In my notorious column of sexual liberation, I’d like to start the year off as friend (instead of foe) to the freshman girl.
In pearls or in stilettos, on main West outside DTD or at the Sigma Nu off-campus house, this girl is profoundly naïve. And though she thinks she owns it—the party and its men—she is about to find out how insignificant (and replaceable) she really is on this campus.
In the few nights of drunken disarray that I’ve experienced with this new breed of Duke women (if I can call them that yet), I’ve discovered several things: They have the evil stare of “I may be a freshman, but I’m still better and hotter than you,” down; and they glorify their newfound social calendars by getting ready to party on East but waking up with a hangover in someone else’s bed on West.
And it’s really no wonder that these women have such an evil stare (and all the arrogance that comes with it). It’s a widely known fact that freshmen girls have it best in college… and that freshmen boys are socially screwed until they surrender themselves to a fraternity that will inevitably take advantage of the next influx of freshmen girls.
In our newfound age of online Facebook—fully equipped with pictures and relationship status—our new freshmen girls will have an open invitation to any party they want. They’ll find dashing upperclassmen in pink Polos, and become sexual slaves to these greek men instead of their Gods.
In fact, these women will think that they’re really something special to have caught the attention of an older man… when all the older men are thinking (other than, “Oh baby, oh baby,” and “That feels so good”) is, “She’s so stupid” and “That was so easy.”
Freshman women, beware: The only role you fulfill in an upperclassmen man’s life is a void that any freshman girl could easily (and would willingly) fill—the other half of his bed… and for only that night.
No relationship will ever come from meeting a man in a drunken haze at a party or bar, ditching your girlfriends to go home with him and getting down that walk of shame almost as well as your evil-eye stare.
And if you really knew how Duke social politics work, you might not be so arrogant with that stare of yours. What most freshman girls don’t know is that their free reign into this man’s bed has an expiration date, and that when the next year looms, they will become what my friend Jane Goodale calls an “old cow.”
Years ago, Jane—the bitter protagonist in a movie called Someone Like You—established a theory for men that, in my educated opinion, perfectly describes the upperclassman man’s probing interest in Duke’s fresh meat.
The “New Cow Theory” states clearly that once bulls have serviced one cow—once they’ve been there, done that—they are ready to move on to the next. Repeat business is of no interest to both the bulls in the movie and the men on our campus.
In the most barbarian sense, Jane’s theory can be translated to “Man seek new cow”. Her bovine-based philosophy describes all men as serial womanizers who narcotize themselves with casual sex… much like the men on our campus.
I only wish that the women of our campus did the same, instead of throwing themselves into a hookup and blindly expecting a relationship or something “special” to come of it.
I write this column with the hope that these ladies will go into hookups without expectations that will later come back to deeply hurt them. Duke’s notorious hookup culture can be incredibly empowering to women; that is, if we learn to use it to our advantage. So feel free to “viva-la-vulva” yourself, Duke freshmen, and don’t be so eager to tie yourself down so quickly.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with exploring your sexual self, even if it is in the first few days of life at college. I tell you this as a woman who loves sex—and her men—and as one who also once upon a time mastered that evil stare. The only difference between you and me is that I know better than to let myself wither into an old cow…
Shadee Malaklou is a Trinity sophomore. Her column appears on Fridays.
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