<p>Right on, fendergirl. Wanna be my surrogate daughter? (I have only sons, sigh…)</p>
<p>Curmudgeon, I just saw your post, and you were spot on with everything except the Reagan jacket (it’s more in the cardigan line) and the Pall Mall’s (because respectable southern ladies don’t smoke). I don’t know what kind of dog she has but it’s little, ugly and expensive. And I never noticed before, but she DOES wear only pastels. Now I’m getting scared.</p>
<p>haha! maybe we can start a band :)</p>
<p>Cangel’s post reminded me of a big reason I wanted nothing to do with sororities when I was a student. My youngest D is a freshman at Florida State. Greek life seems to be very popular on the campus. I was amazed at the huge lines outside the sorority houses when I was in Tallahassee helping my D move in to her dorm. My D has no interest in participating in Greek life. I can’t imagine spending the time and money in order to dress “properly” for rush and Greek social events. </p>
<p>I grew up in Kentucky and have lived in the state most of my life. Some people in the state (and some from outside as well) consider KY to be southern. I always considered myself to be a midwesterner. I do not have a southern accent, but I do say you all - as two distinct words, never as y’all. I was not taught to “Sir” and “M’am” everyone. I reserve those terms for those much older than I. One of my per peeves is being called “honey” by clerks and waitresses, particularly those who are young enough to be my child! I have never heard of any high schools in my area having soroities or fraternities.</p>
<p>I agree with you about looking nice as a sort of empowerment. I do not believe that that is an attitude restricted only to the south. I exercise, eat well, and wear sunscreen religiously. I wear makeup nearly everyday and like to dress in a professional manner for work. I do it primarily to please myself. I do have limits when it comes to doing things to look nice. I would never consider Botox or plastic surgery. I refuse to wear uncomfortable shoes or clothing. I won’t spend big bucks on cosmetics; drugstore brands are fine and dandy. I color my grey hair myself and usually cut my own hair. Most of my wardrobe came from Value City. I feel pretty good about my appearance on most days, though I must admit it’s probably partially because my vision at age 50 is getting a little fuzzy - that sure does help soften those tiny lines!</p>
<p>Cangel’s post taught me that sorority girls in the south carry looking good to a whole other level. I would never want my daughters to participate in anything like that. There is a difference between wanting to look nice and feel good about oneself and feeling compelled to “compete” with others for social status. I understand that it is natural for people to want to “belong”, but I think that the Greek way has a tendency to be shallow and superficial. I’m glad my kids wanted nothing to do with sororities. But, to each her own.</p>
<p>Cangel, I would think empowerment comes from being taken seriously for who you are, what you can do, not how ritzy a facade you can present. </p>
<p>Certainly one should be neat & clean for church, presentable for a job, more so if you work with the public. (My day job is as a real estate agent and it took me years to lose the tie for routine days. Funny thing is, I now really enjoy picking one out of the closet for an evening at the ballet or something.) But dress as a standard of measure, or of competition…</p>
<p>Jym, the comment was made at UCLA. The person making the comment was, ah…out of a different tradition. Fwiw, neither TheMom nor I are locals. She grew up in Missouri and lived in Chicago after college. My stepfather was a mathematician doing oil survey work in the pre-computer days and I lived in Mississippi, Texas, and Louisiana as a small child. If I’m very tired, have had a glass of wine too much, or am around others who speak them naturally, my vowels will still broaden out on a few words. Which is funny, because my “natural” accent is pretty much like an educated damnyankee that’s listened to too much “Masterpiece Theater.”</p>
<p>Cangel, my scouts tell me that we are outnumbered. I request permission, ma’am,to order a full retreat .</p>
<p>I ,too, am around a culture where women and men tend to dress up a bit. We’ve always laughed about it. It seems everybody goes one step up,while W is spot on and I go one step down. As for D, she goes to school for the first three periods with “fixed hair”, no make-up and athletic clothes, “sweats” or “warm-ups” this time of year, as athletics is before lunch. I would expect her schizophrenic look to continue unabated by whatever college she chooses.</p>
<p>D is unwilling to apply makeup for the hour or two it will stay on, but on social occasions dresses quite nicely and does take a moderate amount of time with her “face”. Again, I doubt location influences or will influence that.</p>
