In the spirit of Out Week, I’m coming out. Hello world, my name is Emma, and I am a SWUG.
What is a SWUG? Short for “Senior Washed-Up Girl,” SWUG is a term apparently coined at Cornell, but now part of countless college lexicons. Definitions are numerous and imprecise, but they generally reference senior girls (or, dare I say, women?) who have ceased caring about various aspects of college life, including hookups, big parties and even grades. SWUGs don’t need a hookup or a wild, all-over-campus night to feel fulfilled. They just need a bottle of wine and Netflix.
SWUGs entered pop consciousness last April, when a Yale Daily News article caught the attention of New York Magazine, which then caught the attention of the Internet. On the one hand, many self-proclaimed SWUGs boasted about being self-actualized and above all the petty underclassmen worries. Meanwhile, critics made sad, pitying judgments about girls who were “washed-up at 21,” not caring at a point in their lives when caring is most important.
Being abroad, I missed all this, and was first introduced to the idea on the August evening I moved into my beautiful new off-campus residence for the year. When I popped the champagne bottle my housemate and I planned to share that night, she informed me that we were beginning our descent into SWUG-ness.
“Washed-up? Me? Never!”
“No, no,” she told me, “it’s more like we just don’t give a shit anymore. Like we’re totally happy to just hang out at our off-campus house getting wine-drunk instead of trying to find a party and see a ton of people we don’t really care about, you know?” Well…yes. I conceded that point, and we proceeded to SWUG out for the night.
In the next week our three remaining housemates and other friends returned to campus, many back from abroad and all riding the beginning-of-senior-year high. Many of us laughed at the reality of our SWUG-dom, and that of countless members of the senior class (we even began employing a brother term for the males among us—TOTIS, for Too Old Too Intoxicated Senior).
Some of the more denigrating descriptions of SWUGs paint them as drunkards and jaded, loveless cat ladies. Maybe the Yale SWUGs fit this description, but I think our Bowdoin SWUGs—myself included—are a little different.
I have not spent my entire year thus far hermitting with my housemates and our wine, sticking our middle fingers up at any social or academic efforts. In fact, quite the opposite—I’ve felt more socially liberated this year than ever before at Bowdoin. I’m not a slave to the fear of missing out (most of the time), and I enjoy occasionally doing homework with my friends on the odd Saturday night. At the same time, I can spend a night partying at Crack House and actually have fun, without any of the awkwardness I felt in previous years. Contrary to many portrayals of SWUGs, I can hook up with people—seniors and otherwise—and I can do it without feeling like I am competing with younger, more appealing first years. I’m a senior girl and proud of it, goddamnit.
We aren’t SWUGs because we don’t give a shit. We do. We have just learned to devote our time to the things—lasting friendships, meaningful academic and extracurricular interests, deeper self-awareness and self-confidence—that actually matter.
I would normally end this with an appeal to all of Bowdoin’s non-SWUGs to try to do the same, but somehow I don’t think this would do much. As an underclassman, I thought I didn’t care about looking good or impressing people, but it’s only in retrospect that I have realized how much I did care. I needed to pass through three years of trials and tribulations before I could reach this bizarre nirvana. So I urge you to enjoy your pre-SWUG years, because the more memories you make, the more fodder you have for reminiscence once you become a SWUG yourself. Get excited, for the SWUG life is the good life.
Emma Johnson is a member of the Class of 2014.