High school guys, beware of Penn. Not for the recent criminal activity or the Ivy League-level work. If you come to Penn, watch out for the infamous Penn Girls.
This Penn Girl concept is hardly new. A few weeks on campus and you'll surely have heard the stereotype: all girls at Penn belong to sororities, are from New York, have Daddy paying their credit card bills and all wear the same black pants.
The stereotype seems to have popped up in campus publications lately. My fellow columnist Rory Levine referenced "the ladies of Penn's campus" and called us "eating disorder-prone sorority girls." 34th Street Editor-in-Chief Ross Clark wrote that a gang of Penn Girls would ward off crime, asking, "After all, what could be scarier than 20 girls in identical black pants walking down the street carrying identical Herve Chapeliers?"
My simple suggestion that you get to know a female Penn student before classifying her will in all likelihood not do anything to dispel this stereotype. I've taken sociology courses. Prejudice is a learned behavior, and by hearing upperclassmen repeat the Penn Girl stereotype, new students copy their sentiment, and so the cycle continues.
But what if it's true? What if all female Penn students actually do fit into this category?
Let's start with the idea that all women at Penn are in sororities. Kite and Key tour guides offer the statistic that 30 percent of Penn students are involved in Greek life. We can do the math here: if half of Penn's population is female, that gives us approximately 5,000 undergraduate female students. Thirty percent of that is 1,500, far more women than could be in Penn's seven sororities. Statistically, it's impossible that every female undergrad is in a sorority.
How about the notion that all Penn females are from New York? Penn tells us that they attract students from every state and many other countries. I would venture to say -- very unscientifically, of course -- that the odds that all the female students at Penn are from New York and that males represent the other 49 states and foreign countries is highly unlikely. For instance, a random sample of people I know yields a much greater percentage of females from outside of New York than from New York.
Along those same lines, it is ridiculous to suggest that female Penn students have their parents foot the bill more often than male Penn students. Many students are fortunate enough to have parents who can pay for their college educations, while others are given financial aid in the method of loans and work-study packages. Just try to find a statistic saying that the work-study students are male and the ones with allowances from their parents are female. Not possible.
Then what? Obviously not all women at Penn are in sororities, are from New York or have platinum cards in their wallets. Where does this stereotype come from?
It must be the pants.
Yes, women at Penn do wear black pants. There's no statistic that will disprove this. Just look around and undoubtedly you will find students wearing black pants. Probably, you'll find many students wearing black pants. They wear them to class, to on-campus recruitment, to campus events and out to parties.
Obviously this means that all Penn females think the same and act the same way. Same color pants, same mindset.
Wait a second. We're creating an entire stereotype based on pants?
This is incredibly sexist. To suggest that because many women are wearing black pants somehow means they can't think for themselves or aren't independent is ludicrous. Black pants are acceptable business casual attire, so many women wear them to look presentable and be taken seriously at recruitment events and even to make a good impression in the classroom. They are more appropriate for nicer events and function in situations where jeans are not included in the dress code.
Moreover, the reverse of the criticism is laughable. It's a rare occasion when a male Penn student wears anything other than jeans or khakis. Yet if I tried to criticize Penn guys by saying, as Ross did, "What could be scarier than 20 guys in identical khakis walking down the street?" I'd sound silly. So please tell me, what's so threatening about girls in black pants that we, as Penn students, felt the need to create an entire stereotype about it?
Perhaps the clothes make the man, but at Penn, the clothes hardly make the woman. Rebecca Rosner is a senior English major from Lawrenceville, N.J.
