Stop Calling Them Sorority ‘Girls’

It’s the Pumpkin Spice Latte Effect & we can do better

Everything I knew about sororities and fraternities was from the TV show Greek.

Then I started my career in higher education and I was given the incredible task of overseeing a residence hall housing nearly 600 women. Roughly 80% of them were sorority women and I had no idea how to serve them.

What I did have — bias and preconceived notions.

Media representations like House Bunny and Legally Blonde contributed to my perception of sororities as being comprised of only blonde, ultra-feminine, party girls (though to give my past self a little credit, I did not think this had any impact on their intelligence or ambition). When I talked with people about serving sorority women, they would joke about how “sorority girls” are ditzy or “basic.”

We were so breathtakingly wrong.

Yes, they did wear the XXL t-shirts and barely visible “Norts” (Nike+Shorts= Norts). Yes, they loved a Pumpkin Spice Latte and Lily Pulitzer. Yes, they loved their socials, mixers, and date nights.

Yes to all these things and they were enterprising, driven, inhabited many identities and races, and were complex humans with wants, dreams, and ambitions.

People can be more than one thing. Most people are.

Beyond my personal experience, Greek Life is connected to several positive outcomes for students, including being more likely to graduate on time and pursue graduate degrees. There are many influential women who are affiliated with a sorority including the eternal badass Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Sororities typically raise millions of dollars for charities each year, serving nonprofits such as St. Jude, the Red Cross, and Children’s Miracle Network.

But here’s the thing. Not only are many media portrayals inaccurate or just a small piece of the puzzle, even if they were accurate: there is nothing inherently wrong with being blonde, feminine, and having fun.

I was taken aback by the intense media backlash of an infamous 2015 sorority recruitment video. The video consistently of mostly blonde white women playing football and blowing glitter. It was critiqued as being “Stepford Wives: College Edition” and even Donald Trump commented on the video.

The media frenzy this incurred is what I call the Pumpkin Spice Latte Effect at work — we ridicule the ultra-feminine or basic.

While the commentator described the questionable recruitment video as “unempowering,” as a feminist I don’t get to choose what makes someone else feel empowered.

This is not to say that there aren’t serious problems with the Greek community: trans inclusivity, hazing, and racism being chief concerns among historically white fraternities and sororities.

These are valid concerns worth addressing and yet the majority of the vitriol I hear focuses on the things sorority women love, their appearance, and their perceived lack of intelligence as “sorority girls.” The emphasis on the word “girl” when describing sorority women who are clearly adults only serves to further belittle and infantilize them.

There are few things I hate more than when someone calls me ‘girl’ in a professional setting. I am fine with friends saying “hey girl” or “you go girl” but I am not fine with being called the “girl who teaches about gender” or the “girl who runs that office.” If you wouldn’t call a male colleague, the “boy who runs that office,” reflect on why you are using the word “girl,” to describe an adult woman.

“When we use words to describe adult women that are typically used to describe children, it changes the way we view women — even unconsciously, so that we don’t equate them with adult men,” she says. “In fact, it implies that they’re inferior to men.” — Mayim Bialik

The Pumpkin Spice Latte Effect has another name — misogyny. The interests of women and girls and the trends that follow are often ridiculed and shamed.

It is important to remember that women are not immune to our surrounding patriarchal society that promotes masculinity and belittles femininity. Many of the people who made disparaging comments to me about sorority women identified as women themselves. My ask, that we call them women instead of girls, is for everyone.

Biases and preconceived notions are human. But what makes us better humans is critically interrogating those notions and ideas, reflecting on their origins, and changing our behavior.

Please call them what they are: sorority women.

We can do better by these women and all women when we remember that everyone we meet is a complex human worthy of love and respect. Even if, and especially if, their joys, belonging, and empowerment look different from yours.

Thoughts and opinions expressed in this piece are my own.

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