<p>BTW Cangel , I picked SMU ,too, as the “southern school” in question, certainly not a typical college experience in the south. I have a very successful friend whose son attended SMU. My friend said it was the most artificial and contrived people/setting he had ever seen. That’s not Southern, that’s just new money.Think “Dallas”. LOL. It is certainly different at Austin College, Rice, Southwestern and other Texas schools that are all within a few hours of SMU .I would ask our northern friends not to broadbrush this issue too much. I ,too, would wager the “elite” sororities and fraternities are about the same everywhere. I would agree though that some campuses, many of them southern, are over-stocked with Greeks.</p>
<p>I want my daughter to be listened to and respected for the way she thinks and not looked at because she’s nicely made up, coiffed and dressed…what I notice here is that its a focus on the women’s exterior which is the opposite of the way I look at things…again…3 generations of womens colleges might have something to do with my outlook.</p>
<p>
I totally understand this. From my perspective, though, it seems to be easier to get the initial attention (i.e. to be listened to) when one is done up attractively - THEN, after one has captured interest, one can voice one’s opinions with a lesser worry of retribution, and avoid being blown off altogether for not taking care of themselves.</p>
<p>A person can be well groomed without looking like a bimbo…when I see someone looking like that I immediately assume that they have no wits…a prejudice, but its what comes to mind.</p>
<p>I don’t think there is a huge sex difference when it comes to general presentation and “being listened to”. I would likely listen to some gentleman dressed either in a suit, slacks, cutoffs or jeans and a t-shirt over a person looking like he is doing a Howard Hughes imitation (in the later, street-person looking days when he would try to hitchhike looking like something the cat dragged in). Sterotypes are stereotypes… I would imagine that the frumpy absent-minded professor looking person will be listened to on a college campus, but perhaps not in a board room.</p>
<p>There is quite a discourse on sorority rush at southern universities on Greekchat - it is quite something to behold. You’re talking about girls whose great grandmothers were in a sorority! Some are even prepped by private rush consultants. The mothers contact all their friends to make sure darling daughter has preferably two references to each sorority. They plan their french manicures and eyebrow waxings in advance. They are perfectly dressed for rush in Lilly Pulitzer dresses and Kate Spade purses. They know to carry coffee filters to blot the perspiration from their faces without ruining their makeup. (Please note that this applies to LARGE, southern universiites - Ole Miss, LSU, Alabama, UF, FSU, Texas, SMU. Auburn).</p>
<p>In other words, they spend as much time prepping for rush as we are spending here to prep our kids for college admissions. Priorities, priorities.</p>
<p>curmedgeon, must agree with SMU being pretty bad! [though when does oil money get to switch from “new” to “old”? lol] I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that Dallas is home to the best-dressed women on the planet. I lived there for a short period of time and my mom still says, “You looked so good when you lived in Dallas!”<br>
Dke: those women in orlando must really look like bimbos! What a headache! But do they dress up for the walmart? 
My parents live in Sarasota but the old people they hang with don’t look too bimboish. Can you get your husband to move back before you get too settled in? My mother MADE my father get a new job after a year in Ashland, Kentucky, years and years ago. [I kind of liked it, it was warm and the girls got into fights, as well as the boys. A shocker after the well-behaved Scandinavians I left behind in Minnesota. Again, you’ve really got to have moved around the country to realize the cultural divides between certain areas.]</p>
<p>Candace is in Orlando…I’m in Northeast Florida and, yes, there’s “gussying up” for Target, too!</p>
<p>Oh, and fendergirl, pjs to class? That sounds great!! Think I could get by with it at the grocery? :-)</p>
<p>dke, oops! Sorry, must go make coffee. Do you at least get to enjoy the ocean where you live?</p>
<p>Does this really address the issue of whether it is “okay” for smart girls from the North or Midwest to go to Duke or Davidson or UVa or Emory (among others)? Or is it just another regional stereotypes thread that gives people a chance to prove their own sophistication and superiority by whatever standards prevail in their own minds and communities? Discovering regional differences might be part of an educational experience; one might also ask whether it is worth going to a possibly inferior school (say, one with fewer intellectually like-minded students or a less stellar faculty) in a more acceptable part of the country instead of a more rigourous school in a (to some) less acceptable one.</p>
<p>wow, mattmon :-(( I wasn’t trying to prove my own superiority, just comparing different parts of the country. dke, who started the thread, was down because she’s plunged into a new culture and I, at least, was trying to assure her that it’s normal and okay to feel distressed about being in a different culture. You need to be careful: on message threads it’s easy to say things that you wouldn’t say to someone’s face. would you really say “that gives people a chance to prove their own sophistication and superiority by whatever standards prevail in their own minds?” to someone’s face?<br>
