Images of beauty in college

Last week, I wrote a post about the Delta Zeta's at DePauw University who were shown the door from their sorority because the national pubah-ettes of DZ made some Devil Wears Greek decision to keep only girls who fit some standard of pretty, which based from the last standing was thin, white, and frat-boy-magnet...oh and officially fully committed to recruiting more victims sisters.

little m made a comment to that post that got me thinking. In a nutshell, she asked why we (progressive bloggers) assume white, thin, and attractive is a measuring stick for pretty? We assume in this particular DePauw case that being overweight and non-white is "not pretty" because those who fit that description were booted. She asks:

"Is the self-hate in our patriarchal loyalist culture really that strong? Is looking like Ann Coulter (blech) the only way to be deemed "pretty"? Really? Still?? Do we really have no hope?"

Now because of Ann Coulter's despicable display of heinousness last week, I think we can all assume that Ann is by no means any kind of measuring stick for prettiness. I can't speak for other bloggers but for me when I probed my own psyche deeper, and thought back to my college days, the girls in the popular sororities were primarily white, thin, and frat boy-magnets. Even the minority girls who were in these popular sororities looked "white". That's the filter I subconsciously worked off.

But forget about me, I took a gander around the web, and looked at some other colleges or college related sites to see what "pretty" evidence I could find. I wanted to see what the prevalent images of college girls would come up. (more...)

Yale, believe it or not, has this 50 most beautiful people list a la People magazine. I gag at the thought that this supposedly esteemed institution actually allows such tabloid gibberish amongst its ivy. But if you take a gander at the pretty 50 list, all the girls are mostly white, thin, and (well in Yale's case) moneybag-magnets.

Over at College Humor, they have this, "America's hottest college girl" contest-thingy, where they have hottie match-ups, and the viewing web votes on the winners. This thing is like a horny guy love contest for future Maxim pinups.But again, practically all the girls are white, thin, and wet t-shirt contestant material.

If you do a search for "hot college girls", you get a bunch of porn and of course everybody's favorite douchebaggery of lewdness, Girls Gone Wild. If you have the stomach to peruse this site, you will see that the myriad of girls featured here are white, thin, and crazy enough to be filmed drunk and naked doing girl on girl.

So sadly, if you just peek around the web, the images dominantly associated with "college girl" and "pretty", you get the template that Delta Zeta followed in its ousting. More disturbingly to me is that doing a simple "college girl" search in Google gives you lists of things related to sex, drunkenness, and nakedness. Where is the brains, accomplishments, and do-goodings? If you look through Facebook and MySpace, I have no doubt that there is quite a bit of the same thing but pushing the PG-13 envelope.

At this point, I am feeling very dismayed in what I found across the web related to this post, which has sprung another slew of future post topics. But again, it's further proof of the kinds of images that young girls are fed about what is considered attractive and popular in our culture. This is what gets front and center attention, and it highly disturbs me because it's selling a fantasy and not reality. And what is it all teaching the girls? That this debaucherous type of behaviour is cool somehow. Oh geez!

College is supposed to be about developing your mind, widening your horizons, and learning. It's about building some substance. How did we get so off track??