Welcome to Fall Rush: The Real—And Shocking—Sorority Beauty Standards

Photo: Ben Weller/Trunk Archive

It’s fall rush season for sororities across America, and despite several decades of feminism and progress for women, sisterhoods are still stuck in the dark ages. We’ve all seen some of the shockingly strict fashion and beauty demands sororities put on their sisters during rush, and your appearance is even more important when you’re rushing a top sorority. If you are a minority, getting accepted is going to be even harder. “If you’re black or Asian, you should be the hottest, smartest, richest, and most well-connected representative of your race if you want to get in,” one Arizona State alumna told Yahoo Beauty. (The sorority sisters we spoke with all wished to remain anonymous to protect their identities and those of their chapters.) The harsh truth is that many sisters still believe that it’s important to not only look alike, but also look good together.

Related: On the Globalization of Beauty Standards

Photo: Getty

In a TotalSororityMove advice column posted last month, sorority alumna Catie Warren wrote, “When my grandmother went through recruitment sixty years ago, it was based on looks. The same thing goes for when my mom went through thirty-five years ago, my sisters fifteen and twelve years ago, respectively, and when I went through six years ago. Sure, other things were considered: personality, academic success, involvement in high school, family life (money). But when it came down to it, the question was always ‘Is she pretty enough to be in our house?’”

During recruitment as a rushee, you are only given a few minutes to get to know as many sisters as possible. “It’s a mutual judgment,” as a recent alumna from Sacred Heart University puts it. That judgment can get pretty harsh. One Princeton graduate describes their intricate initiation process. “For discussions, you receive a piece of paper called The Cognitives. It gives suggestions for how you could rephrase your offensive comments about the potential members into something acceptable for discussion,” she says. For example, a girl who was deemed overweight and didn’t look like the rest of the sorority, was branded as “not a good fit.” According to a current sorority member from Columbia University, using the F-word is off-limits. “If you actually called someone fat, you’d be asked to leave the room during discussions,” she says. “Code words like ‘She’s not a good fit’ give you a lot of leeway.”

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Pat Grant, a co-founder of Rushbiddies, a full-service coaching program for steering young women through the competitive rush process, holds private sessions and has clients around the nation. “My clients come back from summer vacation with a few extra pounds, and I have to tell them, ‘You might not squeeze into that sundress,” says Grant. She does think it’s possible for a plus-size girl to get a bid at a top-tier sorority, but says these ladies typically counterbalance their weight with impeccable wardrobes, excellent references, great social skills, and having a legacy (Greek life lingo meaning their direct relatives were in the same sorority). Grant advises her clients to study the sororities’ websites at their universities in order to figure out how to mimic their looks.

The 2013 recruitment handbook from University of Southern California’s Sigma Delta Tau, which features acceptable hairstyles using white, blonde celebrities.

Cornell Pi Phi’s 2010 recruitment handbook, which went viral online, was very clear about what sisters should wear and look like: “NO Satin. No one looks good in satin dresses unless it’s from Betsey Johnson or Dolce and Gabbana, you weigh less than 130 pounds, have 3 pairs of spanks on and it’s New Years Eve.” Meanwhile, the University of Southern California’s Sigma Delta Tau recruitment handbook used only blonde, white celebrities like Carrie Underwood and Hilary Duff to illustrate the “range” of acceptable hairstyles for their open house round of recruitment. Like other sororities, they asked for manicures and pedicures to be clean and simple—no flashy nail art or glitters.

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On the Greek Chat forum in a recent thread called “Am I pretty enough for rush?” someone under the name 28StGreek wrote, “At USC, a freshman PMN (potential new member)—what is going to really affect her rush is: who she is, who she knows, and especially how she looks. And if she does not have any recs, but looks like a Victoria’s Secret Angel, then she is probably going to get a full list of invites each round.” 28StGreek wrote that telling girls to keep an open mind is dangerous advice, and that it would be better to just admit the truth: “How a PNM physically looks, and her size, is a real factor in a PNM’s chances during rush; at some schools definitely, and perhaps at most schools.”

While the top tier sororities are the most attractive and hardest to get into, the bottom tier sororities are the least attractive and, unfortunately, oftentimes the object of ridicule. “Of course we discuss other attributes like grades and extracurriculars when recruiting, but that only happens when the baseline level for appearances are met,” says a current sister at UCLA. Fraternities, on the other hand, are judged to a much lesser degree on their appearance. Just look at the popular website, Greek Rank, which allows sorority and fraternities to rank each other based on looks, popularity, classiness, involvement, social life, and sisterhood/brotherhood. The typical comments about a fraternity are about its campus involvement, wealth, and quality of parties. The chatter about sororities are about looks, looks, and…. sisterhood? Nope, just looks.

Related: Are You Pretty Enough?

“When guys talk about sorority rush, they’ll say, ‘I heard this sorority won rush.’ By that, they just mean that they got the hottest girls,” says a University of Michigan alumna. Columbia’s current Alpha Chi Omega handbook says the deciding factor for “winning” recruitment isn’t about having the strongest sisterhood—it is about selecting the prettiest girls who will in turn attract more fraternities for events. In an email forwarded to Yahoo Beauty about fashion show dress code, the organizer of one Columbia sorority’s event told the sisters, “Boys will want to see your assets, especially your chest. (Just kidding!)”

Photo: Getty

The discussion around sororities online is total mockery. We laugh at their caps-laden emails and ridiculous beauty standards, but there are larger issues at play here: Generations of young women are being told that their self worth, reputation, and friendships are based on their looks. While some sisters find these appearance-based guidelines unfair, they also continue to perpetuate these values. A shift can only change from within the system, and sadly that may not happen anytime soon.