Why it’s time for Bowdoin’s presidency to have a female perspective

My 77 Cents: What’s in a 10? Stop ranking people numerically

As students at Bowdoin and as young adults in the modern world, numbers are an inevitable and undeniable fact of life. We are constantly getting feedback that places us within a system of gradations and numbers: grades, GPA, weight, height, team scores and clothing sizes, to name only a few examples. Now, numbers are not entirely irrelevant by any means, for they provide some semblance of order to an otherwise incomprehensible web of information. However, assigning numbers to something or someone—in this context at least—is inherently a reductive act.
Objectifying a person’s worth to and for them not only distills the worst elements of our culture but also provides an incorrect and illusory understanding of a person that, ironically, neglects their actual value as a human being. We constantly make assessments of other people. This fact seems unavoidable.
What worries me is the language with which we pass such judgments. When I hear someone assign a number to someone else outside a party, it doesn’t seem cool or funny. It looks more like a symptom of self-conscious anxiety about physicality and appearance. Clearly, people contain more multitudes than their looks or grades can possibly capture in any fulfilling way.
These numbers lose all power in light of how arbitrary they actually are. What does 10 represent? What does it actually mean to be a 10? To be perfect? How can we agree upon the terms? I recently had an argument with a friend who insisted that the ranking system is making important leaps and strides in recent years: “now you can factor in face, body and personality so it’s fair.” Even still, what is 10? What is one? There is no reference point and thus no meaning at all behind these numbers. Not to mention that the concept of ranking personality and of ranking these aspects separately is an almost laughable, and, I hope, fleeting phenomenon.
To rate someone—and more so, to allow yourself to be swayed by someone else’s ranking—is to allow someone else’s narrative to override your own. It is to allow one’s complexity to be overridden by a particular, narrow and unimportant analysis that conforms to the essentializing and superficial standards of our society. It seems to me that these issues are important ones to consider when thinking about how we talk about one another.
The way we learn to talk about beauty stays with us. When men rank women, women begin to compare themselves to other women using the same format. They judge men in the same way. If one can make a person disappear behind a number, this makes them less of a threat; it gives the ranker the power.
And admittedly, it feels good to have that power sometimes, to be the wielder of assessment. As if we have any real control over another person’s looks, over our own, over the intricacies of interpersonal attraction. If we believe in the ranking system, it means that our peers can decide whether or not we are sexually desirable, not based on their own subjective attraction, but rather on an arbitrary numerical scale. And that’s frightening.
Though it would be impossible to keep anyone from expressing their opinions about another person’s looks—and frankly, you wouldn’t want to do away with that altogether—I think it’s important that the way we talk about this subject changes. Numbers are not the way to do it. At their best, they are empty; at their worst, they can be incredibly hurtful. To conform to the system of ranking is to succumb to the societally conditioned conception of what it means to be “hot”: a conception that lacks nuance, and which wrongfully evaluates and oppresses us all.

My 77 Cents: Cover up your judgement: clothing choice does not reflect sexual desire

Three girls walk into a bar. They look around, surveying the territory when their eyes fall upon two other young women. These other ladies are wearing short dresses, five-inch pumps and a lot of makeup. “They’re such sluts,” the three girls whisper spitefully. “Put some clothes on.”
Before you roll your eyes at what has become the Feminism 101 cliché of “slut-shaming,” I want to look into what these circumstances actually suggest. Firstly, the notion of “slut-shaming” is troublingly unspecific. Are we chastising women for the actual act of sleeping with multiple partners, or for dressing like they want to be doing so? This is, of course, not to label all women mean-spirited, but to expose clothes-shaming, or the “Crop Top Effect” (patent pending), as an issue that merits equal attention.
While I want to focus on girls’ critiques of each other, I do think it’s relevant to examine some instances of clothing-shaming that have recently come to light but are in no way new phenomena. For years and years, schools have instilled strict dress codes stating that women are forbidden from wearing items like tank-tops, shirts that show their bra straps, or short skirts. I do think these early instances of clothing-shaming contribute to the way we judge women later in life.
All that should matter in a school is that students come to class ready to learn. And sure, dressing respectfully can be important in instances such as say, interviewing for a job. The reasoning behind school dress codes is that classrooms deserve an equal level of professionalism and respect. Makes sense. But what exactly does “appropriate” or “respectful” mean?
What if a student came to school wearing a gigantic M&M costume? That’s not exactly professional, but if her bra isn’t showing, is it considered permissible? The real question is, why are the majority of these rules so quick to police the female body? Why is it so quickly assumed that someone’s wardrobe choices are intentionally sexually provocative rather than merely comfortable or convenient?
When younger girls are sent home for wearing their skirts too short, or wearing a “skimpy” top, this only teaches girls to be ashamed of their bodies. It also dangerously implies that their education is in some way subordinate to their appearance.
Now, why are girls so hard on each other? One argument is that girls feel competitive with one another for male attention, and thus feel threatened when other women dress to impress men.
People generally tend to make “thinking errors” in these types of situations. A “thinking error” means that we tend to invent reasons for other people’s behaviors that often have no basis in reality, but are instead the projected products of our own insecurities or beliefs.
So, we might think, “this girl wore that sexy outfit to purposefully undermine me and my subtle beauty” instead of, “that girl looks great in those pants and I am not going to assume that the reason she wore those clothes has anything to do with my personal reaction to her!”
Obviously I’m being a bit facetious here, but I’m sincere in my overall belief that clothing is often an unfair standard by which to judge other women. If we are to assume a girl is dressing to make it “easier” for men to see she is interested in having sex, this has serious consequences. This kind of thinking is deeply problematic, and I don’t think it would be too far of a stretch to say that it falls directly in line with the “she was asking for it” paradigm. It is just not our job to ascribe motives to another person’s way of presenting themselves to the world. To do this is presumptuous and unfair. When will a girl’s body just be able to be her own?
What would be better than covering women up would be providing them with educational opportunities, sex education, media literacy, and the ability to make informed choices about their own bodies. And yes, the way we dress can make a statement about who we are or how we feel, but it doesn’t necessarily. To assume that it does is, at best, catty, and at worst, hazardous. We have power in setting the standards, and we can do better.

