Quote:
Originally Posted by SkiingSister
WE LIVE IN AN OVERWEIGHT SOCIETY
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While this is definitely true, you would never know it if you were looking solely at rushees at my school. When I rushed, I wore a size 12-14... and I was by far the largest girl in my rho chi group and bigger than most of the girls I spoke to during recruitment. Even when I lost weight and thought I was skinny at a size 8, I was still bigger than a lot of the rushees (and my size 0 and 00 roomies).
Here's an example of how teaching legacies not to judge still doesn't fix the problem: My sister is going through recruitment at a competitive school in August. I have given her several lectures about keeping an open mind because I know this school has a couple of chapters who have reps for being "smaller" for various reasons including weight. She totally agrees with me that she wants to keep all of her options open so she has the best possible chance of a happy ending, but when she went to orientation, she met several boys who (as incoming freshmen) were saying they would never hang out with XYZ or ABC girls because they are the "fat girls" (or so the boys heard at fraternity summer rush functions). She came home and told me this, and her response was basically "Well, I know of a few jerks I'm not going to date in college" (she's been trained well). But how many 17-18 year old girls would listen to that and think "Well, then I don't want to pledge there," you know? For God's sake, they're practically still high schoolers when they rush, and "reputation" is important in high school.
The point is that no matter how well-trained our little southern ladies are, it's easy to get swept up in gossip when you're a TEENAGER, which the PNMs are. Even if you aren't judgemental of people by weight, say you're preffing three awesome chapters, all pretty equal in your eyes, and one is the "fat house" on campus... would anyone CHOOSE to be in the "fat house" over a house that doesn't have a negative rep? Or say you're preffing a house with a negative rep and even if the girls are nice, you don't think you want to have to defend yourself and your house for four years... is that being judgemental of larger people or just recognizing that you don't want to be known as a member of the "fat sorority" anymore than you want to be known as a member of the "druggie sorority" or any other group with a negative rep?
There is a difference between only wanting to be in the "Barbie" house and NOT wanting to have to hear people say "Oh, you're an XYZ? But you're so SKINNY... I thought they were the fat girls!"