Throughout my life, I have had many experiences that relate to Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth and Phil Mole’s "The Invisibility of Misogyny". In high school, girls bullied me for my being different than the typical beauty norm. Now, in collegiate life, I am aware of many situations in which boys, unfortunately, live up to their stereotypes and often are proud of it. That being said, boys are not the only ones to blame.
High school was probably the worse time of my life. My sense of fashion was not the typical Hollister t-shirt and Abercrombie jeans and this made it hard to fit in with ‘cool kids’. The boys were forgiving enough, but the girls’ insults were relentless. My sophomore year I moved and went from public school to private school. Uniforms were required in private school and I felt sure that all the girls in the same outfit would allow everyone to feel equal. But instead, looks became the prime object of ridicule. Because I was the new kid, obviously I would never fit in, but I was not ugly. Unfortunately this meant that the boys wanted to get to know me and to the girls I was competition. I remember a particular incident where a boy had invited me to a party at a girl’s house and the girl told me that I had to leave and that I was not welcome, but the boy could stay. I was horrified and embarrassed, but of course I had no choice but to leave.
Although I am obviously not a huge fan of girls, I did end up joining a sorority in college. I do not regret it; but it taught me a lot about how girls think. Every semester each sorority on campus undergoes recruitment or the process of obtaining new members. We chat with girls that are interested and judge whether they would be good additions to our chapter. The judging that goes on at this time is crucial, but can also be harsh. A girl that has good grades and a good personality, but is not the prettiest girl, might be rejected by a lot of sororities on campus. As Naomi Wolf writes: “The quality called 'beauty' objectively and universally exists. Women must want to embody it and men must want to possess women who embody it”(2). Image is very important in our circle because sororities want to be liked by fraternities and other boys on campus and we want other sororities to be jealous.
Being in a sorority at Radford also has opened my eyes about college boys. Most, but not all, college men attempt to put off an image of having relations with a lot of different girls. Apparently they think this makes them desirable and makes them ‘cool’ with their friends, so they brag about it. If a girl were to do the same, she would be labeled harshly from both her friends and foes. But boys are allowed and even praised for their promiscuity.
In addition to that, a guy hitting on a girl in college is often seen as normal, no matter how gross or weird it actually may be. Phil Mole explains how boys justify their actions: “Men who have these ideas acquired them through socialization, which has given them license to reinterpret a women’s thoughts, words and actions to mean what they, as men, want them to mean.” Too often in college, a girl is cursed at for refusing a boy’s advance, when in reality the girl should be cursing at the boy for being a creep.
Wolf is correct in her statement that “Competition between women has been made part of the beauty myth so that women will be divided from one another”(3). Girls of all ages need to band together instead of tearing each other down emotionally. We need to stop seeing girls that are we consider ‘prettier’ for whatever reason as a threat. For example, in the guy creepily hitting on girl example; in that situation the friend of the girl should be there for the girl to say that the guy was weird and stick up for her friend, rather than being jealous that her friend got attention. Life is not a competition, by any means. We should stick up for ourselves and tell boys we don’t just want to be a number for them, that is not what sex should be about. Obviously this is difficult to combat all at once, but we should make steps in the right direction.
~Anonymous
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