My 77 Cents

Why it’s time for Bowdoin’s presidency to have a female perspective

This piece represents the opinion of the author:

November 6, 2014

Arguing that Bowdoin should select a female president to replace President Mills is difficult in no small part because this decision is endlessly complex—and only one facet of it deals with gender. I understand this. Yet I feel it would be wrong not to make the case for a progressive change of pace for the future leadership of Bowdoin. Fellow NESCAC schools Amherst, Bates and Wesleyan have had female presidents. So have Brown University, the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University to name a few more examples.

Yet these schools stand firmly in the minority. In a 2012 study, the American Counsel on Education stated that only 26 percent of institutional leaders in the United States were female. These numbers do not come close to reflecting the male-to-female student ratios of any college or university. Furthermore, only 36 percent of tenured professors are women, according to a 2009 Forbes article. In STEM (science, technology engineering and mathematics) fields, women make up less than a quarter of the workforce even though they earn 41 percent of science and engineering degrees. Only 20 percent of computer science degree recipients are women. Part of what these statistics vigorously indicate is that there is a wealth of female talent in many dimensions of education that remains untapped and underappreciated.

It is easy enough to argue that we should elect a new president who is uniquely qualified regardless of gender. And this point is not an irrelevant one. President Faust of Harvard University herself said upon election, “I’m not the woman president of Harvard. I’m the president of Harvard.” Her statement brings up an important point. To single out women in this search is to come uncomfortably close to reinforcing the “othering” of women, or favoritism towards them. Yet Faust continued to say, “It would be wrong not to acknowledge that my has tremendous significance.”

It is universal knowledge that the road to social justice has never been easily paved. We do not live in a world that is gender blind; sometimes, to create social change, it is necessary to stir up a little controversy in order to make way for progress. Yes, it would be silly to elect a new leader of Bowdoin just because she is a woman—or, for that matter, just because he or she is any one thing in particular. A person’s qualifications for the job are far more intricate than one genetic trait, after all.

However, I do not think it is unreasonable to count gender as one of the most important factors in this upcoming decision. This nation has rarely changed anything by being blind to difference—it doesn’t work that way. Indeed, considering a candidate regardless of gender may even obscure the potential benefits that come with gender. A female president may have a meaningful new perspective. Surely there are several candidates who are right for the job, and I feel confident that one of these candidates will be female and will be just as qualified as her male competitor.

Boris Groysberg of the Harvard Business School states, “There is a big difference between diversity and inclusiveness. Diversity is about counting the numbers; inclusiveness is about making the numbers count.” It is one thing to elect a woman for the purposes of—to put it crudely—symbolism. Yet, it is entirely another thing to elect a woman because she is qualified, because she has a vision and because she offers a new perspective.

Having a female president would diversify Bowdoin’s presidential history. It would change the statistics—and this is not a bad thing. But I would hope, too, that this decision will be only the beginning of an effort to make these new numbers count. We live in a time in which men and women of all colors, nationalities, races and sexual orientations will be given opportunities to succeed as leaders, both in education and in the world at large.

To quote Faust once more: the doors to change were not “blown outward by a faceless wind…those doors were stormed and broken down by a lot of brave and determined visionary people.” At Bowdoin, we are taught to be these visionary people. We are taught to be leaders in all walks of life. Let us lead the way.

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