There are a lot of things at this great institution of learning that confuse me. I'm confused by the labyrinthine design of the Edens dorms. I'm confused by the Great Hall's decision to open when everybody goes to class and close when they get out. I'm confused about how this campus has managed to breed squirrels that seem to be completely fearless.
But of all the things at this school that truly baffle me, without a doubt it's the girls that confuse me most. Five or six years ago when I first arrived here for my freshman year, I was shocked to find how much the girls here contradicted my expectations of them.
Coming into Duke, I figured that the girls (and guys for that matter) who were accepted into this University were among the smartest, most well-rounded and promising young people in the country.
Subsequently I expected to find girls who were confident, independent, freethinking and unaffected by adolescent peer-pressure and societal expectations.
To my surprise and dismay, however, many of the Duke girls I encountered during my first year tended to downplay their intelligence and other unique attributes especially in social situations, opting instead to play the part of the trendy, shallow, mildly mindless girls who we all grew up watching on MTV and in the movies.
And to make things even worse, many of the girls who came into Duke that year with optimistic attitudes and confidence slowly began to change.
Throughout their freshman years, being at Duke had taken away their genuine confidence and replaced it with insecurities and inferiority complexes.
The thing that makes all of this even more disturbing to me is to see how these girls are actually rewarded for their insecurity.
Girls with so much self-doubt that they acquire eating disorders and even resort to plastic surgery find themselves being accepted in the most elite social circles. The more a girl marginalizes herself by acting dumb and lewdly displaying her body, the more popular she tends to become.
There's a reason that the most drug use and eating disorders seem to occur in the elite sororities.
For a long time, I couldn't understand why girls were socially rewarded for swapping their individuality and confidence for designer jeans and cockiness.
I couldn't understand why the brilliant girl who was obviously smarter and more gifted than I will ever be was spending three hours a day at the gym and then skipping dinner. But mainly, I couldn't understand why I kept getting "blocked number" messages when I'd try to call them.
However, as I kept noticing it at Duke and among other girls from our generation, it started to make sense to me (except for the phone thing-that's just weird).
Don't get me wrong. I don't think all the girls at Duke who perpetuate this trend are bad people (well-maybe just a few of them).
If you think about it, it's really no wonder that girls are feeling insecure despite their intelligence and countless other attributes.
Take a moment and ask yourself what our society values in women today.
When you look at all the female pop icons that we are constantly being barraged with images of, what trait do all these women have in common?
I'll give you a hint-it's not literacy.
In order for a woman to be famous and widely celebrated today, talent and brains are optional but looks are mandatory.
Sure it helps to have some talent as well, but go watch MTV for an hour and tell me what you see more of-plain looking women with talent and brains, or good looking (a.k.a. skinny) women with, well, with not much else?
Is it any wonder that girls today are often insecure about the way the look and dress?
Every time they turn on the TV they are shown images of completely unrealistic-looking women. Next time you open a Cosmopolitan magazine notice how many of the articles are concerned with looking better, versus how many are about feeling better.
Where are our generation's Janis Joplins and Aretha Franklins?
Where are the women who are famous simply because of their talent and not because of how they look on a magazine cover?
Who's the only softball player you know of? Can you name an overweight actress under 30? Why in the name of God is Paris Hilton famous?
The result of all this is that women view themselves through the eyes of men. Instead of behaving in a way that demands respect, we see girls making out with each other in bars just for the sake of the guys watching. We see women trying to transform their bodies into the bodies of girls in order to fit into a pedophilic society. All of women's self-worth is being acquired outside of themselves.
Our moms rejected the expectations of their parents so we could have a society in which girls could demand respect.
Let's just hope our kids are able to do the same to us.
Jake Grodzinsky is a Trinity senior. His column runs every other Wednesday.
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