I Am Platform

I’m getting a little sick of the secret competition that seems to be going on regarding who can be the most feminist. Specifically, I’d like to take the time to dissect A. L. Bailey’s recent op-ed on University of Alabama’s Alpha Phi. As someone who was repulsed by the idea of sororities when entering college, I see where Bailey is coming from. The portrayal of sorority girls in movies like American Pie make me shudder. As Bailey repeatedly called the women in Alpha Phi throughout her article, the women in those movies were portrayed as “bimbos,”something I certainly never wanted to be.

However, unlike Bailey, I decided to do some undercover research and go through rush myself to determine just how oppressive sororities were to women. Let me be honest with you, I saw my fair share of pump-up videos – complete with glitter, handholding and piggy back rides, which Bailey seems to have major issue with. Something Bailey does not realize, or perhaps does not mention, is that a four minute video is not the only representation of a sorority during rush, and is meant to be a talking point with girls who may not know much about the sorority they are visiting. The friendships are made in sororities during the time you spend together at a football game, lake or just hanging out, which are all featured in the video.

Now, let’s get to the real root of the problem here. Bailey argues that not only are these women undoing decades of progress that the feminist movement has made,but “with all their flouncing and hair-flipping… making it so terribly difficult for anyone to take them seriously.” I cannot count the amount of times men have assumed that having breasts mean that I was less entitled to be taken seriously than my male counterparts. I certainly do not need a woman who is supposedly on my side doing the same thing.

Apparently , the women of Alpha Phi are an oppressive force to all women, even worse than Donald Trump, because they have the audacity to dance around with glitter, embrace “traditional” femininity, and (gasp) wear bikinis at a lake! Let’s take a step back now. Bailey again and again accuses Alpha Phi of advertising their bodies as a recruitment mechanism, but this self-proclaimed feminist must know that one of the biggest fights feminists have and continue to fight for is the right to wear whatever we damn well please. How is a Slut Walk liberating but a woman choosing to wear a bikini in a sorority video by a lake oppressive to herself and everyone else? How is embracing femininity and friendship amongst women anti-feminist when the world has so long been dominated by masculine values?

It’s time to stop making feminism a competition. When any woman (not that only cis women can be feminists, by the way, but this is the only context Bailey seems to be working within) tears down another woman for “not being feminist enough” she is hurting the movement. We have it hard enough already! Bailey lambasts Alpha Phi for not being diverse enough, but maybe we should re-examine what the working definition of the twenty-first century feminist looks like. Embrace your femininity or womanhood or whatever combination works for you, whatever your bikini body looks like, whatever makes you feel good to be you. This is what feminism needs to refocus on, not paternalistically (hypocritically) scolding women for positioning themselves in lifestyles you think are oppressive. Greek life, like the feminist movement, has its shortcomings that we must work to rectify, but I am proud to be both a sorority woman and a feminist, and I stand by the women of Alpha Phi.