Quote:
Originally posted by 33girl
She talks out of both sides of her mouth. The sorority sisters going to get piercings together obviously disgusts her - but the Zeta Delta Xis boinking on every available surface in the house is OK, because they're coed. She makes the rush/intake process for NPHC groups sound like a piece of cake, when we all know it's NOT. I'm sure at a lot of schools it's much harder than going through NPC rush. And can she kiss Melody Twilley's butt anymore? I think she's using her in the "magical negro" context (thank you laidback fella for the link), which is just racism turned inside out. As for Twilley herself, her true colors (no pun) show when it's stated that if the Alabama Panhellenic doesn't vote the local multicultural sorority she founded into Panhellenic, she's considering suing. 
The girls that she picked all have issues to begin with - Vicki faked her way through rush and doesn't want to be away from her hs friends, Sabrina is using the sorority for "white connections" and is more interested in cheap quarters and boinking her prof (and telling her mother!! grooooss), Caitlin has a psycho boyfriend and equally psycho controlling mama, and Amy's parents definitely should make sure she's in therapy as she's trying to get over her sister's death with male attention. I sincerely hope these 4 girls are fake, for their sakes LOL - and the intimacy of the dialogue leads me to believe they are. However they definitely showed that what you put in, you get out. Once Vicki starts being sociable and stops bitching about her situation, she has fun.
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A couple comments:
I actually don't think the four girls' "issues" were that out of the ordinary. You take any four random college girls and chances are they're going to have comparable ones. Everybody's got their Achilles' heel -- it's just that these girls' were more noticeable because it's in a book format and thus exaggerated, their actions isolated. Let's face it, sorority girls are all about the drama.
I could relate to every character in one way or another, and while there were definitely times when I couldn't (hi, sleeping with my rapist!), I don't think the behavior sounded all that unbelievable.
I'm really glad you brought up the double standards that she completely bought into, though. I remember reading an article in the local paper about co-operative living communities that made some subtle jabs at the Greek system because many of the co-ops are near Greek Row (some used to be Greek housing, in fact). While reading the article, I commented to a friend, "You know, some of them like to think that they're so much better than us, but the differences between Greek organizations and co-ops are pretty small." I went on to list the similarities -- we both live in big houses down by the lake, when they have openings in the house they have a period similar to "rush" where they decide whether or not they like someone enough to have them live with them, they have dinners together and bond by having nights very similar to "sisterhoods," they express their dislike for the sexual double standard by having singalong protests whereas sorority girls express their dislike for the sexual double standard by sleeping around . . .
I kid.
I get the feeling that some co-ed fraternities (as well as local GLOs, non-traditional groups like service-based, GLOs at schools with non-traditional Greek systems, and any Greeks who don't identify with the mainstream SEC/Big 12/Big 10/PAC 10 huge traditional Greek system model) look down on being considered "Greek" even though they are and that Robbins bought into that . . . It's like they want the benefits of being identified as Greek (brother/sisterhood, social life) but they aren't willing to take on the negatives (specifically stereotypes). I remember talking to a member of a non-traditional group here, who described her GLO as, "Well, we're Greek, but we're not
Greek, you know?" (At least this was before she knew I was a sorority girl.) It was obvious that she was referring to her perceptions of the social Greek system. I wanted to say to her, "Well, you've got a house . . . you throw parties at your house . . . you guys even do some mild hazing -- off the top of my head, I think that makes you more
Greek than a lot of the Greeks here." But I'm a nice girl so I bit my tongue.
I'd have to re-read to make sure, but it seemed like Robbins was accusing these sorority women of being both too traditional AND too radical in regards to their sexuality. How does this work?