CHS to MHC: an Open Letter From a Future Women’s College Student

Mount Holyoke’s chapel. Image courtesy of http://sites.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/

“I couldn’t stand going somewhere like that.”

“Oh god, bless your soul.”

“Why would you do that to yourself?”

These are just a few of the reactions I’ve had after responding to questions about where I’m going to be attending school next fall. You’d think from these statements I was headed off to prison, but no. As I have learned in the past few months, very few people understand why anyone would even fathom getting an education at a women’s college.

I’m attending Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Mass., because of the schools that gave me the best financial aid, it offers the best education and seemed like somewhere that I could fit in. It’s also my mother’s alma mater, so growing up I never thought of it as unusual. I did actively seek a few women’s colleges during my college search; they made up three of the fourteen schools I applied to. Most people I encounter have never heard of MHC, and when I explain what it is, I can feel myself selling it short and having to defend my decision with “well my mom went there and they offered me enough money” while sounding like I’d rather go anywhere else. Don’t get me wrong, I’m beyond excited that I’m going to school there. I’m just tired of feeling guilty for being secretly enthusiastic about something that most people seem to outright hate.

So to clear up a few misunderstandings:

1. Mount Holyoke isn’t exclusive to women. Being a part of a five-college system, students from four nearby schools – UMass, Amherst, Hampshire and Smith (another women’s college) – have full access to MHC’s curriculum and can easily take classes there. Saying that the school is “all girls” also erases its significant population of trans men and those who don’t subscribe to the gender binary.
2. The student body does not consist of 2,500 raging men-haters who burn their bras and do other things people who don’t know about feminism have seen in cartoons. Some students probably do, but you can find that at any school. (Also, if they do, can you blame them? I can’t.)
3. No, going to a women’s college does not mean that you experience attraction to women. I was actually asked by a friend if I was going to “turn into a lesbian.” I don’t even know how to respond to that.
4. To something a student said when I visited mid-April: “A women’s education is not about the presence or absence of men. It’s about the community among women.” Look men, something that isn’t about you! How rare.

I also find it alarming that no one bats an eye or asks these kinds of questions when my younger brother brings up how he’s interested in going to the all-male Christian Brothers Academy. I wonder why. (Just kidding, I know why.)

Next time you’re considering asking me or anyone else attending a women’s college a question, think about whether or not you’re making it about yourself, if you’re basing your idea off of something you don’t know about, or if it’s potentially offensive. Because from my experience, it probably is.

Media Autobiography: About The Girl

When I was 8 years old, my mom rented a Mean Girls DVD from Blockbuster for me and my sister to watch. (I’m very old.) I was definitely too young for this movie’s PG-13 content and probably didn’t understand half of the jokes, but it was an incredibly important film for me to see at that age. If you flip on almost any female-centric Disney movie or show, you’ll watch the well-meaning main character pit herself against the evil, snobby, clique-leading pink-wearing antagonist with no other character trait that “mean.”

used with permission of ambivalentlyyours.tumblr.com

When a girl watches the protagonist compete with this mean girl for glory (and usually for the guy,) she puts herself into those shoes. She learns to hate this girl, and subconsciously, the girls in her own life that resemble the girl. She starts to think that all other girls are competition; in order to achieve, she has to be the only girl good at what she does. She drives herself crazy trying to find flaws in the girls around her so she can reassure herself that she’s better than them. Boys learn this too, and pit girls against one another, distancing themselves from them: “How could something a girl does compare to what I do? She’s a girl. It doesn’t count.”

But back to Mean Girls. This movie follows Cady’s journey from hanging out with the loved-and-loathed Plastics as a joke, to trying to tear down their hated queen bee, to leading the clique and being incredibly unhappy, to finally restoring the peace in Girl World. No one really loses in this movie; Cady shares her Spring Fling crown with everyone. Unlike the movies that view girls as strictly the good and the bad, Mean Girls has a moral: “Calling somebody else fat won’t make you any skinnier. Calling someone stupid doesn’t make you any smarter… All you can do in life is try to solve the problem in front of you.”

My goal with this blog is to have a conversation going about how issues like girl hate affect Communications High School. Our place of learning has the unusual circumstance of being incredibly small but holding a high female-to-male ratio. I’ve witnessed enough anti-girl sentiment here to fill three full-size high schools; it’s time we got serious about putting girl power here back in the hands of girls.