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Lindsey Will
Kathy Rowley
English 201-11
August 2, 2012
Argumentative Essay: SororiTHIN
The media does its part to play up the view of sorority sisters as mean girls
obsessed with thinness and beauty, in movies such as "The House Bunny" and "Legally
Blonde.” Today younger women are becoming more focused on their body image and
weight. These girls feel the need to achieve the perfect body: slim, trim, and toned. After
high school the pressure continues, especially for girls that do choose to join a sorority
and are placed in an environment surrounded by females with the same wish for the
perfect body. To lose the unwanted weight, however, these now “sisters” partake in
habits like binge eating and self-induced vomiting. Some, to put it bluntly, literally starve
themselves. Although little research has yet to prove a direct correlation between
sororities and eating disorders, one can infer that girls who join a sorority are more likely
and at a higher risk of developing an eating disorder. With constant peer pressures,
competition, “Rush”, hazing practices, and trying to fit in it is no wonder why so many of
these girls have become bulimic, anorexic, and established habits of binging and purging.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a sorority can be defined as “a body
or company of women united for some common object, esp. for devotional purposes” and
an eating disorder is “any of various psychological disorders characterized by abnormal
or disturbed eating habits, esp. anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa”(OED). So what do
these two subjects have in common? Sororities offer a niche- a smaller segment of the
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community that purportedly helps to make college life more manageable. This may seem
constructive at first glance but in reality, however, the motives for the vast majority of
girls looking to join a sorority include: making friends, meeting guys, to party, and to
belong to a smaller community within a campus. Hesse-Biber writes that, “Colleges and
universities across the country are reporting dramatic increases in eating disorders.
Several studies on anorexia nervosa in college populations report that it affects between
6% and 25% of female students. Bulimia ranges between 1% and 19%, and between 23%
to nearly 85% engage in binge eating” (Hesse-Biber 170).
While the pressure of living under the same roof as dozens of other girls can
invite looks-based comparisons and judging, it does not give mean every member
exhibits an eating disorder. In fact, there have been several research studies that have
proven that there is no difference between eating disorders in sorority women and those
who are not in a sorority. A current study conducted by Kelly Allison, Ph.D. and Crystal
Park examined disordered eating prospectively among sorority and nonsorority women.
The article, “A Prospective Study of Disordered Eating Among Sorority and Nonsorority
Women,” found that women who join sororities are similar to those who do not in their
baseline levels of disordered eating, but they maintain more rigorous attitudes and
behaviors regarding dieting over the course of their higher education (Allison 356). In the
scholarly journal article, “Health Behavior And College Students: Does Greek Affiliation
Matter?” authors examined alcohol and drug use, smoking, sexual behavior, eating,
physical activity, and sleeping in 1,595 college students. Results show Greek members
engaged in more risky health behaviors. However, “on the dimensions of eating, caffeine
use and exercise, Greek students do not differ from the rest of the student body” (Sheldon
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68). Thus, eating habits were not proven to be significantly different between the two
groups.
Some studies have actually shown that sororities can take an active role in
preventing eating disorders. The aim of the study “Effectiveness Of Peer-Led Eating
Disorders Prevention: A Replication Trial” was to replicate and extend results of a
previous trial that investigated the effectiveness of 2 peer-led eating disorders prevention
interventions in reducing eating disorder risk factors in undergraduate
women. Researchers randomly assigned a larger sample of both higher and lower
risk sorority members to either a cognitive dissonance or a media advocacy intervention
under naturalistic conditions. Interventions were delivered by trained sorority peer
leaders and consisted of two 2-hour group sessions. Results indicate that both
interventions reduced thin-ideal internalization, body dissatisfaction, dietary restraint, and
bulimic pathology at 8 months, although higher and lower risk participants responded
somewhat differently (Becker 354). Thus, it can be argued that sororities can actually be
counter active to eating disorders.
An advantage of working within the Greek-letter system is that sororities can
mandate education for their members. Many sororities use a merit or “loyalty” points
system. In order to be allowed into social functions sisters have to accumulate merit
points by attending at least 70 percent (varies between chapters) of chapter activities
(Robbins 95). Sororities have speaker events that are mandatory and many times feature
educational speakers who lecture for about forty-five minutes on topics such as eating
disorders. Providing education and developing role models with healthy attitudes toward
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their own bodies is the first step in addressing this complex problem, but does it
necessarily prevent them?