Also I think this thread is very valuable to someone with kids deciding where to go to school: I live in the south and didn’t realize the greek system was so big in Florida, I didn’t realize that rush was that structured at Vanderbilt, and I was interested to learn that some students that jonri knew were miserable at southern colleges because I have southern boys but I’ve raised them to be very, very “northern” so yes, this thread is helpful.</p>
<p>My yankee son attends one of the schools mentioned by mattmom. He actually wanted to experience living in a different region (outside of the NE).</p>
<p>(He has not been totally shocked by the culture, however, because about 68% of the students are not from the South. So in response to the original poster, I am not sure of what constitutes a “southern” school other than location. What % of the students must hail from the south? Kind of like the Florida issue…)</p>
<p>He is home for break for another few days. The other night he mentioned that he was surprised at the lack of a dress code in college (male and female). He mentioned that he would have no problem wearing a tie to class and would actually like it. In fact, he was required to wear one in high school. I think he is slowly adjusting to the idea of being able to dress so “casually”, and still take his classes seriously. Maybe it really is an empowerment thing. - Ha. Ha.</p>
<p>sokkerman, yes, Duke’s student body is too diverse to compare it to davidson, smu, etc etc. Emory’s, too, I’d imagine. And UVa is filled with kids from the suburbs of DC. Again, not too southern, when compared to Mississippi or SMU or Auburn.</p>
<p>I agree with Curmudge - PEACE!!! Folks. I think many of you have completely missed the point, and for artificiality I refer you to Westchester, Park Avenue, Michigan Avenue and the O.C.</p>
<p>I do want to address TheDad, women in the South, adult women, are not necessarily judged for how they look, in the feminist sense that you are painting it - at least not anymore than in any other part of the country. I don’t think female executives or lawyers or boardrooms anywhere show up for court or the big meeting sans make-up, and good grooming. The day to day standards of dress in the South are a little different, but I’m not sure I would say higher, I don’t wear suits and heels, I wear scrubs. I bet most women, men, too, would have to admit they feel better about themselves when they look “nice” in the mirror - I think that’s a common trait of humanity, some of us express it with dresses, make-up and combed hair, in other cultures it is body tattoos, beads and feathers.
Note, though, I said adults. I think teens and college students do tend to judge people by appearances (they are still kids) more than adults, they are at “mate-hunting” age after all.</p>
<p>Mattmom - to answer your question, yes, it is okay. My daughter has never had her eyebrows waxed, although I’m considering giving her a makeover for graduation - if she wants it. I think the poster who was talking about the unhappy girls at rush is telling the truth, but perhaps interpreting the actions/motivations of the roommate wrongly. The truth is that there are kids in my DD’s class who have known for years what college they will go to, what sorority/fraternity they will join, what profession/business they will enter and where they will live after graduation - there is not a lot room for seeing differences when you come from that mind-set. Sororities at large Southern universities have personalities, some have 95% of the membership right down the line fit the stereotype that has been outlined, others are different, sometimes quite different. An “outsider” (which my DD would be, I didn’t belong to a sorority, although I have a lot of friends who did) would be bewildered if they didn’t realize that there are unwritten “rules”, particularly at rush which is the most artificial, contrived part of the whole process. What you should realize is you don’t have to rush - don’t like it, don’t join!
Of the schools you mentioned, Mattmom, Duke and Emory aren’t all that Southern, not like Vandy or SMU. Their Greeks are more of a mix. I don’t know much about UVa, and Davidson does not have traditional sororities. Davidson was high on DD’s list, and we questioned multiple people about the eating houses, because she was adamantly opposed to Greek life early on last year. By all accounts the eating houses are self-selecting, if you want to join, you can join, you get one of 3 picks.
We learned to ask 3 questions - When is rush? (At a traditional Southern uni, like Alabama, rush may be before class starts freshman year, kids come to school knowing the “rulkes”), Do people ever rush at a different time? Where are the Greeks housed and how are they housed?(Everyone on one floor of a dorm, every one in the chapter house, etc.)</p>