‘Biddie’ battle: ditch the divisive term and find our commonality

Doing it wrong: Questioning the morality of LASO’s date auction

Last weekend, the Latin American Student Organization (LASO) hosted a Valentine’s Day Auction, during which, according to the student Digest, LASO would “auction off dates with more than 15 lovely Bowdoin students.” LASO is to be applauded for its effort to raise money for a very deserving organization, Safe Passage. Nevertheless, I think there is something inherently immoral about a date auction in general. This isn’t an attack specifically geared towards LASO. It is a critique of the date auction.
What does the term “date” invoke? Most people associate a date with free time, a fun experience, an activity over which one has autonomy. Now think of the word “auction.” What comes to mind? Sadly, because of this country’s history, we are often reminded of phenomena such as slavery and prostitution when we hear the word “auction.” We also think of objects. In an auction, the idea of obligation is involved. After an item is bought at an auction, it is required to be given to the highest bidder. Already, there is a contradiction in this term. A date that is sold in the context of a date auction is not really a date, because there is an element of obligation involved. There are definitely social pressures at play, as with all sorts of agreements. A date resulting from a date auction is more like a debt than a date.
At a date auction, people are bid on in exchange for money. When you buy a certain amount of time with someone, you are effectively putting monetary value on them. In a date auction, you are not only paying for a date, you are payng for a specific person. If you were just paying for a date, then the auction would be anonymous.

Doing it wrong: Adjusting after breaks should involve changing conversations

When you first come to college, the transition period is endlessly discussed. It’s normal to feel homesick or culturally shocked during the beginning of your freshman year. A similar sort of process is also acceptable for those who come back from study abroad. Yet, during Spring Break, it occurred to me that for those of us who go home often for break, no one talks about how difficult it can be to constantly readjust from Bowdoin to home and vice versa.
My Spring Break was considerably relaxed; I spent most of my time eating Chinese take out and watching “Scandal.” However, towards the end of my break I started to feel unusually stressed and irritable. I realized that what was stressing me out were the differences between my life at Bowdoin and my life at home. I had never understood why going home never sat well with me considering I loved spending time with my family and friends. But there is something to be said for the toll that continuously adjusting to different environments takes on many people at Bowdoin.
The adjustment that affects me personally at Bowdoin is the ease of life here. When I’m at school, all I have to do for meal times is swipe my OneCard at the dining hall and there is an array of food available to me.
I don’t have to walk to the supermarket, worry about how much money is in my bank account, or make sure that I make dinner before my parents get home. If I want to hang out with my friends late at night, I only have to walk a couple of minutes to their dorm room. I don’t need to take the subway and worry about being a young girl alone in New York City. I don’t need to worry about constantly entertaining myself—there is enough work, events and extracurricular life to do that. At Bowdoin, I am often able to forget that I am vulnerable, poor and unsure of myself.
But this attitude is sometimes hard to preserve. And for the times when I am not able to forget some of these things, it is not easy to talk about them. For some reason, I don’t feel as comfortable tackling economic privilege in a conversation with my friends as I do with other heavy topics like race and gender. I almost feel like I’m at the dinner table in Downton Abbey, and it would be out of the question to talk about wealth. It shouldn’t be that way. There should be a space for students to express their feelings on economic privilege.
Living in a place with so much wealth can be difficult when you know that at a certain point, you have to go back to a very different situation. The more comfortable people feel to talk about an issue that is important to them, the less it will strain them.
Bowdoin should try to tackle this by educating more students about the reality of economic privilege, to show students who deal with this issue that their troubles are important, and to make students attuned to these issues so that they can better understand their fellow students. Adjusting to a new home is a great deal easier when you don’t feel like you have to hide certain parts of yourself to get by.

Doing it wrong

‘Biddie’ battle: ditch the divisive term and find our commonality

This piece represents the opinion of the author:

February 27, 2014

Biddie. I had never uttered the term before arriving at Bowdoin, nor did I hear it all that much. Nevertheless, the term has become part of my daily vocabulary, even though I’ve never learned what it actually means.

After Googling the phrase “Bowdoin Biddie” with no real success, I searched for “College Biddie” and found a blog called “Biddie Lifestyle” which described to me the commonalities of biddies everywhere. Apparently, biddies wear leggings as pants, have iPhones, love glitter, pretend to know about sports when guys are around, and listen to Jason Derulo and Nicki Minaj. I am guilty of 3 of the above, yet never in my worst nightmares could I imagine anyone referring to me as a biddie. Unthinkable. Further research was needed.

I then found “biddie” in the Microsoft Word dictionary. After correcting my spelling to biddie (I will continue to use this spelling out of respect for Amherst President, Biddy Martin), Microsoft kindly explained to me that the term biddie (noun) is 1. “Same as chicken,” or 2. “an offensive term for a woman whose behavior is regarded as fussing or interfering.”

Pink, Nicki Minaj, glitter—the loud things, the bright things. These are the things that society condemns women for embracing, yet simultaneously conditions them to adore. For a woman to enjoy these things is to interfere with our social standards, but if she does not comply with these interests, she fusses with social norms. Unsurprisingly, there is no way out.

Urban Dictionary says that a Biddie is “gullible/easily tricked,” “does not remember the last weekend that did not involve a hangover,” and “dreams of being a woman from Desperate Housewives.” It is audacious to me that this term could involve so many intricately offensive assumptions, yet in reality is applied to so many women. I can’t remember the last time I looked at a girl wearing a sequined tank top at a college house party without “biddie” being the first thing that came to mind.

Where does one draw the line between biddie and non-biddie? It’s unclear, if not impossible. Because I listen to Bright Eyes and shamelessly detest football, does this make me a non-biddie? But I wear leggings as pants on occasion and I have an iPhone. Does this make me a biddie? This shouldn’t concern me. It shouldn’t concern anyone. We need to stop classifying women and pitting them against each other.

The term biddie separates women in a society where women should be finding their commonalities in order to fight against the oppression that is prolonged by the use of gendered and derogatory terms. Women are constantly mocked for what they are and what they aren’t. Instead of ridiculing women for having certain tastes, we should work towards a society in which women are comfortable to explore their interests.

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