hers who’s rushing right now (at an SEC school). I don’t know her friend OR her friend’s granddaughter.
All I could think was WTF?! Luckily for me, she was mistaken about the sorority that I was in in college, so it was easy for me to say no. But I was literally so shocked that she would even think to call me! The whole thing struck me as totally ridiculous. I guess it’s not just the parents who are overly invested in this.
That is wild and not at all surprising.
I’ve now seen a number of videos from pnm’s whose parents flew down to stay with them/drive them around/feed them/support them through rush week
Oh, for sure. U Arkansas had their bid day yesterday, and all PNMs gather in the Chi Omega greek theater on campus to open their bids...and ALL the parents stand in the grass behind the theater to watch. And there are all sorts of stores that cater to the Greek system doing events and sales all weekend. Targeting those parents’ wallets is a whole thing.
Wait, what? So there is a public bid opening with the students who don’t get bids or not the ones they want being forced to attend and get their hearts broken in front of an audience? That is a thing?
My sentiments exactly.
Ugh parents week in the spring where I worked was the worst. Highlights (lowlights?) include a woman telling her daughter she couldn’t buy a romper that looked great on her because the tag said “Large”, and another mom telling me I should be folding stuff to move the line along when I was busy being the anti-theft person. (Which, admittedly does look like messing around, but if you’re talking to customers, it’s harder for them to steal stuff. So I just wandered around talking to people.)
I’m also pretty sure I heard somewhere that U Arkansas has one of the largest pledge classes this year... it I could be making that up. Sure feels like a lot.
I commented down thread about UT-Austin, but I think this is a case of "everyone else does it" so it becomes something moms add on so their daughters can "keep up." UT itself has gotten really hard to get into for many kids (top 6% of HS class, generally), and there are a lot of moms in Texas who went to UT themselves (and found their partners). Austin is new Texas but there are definite pockets of old Texas in some of the Greek. Texas girls who can't get into UT are at flagships at Arkansas, Ole Miss, LSU and Alabama, sometimes Oklahoma, and sometimes Texas Tech. It's a weird ecosystem.
Funny you mention the Texas girls are at Arkansas, because the “Texas invasion” is a FREQUENT topic in Fayetteville, both from locals and from local job recruiters trying to hire from UArk who run into a hundred candidates who want to move back to Dallas.
Makes total sense.
Just wanted to say thank you for all the work you did bring the Rush Tok videos to instagram. I can’t have that app on my phone because it just sucks me in and becomes all consuming in a way that other social media doesn’t quite manage to do. It was so interesting to watch and get your analysis
Yes! I stay off Tik Tok which is only possible bc generous hearts like AHP curate to other platforms, otherwise the fomo would consume my soul. I feel like there should be an extra tip jar just for AHP’s bama rush curation.
Same!
Ditto. TikTok exhausts my brain and my faculties extraordinarily quickly. I try to go there only for truly compelling reasons. Ha! Of which there are relatively few, thankfully.
I’m fascinated by this whole thing. I went to a medium sized nerd school that had greek life but they were heavily regulated (someone died of alcohol poisoning in an 80s frat rager on campus): no Greek housing allowed, rush was in the second semester and freshmen were heavily discourage from rush, so those that did usually did it second semester of their sophomore year and the residential side of it wasn’t a factor. Most of the kids who did it were children of members. (One of my roommates rushed and didn’t have any Greek connections and we were all Very Concerned--she seemed to have a good experience, but that’s how unusual it was.)
Basically, it’s so interesting to me because it’s so far outside my own experience.
The thing that gets me the most is the woman who’s the rush consultant. Her aggressive “stay quiet, conform” message reminds me of the women who worked in HR at various employers who always carried that message. “Are you sure you want to file that workers comp claim? It will label you as a problem.” Not really different from “Don’t make rush about you, it’ll label you as attention seeking.”
I hope these girls have a great time in their sororities but I do worry about them and the pressure to conform, stay quiet, not rock the boat and how that’ll impact their futures.
I think she actually works in HR for her full time job so that totally tracks - and someone on Insta this week in the the stories I think mentioned the sorority to HR pipeline.
I thought I’d seen that but couldn’t find it again! It absolutely tracks.
