Effortless Perfection

American Studies Honors Project by Elizabeth Douglass

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Anonymous Male Student, Kenyon College Class of 2016

I think females are treated better academically. Socially men reign. 

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There is another facet to this effortless perfection, and it involves women attempting, to be one of the "bros."

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Anonymous Male Student, Kenyon College Class of 2017

I don't really feel any social pressure. I feel academic pressure obviously. I don't give a shit if I go out in sweatpants but girls feel the pressure to dress up.

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Duke Women's Initiative

At this stage in their lives, they[undergraduate students] are already working hard to figure out what is important to them, what their strengths and weaknesses are, what their standards and goals might be, and what the future significance might be of the attachments they have to others. Furthermore, the peer culture is not by any means free of sexism, racism or homophobia, contributing to an environment where women and other groups are often reminded of their need to prove their worth. 

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Do men worry less about seeming intelligent in front of their peers in a classroom setting? 

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Does the hookup culture make it difficult for men and women to live,work and study together as equals, and for women to flourish as human beings? 

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What would a truly co-educational college look like? 

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Do non-white females experience a different side of Kenyon from white females? Are there differences between experiences of gay, bisexual, and transgendered females compared with heterosexual women? Is life organized around hetero norms? 

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Do most undergraduates come to college with relatively firm idea of how women and men should behave? Are these expectations reinforced during college or do they shift? 

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"First coined in Duke University’s landmark study by the Women’s Initiative in 2003, the concept of “effortless perfection” has spread virulently since, giving a name to the constant pressure felt by...

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Nannerl O. Keohane, Chair President of Duke University's Women's Initiative Executive Committee

Throughout the year, we have become increasingly aware that the problems we have identified for women cannot be fully understood, much less tackled successfully, until we know more about the experiences and attitudes of men

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Anonymous Female Student, Kenyon College Class of 2014

I sat down to write this and I realized that while college might be just as difficult for guys, there is definitely something especially fucked up about being a girl at Kenyon. I was never pretty enough, smart enough, cool enough, unique enough, talented enough, or funny enough to be be happy with myself. That can really wear on a person— not being happy for so long. And it definitely wore on me. I don’t know where the pressure comes from. Maybe somewhere obscure and looming like society, or somewhere internal like one’s self, but wherever it originates, the pressure that college girls experience can be all-consuming. I always wondered why it was so much easier for others, but I think now that perhaps it wasn’t easy for anyone. We were all struggling with the same things. What does it mean to be the ideal college student? How does one become that girl? What do you do if you can never become her? For me, the answer was to collapse. I am stronger now because of it, but will never forget the real toll college took on me and my friends. The depression, the eating disorders, the anxiety, the drugs, the drinking, the assholes, the bitchiness, the embarrassment. How do you even prepare someone for that? Is it all necessary?

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Susan Roth, Chair of Duke University's Women's Initiative Executive Committee

People are talking about things that I don’t think they were talking about before so it has had an impact, [but] I don’t think [Effortless Perfection] is a magical [term]… I don’t know if it captures all that we came to understand [in the Women’s Initiative] from undergraduate life.

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Karen Krahulik, program director of the Center for LGBT Life, Duke University

Only certain people with the right gender and sexual orientation and right class can engage in the process of appearing perfect without effort.

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Donna Lisker, Duke University

It’s quite expensive to have the right clothes, to train your body into a certain shape and get the manicures and the pedicures and the tanning…. [Perhaps] if you just can’t afford it, then maybe you’re more likely to challenge it or question it...Come graduation, the issues just change names, like "becoming a super-mom"