How To Be A Sorority Girl
January 14, 2018
1. If you are not white, classically beautiful, or wealthy, you likely do not have a place in the Greek system. I would recommend that you stop reading immediately.
1B. If you are not white, classically beautiful, or wealthy, but you insist on joining the Greek system anyway, you should make every effort to become at least two of these three things. You might think about taking up SoulCycle, trying out the latest juice cleanse, or investing in bitcoin to pad your bank account. However, be sure to never reveal that you are smart enough to understand cryptocurrency, or any sort of currency, for that matter. Intelligence isn’t valued over looks, and besides, it is better to treat money as if you have so much of it that you will never need to know how it works.
2. During the recruitment process, lose all aspects of your personality that define you as an interesting and individual person. In fact, it would be best if you lost your personality altogether. Instead, with each girl you talk to, try and adopt the traits that you find the blandest and most generic. One foolproof way to do this is to mimic their actions. Play with your hair. Tilt your head seventeen degrees to the right and smile with all your teeth. Mention sisterhood in every other sentence. Interrupt anyone telling a boring story with your louder, tangentially relevant, and much more interesting story.
3. If you get a bid, congratulations! Now the real fun begins. During rush, the girls were required—to some degree—to be nice to you. They don’t have to do that anymore. You will quickly see that every stereotype about bitchy, competitive sorority girls is true. Until you graduate, you will never hear genuine praise from your sisters without some sort of ulterior motive behind it. You will have to look and talk and act a certain way, or you’ll be, like, totally blacklisted. If you have problems that aren’t shallow or superficial, don’t even think about discussing them in the house. This is a space for happiness and positivity and growth.
3B. But, like, it’s a safe space. No judgment, no shame, just love, okay?
3C. Also, be sure to internalize every backhanded compliment someone pays you, but don’t let them know how much it hurts. You can cry about it later, as long as no one hears you.
4. Two weeks in, you’ll realize that there are perks to living in a sorority house besides the obvious social elevation and the instant, exclusive access to the best campus parties—and those perks are clothes. Forget emotional connection—you’ve never seen this many Lilly Pulitzer dresses in your life. Just remember that if you want to remain a member of this sorority, you need to stay at a size 4 or below. Always skip dessert, never skimp on cardio at the gym, and don’t even think about eating carbs after six p.m. Repeat this mantra in your head every time you’re craving a cookie.
5. Sometime in the fall, your member development team will host a mandatory Body Image workshop. You, along with fifteen or twenty of your sisters, will participate. In the folder of relevant materials passed out at the beginning of the workshop, you will find various activities and mantras intended to help all participants develop a healthier, more sustainable body image.
5B. One of these activities will be to write down five negative thoughts that you’ve had about yourself. You will then sit in a circle and throw around a ball of yarn. But before throwing the ball of yarn to someone across the circle, you will have to look them directly in the eye and address to them a negative thought which you would normally reserve for no one other than yourself.
5C. Before the activity, you and the rest of your sisters will protest, finding it dehumanizing and terrible. You will be forced to participate anyway.
5D. During the activity, you will cry. Your sisters will cry. Don’t worry. It was not intended for thoughts as acute or intense as I will never live up to my parents’ expectations of me or I am too problematic to ever be loved or I am worthless. At the end of the workshop, you will mindlessly repeat phrases such as I am more than my looks or inner beauty is more important than physical beauty. You will wonder why everyone seems to assume that, for sorority girls, body image is only skin-deep. You will be told that these phrases are supposed to solve your problems. You will be told that, to combat your physical insecurities, you should turn to your inner worth.
5E. You will sit in your room later that night and wonder what you are supposed to do when the problem is that you don’t believe in the existence of your inner worth at all.
6. You will become devoted to wine and cheese, face masks, and the phrase “self-care.” If you’re lucky, you will also start to find the people with whom you can brunch, hot yoga, and occasionally discuss your more serious problems—because, deep down, you are human. Slowly but surely, these people will develop into real friends. You might even start to understand what all those middle-aged women mean when they squeal about how my sorority sisters became my best friends, soulmates, and bridesmaids! Maybe someday, once Chad from KA gets over his severe commitment issues, these girls could be the women waiting for you at the end of the aisle.
7. At night, after you get back from a long evening spent in the library, you will catch some of your sorority sisters in the kitchen snacking on chocolate covered blueberries and barbeque potato chips in all their makeup-free, sweatpants-ed glory. They will invite you to stand with them by the dessert table and pick at the crunchy bits of peach cobbler that remain in the pan. You will ask them about their days, and they will tell you that they’ve been applying to jobs, or finishing presentations for class, or getting ahead on their homework. It might be somewhat shocking that you aren’t the only girl in the house who cares about her academics. Don’t worry. Take a deep breath and inhale another mouthful of cobbler remains. This, too, shall pass.
8. You will open the door to your room after winter break just enough to shove your luggage bag inside before running down the hall, up the stairs, and to the left. It is still morning, and most of the girls are asleep. You will kick off your shoes and dive headfirst into the bed of one of your best friends, and you will spend the next half hour snuggling, catching up, and laughing in the dark.
It is perhaps a new experience for you to be so excited to return to school. But between screaming and hugging your sisters in delight, and demanding updates on all that transpired in the three weeks you were apart, you will feel it, if only for a second. That familiar rhythm in your chest. That pure, almost inexplicable happiness. That sense of belonging, that notion of comfort, that warmth of love—it will unfold inside of you, however briefly—and you will remember what it’s like to be home.