I have so many thoughts about the gender expression of it all. I’m intrigued by all the drag happening with the girls lip syncing as boy bands— is this happening at the same hyper feminine sororities or are these videos from sororities that are generally more lax with their gender policing? It’s fascinating how queer-coded they are in those videos and how much they’re leaning into it in a way that I imagine they might not usually be able to in sorority contexts.
Also I would argue that high femme is not the right word to describe these women’s aesthetics, that word comes from lesbian butch/femme culture and would certainly apply to a lesbian/non-binary person/trans femme or drag queen dressed exactly as they are dressed, but “femme” as a gender expression is a specifically queer identifier and involves much more subversion and intentionality than straightforwardly buying into the gender performance requirements of white heterosexual hyper femininity.
I feel like my brain is still trying to figure out the drag (how much of it is being at once jealous of male rush and also repulsed by the men themselves, or repulsed by patriarchy?). And thank you for the high femme clarifier note - a few people had used it in my DMs to describe a look but I should’ve thought more about my own usage here. Intense femininity?
Hyper femininity? I really don't know what the right word to use is here and honestly some of it is campy enough to be high femme, but I guess I would only use high femme as a descriptor when it is performed with a certain kind of self awareness. Also I saw "competitive femininity" used to describe rush which feels very accurate and funny
There’s something here too about the immature vs mature feminine. These videos are heavily coded “little girl.” It’s in contrast to, for instance, the rooted or mature feminine you might observe in a 70yo woman who’s seen some shit and is deeply confident in who she is.
thanks for this! I also have questions around this/these theme(s). I do think that cis-opposite expression has a long history in greek life and most other american systems that are more coded for cis women or cis men that this connects in to
another big question that I have is: why are so many folks watching these assuming these folks aren't queer (question 6)? the points ahp & other commenters have made about queer -ish performance and co-opting are valid, but isn't one of the main arguments that many are making that we cannot assume gender identity or queerness (which I intend as to separate but overlapping categories) based on someone's gender expression?
I went to a small school and we didn't have any Greek life on campus. It was a point of "pride" that we didn't participate in that life, which is obviously just as performative as fully participating in all of it. Even if you're not in Greek life, you're still influenced by it.
Heck, I never experienced Greek life but I was a college radio DJ in the late 80s/early 90s when the performance of "cool" could be just as demanding - did you listen to the right music, attend the most underground concerts, did you find the right thrift store clothes? Did you write a zine or draw an indie comic? There was absolutely a "male gaze" a la boys club: maybe different aesthetic requirements, but still those who fit in and those who were "posers" or "wannabes". Youth is exhausting.
Great comment, I was also trying to think through this. My experience of it was more in the aughts but it was absolutely still in play, specifically regarding male gaze (peak manic pixie dream girl era, direct line to “cool girl.”) It brings to mind this piece I read recently through a links and recs rabbit hole, and very much identified with: https://therumpus.net/2017/08/03/mimesis-of-girlhood-in-three-acts-featuring-bright-eyes/
Anyway … there are different ways of enforcing conformity or performing, and they can also come at a personal cost, and I’m not sure “hyper femininity” is actually so much worse than others? Potentially more expensive and time-consuming, I guess, those seem plausible, maybe worth singling out.
Thinking through my comment more. I mean I guess obviously the difference between these older aspirations/archetypes and rushtok is … the vast exponential shift in the scale of visibility and audience, no matter what type of “cool” you are. So yeah ... I didn’t mean to suggest there’s nothing distinctive about rushtok or that all things are the same as all other things have always been. But as someone else said, treating feminized pursuits with curiosity and respect is a strength of CS! So although my comment kinda feels like a tangent rereading it now, I was sort of reminding myself of the value of pausing to consider common threads, vs just kneejerk writing all this off as strange, alien, or sad, just because it’s of a different generation and with a different presentation.
Same, same! I was very drawn to the fact that my SLAC didn’t have Greek life (partially because I felt like I would feel some draw to participate if it was there but they gave me icks), but parties and traditions and conformity and exclusion find a way. Upon hearing we had no Greek life, somebody once asked me, then, where are all the parties? And I was like… In the ultimate frisbee players dorm rooms?
I went to a school with no sorority/frat houses, we just went to bars. My orientation leader took us for fake IDs on Day 4 when we finally allowed off campus (this was 1993 in NYC).
