Confessions of a Misfit Sorority Girl

“Gamma Phi Beta girls! Boom, boom, boom,” echoes around our expansive entryway. A hundred mostly blond heads fill the space. Their perfectly-curled ringlets bounce with the rhythm. Each face touched by the Southern Californian sun (or spray-tanned). Strapless bras and thongs in place, per our president’s orders.

I stand in the back row. A smile painfully frozen on my face. My feet aching from hours in too-high heels. I corral these feelings to keep them from contaminating our desired image.

Perfection. Nothing short of it will do.

I’m shoved to the side. I stumble into the hallway, disoriented. Recovering my senses, I scan the group for the culprit. My arch-nemesis bobs jauntily in my place.

Rage courses through my veins. My anger: a monster I have yet to tame.

As the prospective sorority girls move into the dining room for Strawberries and Chocolate, I track down my attacker.

“Why did you push me?” I hiss.

“Your hair isn’t big enough” she coolly replies and pivots away. Another sister lunges to push me into the kitchen, out of view once again.

I’ve committed an enormous faux-pas. The words of our president resound in my mind, each word carefully emphasized, “we are all friends here. When we are in public, we have no drama. We all love each other. We’re sisters.” Not only did I break this rule, I broke it during Rush Week.

This is sacrilege.

It was the beginning of the end of my time in the sorority. The past year had left me jaded. The shiny veneer had fallen away. The excitement of glamour, luxury and admiration was gone.

I abhorred their superficiality. They worshipped designers, chirping inanities such as: “Oh. My. God. Did you see what she was wearing? She was, like, so Gucci-ed out!”

Our charity events were just excuses to party (with copious donations made between Jell-O shots and keg stands). Coming home drunk three nights a week, after donning too-tight clothes and excruciating shoes, wasn’t just physically exhausting, it was spiritually exhausting.

We told horror stories about the other sororities: they lined their girls up in their underwear and circled parts of their bodies that needed improvement. One of our favorite adages was “if your girlfriend won’t give you any, Tri Delta.” We were better than them. We were only known for drinking too much. A problem that led to chastisement from our leadership every time we promptly left a fraternity after drinking all their alcohol.

At an elegant dance hall with an ocean view obscured by sparkly lights, my Big Sister, my mentor, pulled me to the side.

“I want your nose,” she intoned.

I scrunched my eyebrows together in bafflement.

She grabbed my head, pushed me in front of a mirror and cooed, “your nose. I’m going to take you to my plastic surgeon and tell him, ‘I want her nose.’”

This was the same party that resulted in punishment for a few sisters for “literally having sex on the dance floor.”

I was at a precipice. A moral precipice. I yearned with heart and soul for substance. In a world where appearances are all-consuming and spending three hours getting ready each day feels justified, where is the room for the ugly truths of the world? Where is the time for honest contemplation? Or even self-reflection?

I cast about for something more substantial and landed on pictures of deprivation and mistreatment. They lined a table at an event showcasing our school’s many groups. The contrast could not have been more stark. My university’s chapter of Human Rights Watch. I signed up immediately.

The sorority left an indelible mark on my conscience. I scrubbed that spot with protests and sit-ins.

I walked away believing their superficiality was more than unfortunate and pitiable, it is an evil in itself. To gloss over real suffering on this planet with “manis and pedis” is inexcusable.

The sorority is a microcosm of our consumerist culture. We all have a choice whether we pursue status symbols and facile happiness or look for underlying truths.

In their attempts to carve a Southern Californian aristocrat out of me, they instead cut away my belief in their superiority.