Body Image and Sororities

It was somewhat disturbing to read in the Sunday New York Times about a new kind of service business: sorority coaches. These are women who get paid to help girls at college to pledge sororities. As part of their work, the coaches advise these young women on how to dress, shape their resume, and present themselves in order to maximize their chances of being asked to join a sorority.

As an adult long past this stage of life, I feel sympathy for young women who have to, or feel they have to, put so much effort into packaging themselves in a particular way to find a circle of friends at school. But what I found most disappointing in the article was its offhand discussion about weight and the necessity of losing weight before sorority rush. The author writes, “Many aspiring sisters spend their summer working out and dieting,” and cites a study that among girls in a normal weight range, the thinner ones are more likely to end up in a sorority. “It’s just you are being judged on how you look,” says one college student quoted in the story.

That the author and the participating girls just accept this without question or comment strikes me as sad. It also shows how ingrained in our culture it is that girls should strive to attain the a thin ideal. Given the pressure for conformity in sororities that this article describes (in many areas, not just weight), it is not at all surprising how prevalent body image concerns are among college women.