Perhaps similarly, I went to a small New England college that had had a very dominant Greek scene until they abolished it in the 80s. It continued underground in some form when I was there in the late aughts, but it was never clear to me how formalized the underground system was, and whether it was a true club with clearly defined membership and rituals or merely series of normal elite college cliques defined by class/performance of class, legacy, and sports team affiliation. Regardless, it was the source of endless gossip, rumors and fascination.
Did we go to the same school? Although, ultimate is more wide spread than in the 1990s when I went to school.
Ultimate!! <3 <3 <3
Ooh, now I gotta know! What state?
Minnesota. Starts with a C. Class of 1996.
YES WE DID. Class of 2011 😄😄
Bwahaha. Me too! I knew at as soon as I read your comment 😅
Hello from across the river, class of 2005 😆
Ha!! Some things never change. I will say I did find my people there.
Yes! I was at the same school a few years back, and also very drawn to not having the pressure and drama of Greek life organizations around. But then the definitely-not-Greek-life group of students that planned all the biggest parties got busted for hazing. You can have parties without Greek life, but I guess you can also end up with the same kinds of exclusion and drama of Greek life without a national organization, too.
I have been waiting for this!! I have so many thoughts because 1) I went to another huge SEC school (the one that beat Bama in the national title game last year) and dropped out of rush and 2) my family and I lived in Mobile for many years and were connected to one of the two expensive private schools that is a huge feeder to Alabama, so we knew and know a lot of young women who were in sororities.
I should say first that my 16 y/o follows a lot of girls from her old school who are presumably going through recruitment right now and haven’t posted a word to their socials, but as far as I can tell, neither have the sororities they would most likely pledge. The “top tier” ones at schools like UA don’t need/want to advertise; they also most likely already know who they’re choosing before recruitment starts. I know at UGA when I was there every top sorority had sort of a known pool--i.e. if you were a debutante from my hometown, you pledged Theta.
I was also thinking about how sororities are judged top or not and it occurred to me that so much is in relation to which fraternities they’re having parties with. A sorority having a joint party with, say, SAE at UGA, is going to be considered a good one. In thinking about this, I distinctly remember my freshman roommate worrying about the fraternity her sorority most often paired with because she didn’t perceive it as desirable as KA (which has terribly racist and problematic traditions!), and thus the perception of her sorority would be judged on that distinction.
I’m also so curious about the role The Machine at UA is playing now that so many out of state students are attending. I wonder how many end up staying in Alabama--I can think of a handful of women I know who weren’t from Alabama and married men who were and ended up staying, but I can also think of a lot of recent grads who have moved to Atlanta. I think about young women like Morgan or Bella Grace and am curious how they’re perceived by power brokers at the school. I could see either of them doing great things at UA without needing a sorority behind them.
Yes! I grew up in a mid-size Alabama town (with both an active debutante scene and pretty gnarly high school sororities) and went to that Other Alabama School semi-recently. I really think the sorority/fraternity associations and how they contribute to rankings gets missed a lot. For most of the girls I grew up with college is still very much about finding husbands. A sorority with a Known Connection to the most prestigious (and rich) frats, or the frats that the “good families” in your hometown are legacies of, is worth its weight in gold. Especially considering a lot of the true legacy kids in the south will move back to their hometown to take over whatever lucrative business that has kept their family in its social position for the past couple of generations.
Anecdotally I lived in a good sized southern city after college and joined a civic organization with the city and one of the first questions always asked at the mixers are what sorority/fraternity you (and your partner) were a part of at what school, it continues to be a shortcut to business contacts for life!
My (very much outsider) understanding is that the Machine is a little blunted by recent non-Machine wins in SGA, although it's still very much around and, I suspect, just a more underground org than in the past. And yes I think a lot of OOS students leave after graduation, if not for their home states, for Atlanta, Nashville, Charlotte, Austin--big Southern economic centers.
I grew up in Austin ( and live here again now) and lived in Nashville for three years ( and go back frequently for visits) - and while Austin is in the south of the country, I would not classify it as Southern ( capital S) in the same sense as the other cities. It was honestly a bit of culture shock to us when we moved to Nashville.
Austin it is a big tech city and really just its own thing all together even in Texas ( “keep Austin weird”). Im sure there are pockets of that UA culture here, as is most places, but it’s not the predominant one.