In the weeks before college, many young men and women are deciding whether to
“rush,” a process in which undergraduates campaign to be invited into a fraternity or
sorority. The process of being invited into a sorority can be very shallow, based solely on
a young woman’s appearance and social appeal. Women who join sororities are more
likely to judge themselves on their appearances and display bulimic tendencies, according
to a new study published in the journal Sex Roles by researcher Ashley Rolnik. The study
reports that women who rushed and ended up joining a sorority were found to have
higher levels of body shame just one month later. This concept seems feasible for new
pledges since they suddenly find themselves in a house surrounded by hundreds of young
women telling you if you look good, influencing the way you dress, even prompting you
to exercise because no one wants to be the “fat girl” in the house. Women who dropped
out of the rush process, the study shows, were found to have a significantly higher body
mass index [BMI] than those who pledged -- yet those women were not found to be
overweight. They had healthy BMIs on average, but were just less thin than the women
who actually joined sororities. The researchers concluded that rather than an anti-fat bias
at sororities, a bias exists against women who don't live up to the "thin body ideal," not
the healthy body ideal.
In the New York Times bestseller, Pledged, Alexandra Robbins goes undercover
among a group of sorority members in order to expose the inner workings of female
Greek groups. What is interesting though not surprising is the incidence, condonation,
and even camaraderie, of eating disorders in sororities. Robbins first describes the
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process of Rush, or membership selection. It has become so competitive and elaborate a
process at determine mothers have taken to hiring “rush consultants” to groom their
daughters so they will be accepted by their desired sorority. These consultants are a cross
between beauty pageant coaches and college preparatory service counselors and train
rushes on everything from attitude to outerwear. According to Robbins, women’s bodies
are front and center through the sorority selection process, and according to a rush
manual (Rush: A Girl’s Guide to Sorority Success) she quotes: “For example, if you are
overweight, you must try to lose weight before rush. If you have acne problems, you must
work on clearing up your face. Whatever problems you have, you must do your best to
minimize them. Physical attractiveness plays a large part in the overall evaluation
process” (Robbins 224).
Not having much to go on besides looks, sorority members rate rushees after just
several minutes of conversation. When I was in a sorority and new to the other side of the
rush process, we were instructed to rate each woman on a scale of 1-5 (1 being the best, 5
being the worst). We had to shout out the numbers in front of the entire house and
sometimes even explain our ratings in heated debates. Since hundreds of women had
visited the house each day, we relied on notes we had to scribble down on individual girls
to jog our memories. According to Robbins, a West Coast Delta Zeta she interviewed
said, “If some really fun, interesting girl came in and she was really fat, she wasn’t going
to be invited back, that’s for sure. Ugly girls wouldn’t make it. That would look bad for
the sorority” (225). Having sat through the process one year, I dropped the sorority the
next. How can you rate a person on a scale of 1-5 after just meeting and having a short
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conversation? And even more importantly, how can this rating not be soley based upon
looks and appearance?
Once girls are pledged into a sorority the urge to fit in can be extremely
petrifying, especially at the start of the year, that the new girls often go to extremes to
blend in quickly. This explains the rampant eating disorders, group piercings, and the
similar hair color and dating patterns of sisters in the same sorority chapter. The girls
worry that if they do not conform they could be deemed unsuitable sister material and be
cast from the group.
Pledging practices, many of which are not spoken about or also known as
“hazing” also encourage eating disorders. Robbins writes: “I had been under the
impression that pledging practices such as ‘circle the fat’ and ‘bikini weight’ were the
stuff of urban legend. I was wrong. During circle the fat, pledged undress and, one by one
stand in front of the entire sorority membership. The sisters (or, in some chapters,
fraternity brothers) then use thick black markers to circle the fat or cellulite on a pledge’s
body. The purpose is to help the pledge learn what parts of her body she needs to
improve. During bikini weigh, or “weigh-in,” pledges are weighed in front of either the
sisterhood or a fraternity; the audience yells the number displayed on the scale” (259).
The thinness ideal is easily enhanced because of competition between girls. Many
sororities have one cook who prepares the meals for member of the house. While some
may cater to vegetarian needs, others may have to prepare meals that are not the
healthiest due to budgets. Either way, everyone watches what everyone else is eating and
tries to eat the same amount of less because no one wants to be the heaviest eater at the
table. If a thin ideal is the standard being set in this culture, women who fall short of that
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ideal may become more dissatisfied with their bodies and may pursue what is considered
an acceptable method in their sorority (for example, dieting, purging, or excessive
exercise) as a way of changing their bodies to conform with the ideal. The vigor with
which the women pursue weight-reduction methods may be influenced by the emphasis
their sorority sisters place on achieving and maintaining that slender ideal and the
individual member's own desire to maintain her status within the sorority.
