02. On sorority girls
I never thought I would join a sorority, which is not an uncommon testimony among Greek-affiliated women despite the sensationalization of Greek life on social and traditional media. I know you’re into RushTok every year, just like I am. It’s the newest form of reality television, and America can’t look away.
In my small southern hometown I never had a group of girls I could consistently connect with or rely on. I gave Greek life a chance so I could give female friendships a try, and I am thankful I took that chance, despite every Sorority Girl Stereotype I had been fed through personal experience and the media. While there are certainly some women attuned to the standardization, there are exceptions, because sororities are diverse organizations dedicated to the success of their members.
Sorority women can be kind. Sororities can be a place where women learn from each other. Sororities can provide women incredible role models and mentors. Sororities can work beyond their own members into surrounding communities through their often incredibly successful philanthropic events. Sororities can support their members’ professional lives by offering invaluable opportunities within their alumni network. Sororities can teach women how to have fun and still be successful. Sororities can, and often, serve as a transition from girlhood to womanhood. And more often than not, an insider’s perspective is required to learn what it means to be involved in a Greek organization, beyond the sensationalization, the glitz and the glam.
Going into my fourth Greek affiliated year, I can confidently say deconstructing the Sorority Girl Stereotypes must begin with addressing these women as women instead of girls. A small change of vocabulary stops the inherent infantilization created and perpetuated by these stereotypes. This notion is highlighted in the NYT Cooking YouTube video “How a TikTok-Famous Chef Feeds a Sorority”, a twenty five minute news-style video piece dedicated to understanding the intricacies of Greek life, specifically the symbiotic relationship between a man employed by Pi Beta Phi and the women he serves.
Kevin Ashton uses his passion, food, to challenge and help transition the sorority women into postgraduate life. He does so by introducing new foods onto the menu, calling each woman by name, encouraging dish suggestions, and intimately knowing their dietary preferences and restrictions. In return, the women do not view Ashton simply as an employee but as a family member, because the chef provides comfort and education in the form of a home-cooked meal.
Here, Greek life can clearly be identified as a teacher of balancing academic and personal lives, a direct parallel to the balancing act between work and family Irma Phillips and Gertrude Berg experienced. “How a TikTok-Famous Chef Feeds a Sorority” demonstrates the reality of accrediting sorority women, a reality our culture must put effort into creating.
The National Panhellenic Conference’s 2022-23 Annual Survey of NPC sororities reported 342,851 undergraduate members in their 26 member organization. There is not an official number of active women members in the National Pan-Hellenic Council, however it is estimated more than 920,000 women have joined the four NPHC sororities. Many successful celebrities are a part of Greek life; Cosmopolitan published a list of 64 celebrities including figures like Kamala Harris (Alpha Kappa Alpha), Kristin Chenoweth (Gamma Phi Beta), Farrah Fawcett (Delta Delta Delta), and Toni Morrison (Alpha Kappa Alpha).
Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison wrote “The Work You Do, The Person You Are” in 2017 for The New Yorker about one of her first jobs as a girl in the forties. At the beginning of the essay, Morrison loved her job cleaning a beautiful house for “Her” because it was a paying job that allowed her small luxuries like candy and toys and a sense of pride in providing “real things” for her family like “an insurance-policy payment”. She later grows to resent her job as it becomes increasingly difficult and even leads to injury. Morrison then complained to her father looking for sympathy but was gifted advice instead, and she leaves the reader with the four pieces of advice she heard her father give her about work/life balance.
1. Whatever the work is, do it well—not for the boss but for yourself.
2. You make the job; it doesn’t make you.
3. Your real life is with us, your family.
4. You are not the work you do; you are the person you are.
Simply, women are more than a stereotype, a job, a sorority, and even more than their families. Women are a culmination of all of these things, multifaceted and intricate, and that is what makes us the good, radical, innovative people we are.
Madeline’s Weekly Favorites
In no particular order and for no particular reason.