I’d be really curious to know if those UA people are moving here because I don’t see it being as welcoming to them as Nashville.
That's totally fair--I was thinking of places that seem to be within a broad 'southern' orbit, versus, say, NYC/Boston/Philly, which were the epicenters that drew my college classmates after graduating from a NE SLAC. UA has a lot of Texan students. Many, in my anecdata, from Houston--so maybe they are heading there instead of Austin, I'm not sure.
That makes sense - Houston is much more of an ‘old money’ feel ( as much as that can be in Texas) than Austin and it’s is likely due to Oil & Gas which is still prevalent there. Or even major financial institutions like Goldman - they have offices in Houston, but not Austin. Even the culture in Houston is different from Austin - I was born there and we moved to Austin in 3rd grade - my parents who worked in tech in both places and at the same company, went from wearing suits to basically athletic wear/ jeans. This was in the early 90s but I’ve found it’s still held true.
I also think Austin, and Texas in general, has its own feeder school for new employees with UT and A&M even - there isn’t as much of a need to seek people out of state and if they do, it’s more likely to get people with degrees from universities with unique reputations in those fields. So wildly speculating, but I think there’s just less opportunities as our state schools are massive and good. Not to mention they have a built in rivalry with UA.
I’ve got two girls though and they’re pre-device ages right now but I’m watching this with a lot of intrigue and also fear!
I’m from Houston and many of my mom friends/acquaintances whose daughters rushed at UT got hotel rooms near campus during rush. They were support, a place away, and a last minute wardrobe shopper.
I’m not sure it’s exclusive to OOS students. I went to a big state SEC school, and plenty of in-state people (particularly the ones from smaller towns) migrated to the big cities. These schools inherently feel like big cities, so it seems like a natural progression.
Young people have always migrated to big cities, even the ones who return to their home town to raise a family, or take over the family business.
"But it should also be natural for us to think more — like, a whole lot more, a whole newsletter or hours of Instagram Stories more, the rest-of-our-lives more — about any system animated so thoroughly by exclusion." ● Mic drop
This is so important: after all, if sororities weren’t exclusive, there would be no drama and therefore, no Rushtok. But the decisions about who is included and who isn’t included — not to mention the many college women who can’t or won’t even try to play the game — are so rooted in American attitudes toward race, class, and gender that we absolutely need to think more about the entire phenomenon.
Would love to do some dissecting on class and the “college experience,” specifically what kind of college experience is prioritized— my parents are like the definition of New York “liberal elites” and they were much more focused on the epitome of the college experience being a small private liberal arts school in the Northeast with beautiful brick buildings and great autumns and very competitive admissions (think: Dartmouth, Williams, Amherst, etc). My alma mater (small, public, liberal arts) didn’t even have a football team, let alone a big one! So it’s fascinating to think about who is prioritizing this big SEC experience and why.
I have a lot of thoughts about this, but it also made me wonder: do those schools not have “eating houses” or something like them that essentially function as Greek organizations? My sister went to Davidson and that’s what they had (I don’t think they had sororities at all).
Eating Clubs specifically are an analogue at Princeton, but they're all co-ed and non-residential. I imagine that some other schools have similar systems? Harvard and Yale also have big non-Greek affiliated social clubs but they're all a little different (Finals Clubs, Secret Societies). Presumably those three schools in particular get away with maintaining separate systems because of their general "we're so old school and important we don't have to worry about *other* schools" vibe.
I'm honestly not sure! Probably depends on the institution (which is another rabbit hole-- what are the differentiators among small liberal arts schools in terms of who has these types of orgs and who doesn't?) My alma mater technically had Greek orgs but they really weren't a significant presence in any meaningful way and I think in part because we were public and not private, there weren't any other groups that filled this particular niche of exclusive, pay to play, tightly bonded society.
Dartmouth absolutely has frats. (One of them was the inspiration for Animal House!) In fact, when I was there in the late aughts, the majority of undergrads were in a frat or sorority.
Saaaaame
Also want to add, this article was so well done. Not only did I grow up in a SEC college town, but I also chose to go into higher education, and every time I thought “I hope she doesn’t leave out this part” you hit on it within a paragraph. I know you can’t go deep on everything in one essay (black sorority and fraternity life is it’s own fascinating subculture) but I appreciated the breadth you hit on. Excited for whatever is coming next!