The University of Texas’s student newspaper, The Daily Texan, has been having a fucking hayday with anti-Greek material for the past week or so. Last week alone they published three anti-Greek articles, and one cartoon of a sorority girl that looked like it was drawn by a 5-year-old. One column in particular piqued my interest. It highlighted the sorority girl “uniform,” AKA norts and XL tees. The article’s author, German exchange student Maria-Xenia Hardt, discussed how wearing these items somehow makes us mindless drones that are unable to think for themselves.
“By wearing them, you identify yourself with a group. You don’t have to waste time or effort building your own identity,” she says, just after she sarcastically condemns “going to class in a gym outfit” as “a level of informality that German women haven’t reached yet.” Ummm, contradictory much?
I’d love to have a bully pulpit (like a school newspaper) where I can rag on people without having to worry about silly things like “bias.” Oh wait, I do. Hold on to your big girl panties, Hardt, Corningstone’s bitchmode has officially been activated.
So, Ms. Hardt, let’s start off with why we wear big t-shirts and norts. BECAUSE THEY’RE FUCKING COMFORTABLE. If you want to see me dressed up then make friends and go out on the weekends. When I’m in class, I’m there to learn. I’m not trolling my American Experience Through Autobiographies class for a new boyfriend. In case you haven’t heard, the Greek community has consistently had a higher GPA than the rest of the student body at UT, and this pattern continues at a vast majority of universities across the country. How on earth do we manage to excel academically when we don’t even have the ability to think for ourselves? Maybe because we don’t spend class wondering if we look fashionably homeless enough, or coming up with delusional opinions about sorority girls to publish in the student newspaper.
Another reason for wearing t-shirts is the sheer fact that we have so fucking many of them. My sorority alone produces a billion (rough estimate) awesome t-shirts every year, each one even more adorable than the last (shout out to my kick ass sisters who design them). Sue me for having some Greek pride and ordering everything we come out with. Plus, you have to factor in t-shirts for date parties, philanthropies, and fraternity events. The joy and excitement of adding a new t-shirt or tank to my collection brightens even the cloudiest of days. Just let me enjoy the simple things in life, dammit!
I’m just going to take a shot in the dark here and assume that you consider yourself quite the accomplished columnist since you’ve been published by such a “reputable” source. I’d hate to crush your dreams, but “people who dress similarly to others” is terrible subject matter because EVERYONE dresses similar to SOMEONE, and dressing like the people you associate with is called “not being a freak.” Look around campus. Hipsters, athletes, nerds, and all the other genres of human appear similarly dressed. This doesn’t make them mindless or lacking in personality. They establishing a sense of identity within that group, and probably don’t give a shit what anyone else thinks about their attire. Are we all supposed to pull a Gaga and wear a dress made of meat to class? I’m sorry, I don’t want to wear something different for the sake of being different. At least I’m not, oh, say…openly admitting that I like to wear norts and t-shirts, but refuse to do so because sorority girls do, like *cough cough* some people.
Oh, and we do have a cold weather option for clothing. They’re called yoga pants.
Nice Move369
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