Peer pressure is one main causes of this self-destroying activity in sororities. In
the United States, popular culture instills in females unrealistic expectations about
physical perfection. The media constantly delivers the unhealthy message that if you're
not youthful, thin, and beautiful, you're not happy. A sorority member may feel pressured
to lose weight by a romantic partner or “sisters” who are overly concerned about their
own appearance and images delivered by the media. Robbins claims that it is common for
individual sororities to have a tendency to acclimatize to and disseminate a house
standard. She proves this with evidence from a Texas College. Plumbers would be
regularly called to one of its sorority’s houses to clean out the pipes, which would be
clogged with vomit. At this same sorority, girls often gorged themselves on the weekends
when the cooks and the house mom were gone. After their enormous dinner, they
disappeared into the bathrooms- a regular weekend binge trend. (27- 28)
Robbins sat in on an meeting of the Panhellenic Council at a certain university to
which she referred to as “State U” in her book. Surprisingly, representatives from all
eighteen sororities said their houses had a problem with eating disorders. Robbins follows
up this information with more evidence regarding peer pressure. During a talk with a
Delta Zelta from a large east coast school, this sorority member blames her sorority for
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her own eating disorder. She states, “I would never have thought about starving myself to
get thin. Then I saw other people doing it and they got kind of crazy, but it was catchy.”
She also says, “Everyone had done it, and since sororities revolve around looks,
starvation became an acceptable thing to do” (28).
Another example of this disturbing behavior that Robbins mentions is when a
sorority president from a northeastern university investigated the disappearance of
hundreds of plastic sandwich bags from the sorority’s kitchen. She found the hundreds of
plastic bags filled with vomit in one of the bathrooms. The pipes also had to be replaced
in this bathroom because of the erosion due to gallons of stomach acid. The sorority
president told People in 1999 for an article about eating disorders, “It made sense” due to
the fact her sisters were vocal about their extreme weight concerns. Robbins includes that
a 1990s study reported that a whopping 80 percent of college women who frequently selfinduced vomiting were sorority sisters. Other sorority girls have said that the pressure to
look good was so intense that they turned to plastic surgery to better fit in” (29).
All in all, peer group and relationship pressures, media, competition, “Rush”,
hazing, and trying to fit in all are contributing factors to why sorority members develop
eating disorders. Overall, it appears that eating disorder rates are increasing in other
Western and non-Western societies. As this globalization spreads Western values to other
nations, American society’s “Cult of Thinness” message promises to envelope these
nations’ young women in a complex web of eating disorders and eating problems (HesseBiber 787). One cannot help but question the ideals of today’s society. This idea that
looks are the most important has taken over. From a very young age, it is emphasized to
women how important it is to be pretty-- and to be pretty by society’s standards means
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being thin. The American standard of physical perfection promotes both eating disorders
and an obsession with thinness among women, and consequences of this obsession can
often be tragic. Since sororities provide an environment where women live together and
conform to the group’s culture there is a greater likelihood of eating disorders to arise,
especially with societies thinness ideal. It is clear that media, television, and
acquaintances all stress the importance of being thin and beautiful to impressionable
young women. If we as a society could only change the emphasis to be on the mind rather
than on the body, women would benefit with increased self-esteem, healthier lifestyles,
and increased confidence. How do you think this society can change this emphasis?
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Works Cited
Allison, Kelly C., and Crystal L. Park. “A Prospective Study of Disordered Eating
Among Sorority and Nonsorority Women.” International Journal of Eating
Disorders 35, no. 3 (April 2004): 354-358. PsycINFO, EBSCOhost (accessed July
18, 2012).
Becker, Carolyn B. “Effectiveness Of Peer-Led Eating Disorders Prevention: A
Replication Trial.” Journal Of Consulting & Clinical Psychology 76.2 (2008):
347-354. Academic Search Complete. Web. 18 July 2012.
Hesse-Biber, Sharlene N. “The Spread of the Cult of Thinness: Preteen Girls,
Adolescents, Straight Men, Gays, Lesbians and Ethnic Women.” Stuart and April
Lidinsky, eds. From Inquiry to Academic Writing. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s,
2008. Print.
Hesse-Biber, Sharlene N. The Cult of Thinness. New York: Oxford University Press,
2007. Print.
Robbins, Alexandra. Pledged: The Secret Life of Sororities. New York: Hyperion, 2004.
Print.
Rolnik, Ashley, Renee Engeln-Maddox, and Steven Miller. “Here’S Looking At You:
Self-Objectification, Body Image Disturbance, And Sorority Rush.” Sex Roles
63.1/2 (2010): 6-17. Academic Search Complete. Web. 18 July 2012.
Schulken, Ellen D. “Sorority Women’s Body Perceptions And Their Weight-Related
Attitudes And Behaviors.” Journal of American College Health 46.2 (1997): 6974. PsycINFO. Web. 18 July 2012.
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Scott-Sheldon, Lori A. J., Kate B. Carey, and Michael P. Carey. “Health Behavior And
College Students: Does Greek Affiliation Matter?” Journal Of Behavioral
Medicine 31.1. (2008): 61-70. Academic Search Complete. Web. 18 July 2012.
"What Causes Easting Disorders?" What Causes Easting Disorders? Web. 02 Aug.
2012.< http://www.safety.com/articles/what-causes-easting-disorders>.