#effortlessperfection

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We All Want to Be the Best: Female Student, Kenyon College ‘15.

We all want to be the best(at least secretly), but why? Capitalism?  And what does being the best mean? And if you don’t think you’re the smartest or prettiest what do you do? Keep trying or if you’ve given up..drink? Or does drinking and pretending not to give a fuck sometimes make you “cool?.” If you don’t try you have less to lose right? 

What if you don’t actually enjoy sex? What if your parents hired a babysitter until you graduated highschool? What if you got C’s in special Math and only got into Kenyon because you can pay full tuition? 

On facebook...the pictures make you look cool but you look like a chubby weirdo with questionable friends, so do you untag all the memories? 

Do I write something with clever imagery that is sure to make you like this or just use the vague statements that earn me a B(if I’m lucky) on an essay?

We aspire to be like Olivia Pope but we love people who are unapologetically flawed like Tina Fey or Lina Dunham...actually a lot of people don’t like Lena Dunham. 

Being funny is cool. Mean Girls is cool. 

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I Collapsed: Female Student, Kenyon College ‘14.

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

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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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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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Anonymous Female Professor at Kenyon College: If you asked many girls in this video about what they did they'd tell you that they were expressing their sexuality...they might not realize how they are objectifying themselves. Its more competitive to get into Kenyon as a woman and so female students are usually brighter and more accomplished. You have to wonder if this is a way to keep females down. 

Anonymous Female Student: The images in this video reflect how college was branded to us through the media and most of us don't give it a second thought.

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Anonymous Female Student , Kenyon College Class of 2015

Guys say a lot of derogatory things in front of me. They refer to a lot of girls as whores. Its because "I'm chill" and I know how to be "one of the bros". Other girls say it about each other too and I have in the past but now I find it unsettling. If I called them out it would make everything uncomfortable.  Everyone is just trying to fit in. 

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Based on Janet Reitman's article Sex and Scandal at Duke University. 

Is participation in a booze fueled hookup culture  part of being a "modern woman?" The clip demonstrates the harsh scrutiny that comes along with engaging in the hookup culture,  especially from other girls.