{Review of Debutante: Rites and Regalia of American Debdom by Karal Ann Marling. University Press of Kansas, 2004.}

Welcome to an American Spectacle. Muffy, Bitsy and Bunny rouged, bejeweled and décolletéd, sashaying across the room, curtseying to bovine boys in penguin-tails. You think: Campy costume party? Drag show? No, this was the coded language of genteel, white American aristocracy, circa 1930. A hermeneutically-sealed world of bon viveurs lionizing the good life of clanking crystal, dulcet waltzes, enjoying most of all their own prominent social visibility. I can’t imagine that the glittery world of early-20th century debbing could ever be the same today. Nevertheless, it’s making a comeback, or so reports author Karal Ann Marling, a cognoscente of Debdom, the umbrella term for all things Debutante.

Ms. Marling historicizes the esoteric rites associated with debbing as well as the brand names who made such rituals famous: Astoria, Waldorf, Vanderbilt, among other hotel names. At the height of debbing in this country (ironically during The Great Depression), Emily Post governed the scene as ecclesiarch of Victorian deportment and other highfalutin interactions. In 1959, in a gesture of classist one-upmanship, Henry Ford II planned a debut for his daughter Charlotte that put other cotillions to shame.

Ms. Marling is right to say that eugenic theory gurgles beneath the surface; debbing prizes bloodlines. Of course, debbing has its own naughty psychosexual undertone, fetishizing and showcasing the sublimated sexuality (and fertility) of these virgin teenage princesses.

Debbing’s decline during the mid-20th century is attributed to America’s uber rich gaining a social conscious. Throwing lavish functions during, say, the Civil Rights movement was considered to be in bad taste.

As astute as Ms. Marling is in exposing the undergirding race and class issues of debdom, she delivers an otherwise constipated and depoliticized critique of The Miss America Pageant, the winner of which we could consider to be our country’s Number One Deb. I am not convinced that The Miss America Pageant seeks to project “female power,” or that the “feminist ire” on the subject is misguided. The general disdain for pageantry stems from a larger problem in American culture which idealizes the svelte, callipygian bodies of toothy women rather than what’s between the ears. I highly doubt that any viewer tunes in to watch the talent portion of the show.

Ms. Marling is clearly smitten with this whimsical world. But how can you not be? The history of debbing is both delicious in its excess as it is disturbing in its early, bigoted history.

{Review of Pledged: The Secret Life of Sororities by Alexandra Robbins. Hyperion, 2004.}

Journalist Alexandra Robbins goes undercover to follow the lives (and asinine antics) of Vicki, Sabrina, Amy and Caitlin, four new pledges, or inductees, into two sorority houses at one unnamed university in California. At first, these four women are perceivably more likeable and less misguided than the grievously cruel and flibbertigibbety sorority sisters who orbit them.

The book runs the course of a full school year, August to April, each chapter representing one month. Subsections divvying each chapter symbolize a day in the life of one of each of these sorority girls.

Selfhood, academics and community service take a backseat to obsessive body image issues, dating, drunken clamor and dervish promiscuity. Philanthropy, a service which is often touted as part and parcel of the Greek campaign, we learn is merely window-dressing, a once-a-year backburner concern, at least at this California school. (Who knew?)

In early interviews with Ms. Robbins, each girl admits that the Greek system’s seduction is its instant community, easing young women into the big scary world of college. But it’s this exclusive, prickly world of homogenized Stepford automatons (the original) I’d be afraid to join. Sleights of hand and other ruses cauterize any smattering of autonomy or sense-of-self these young women may have possessed before joining these sororities. In fact, some entrants are so easily corruptible, falling prey to a feral and uncritical herd mentality, I was sure Ms. Robbins was apprenticing Jane Goodall.

Although Ms. Robbins' credentials are certainly impressive at her young age—26 at the time of this reporting and a once-upon-a-time staff member of The New Yorker—I would hardly deem this work ‘investigative’ by gritty, journalistic standards; portions of her book read like a Harlequin romance. With that said, anecdotes of superficial interactions are interspersed with a few harrowing statistics and reminiscences of date rapes, eating disorders and hard drug use.

For instance, at a particular university in the northeast, Ms. Robbins explains that bulimia was such a problem in the sorority house that the “pipes [had to be] replaced because of erosion due to stomach acids.” Tales of date rape seem less disturbing than how one woman deals with her rapist—by saying and doing nothing. Degradation runs so deeply, both within the sorority houses and among the fraternity boys they seek to titillate, that a set of frat boys unabashedly described their female counterparts as “sorostitues” and “fraterniture.”

In fact, the entire mise-en-scene—drugs, alcohol and sexuality—seems to be a big spectacle of self-indulgence and dangerous hedonism simply to lure fraternity boys. Ms. Robbins explains this is one of the looming paradoxes of this system: act like a Lady publicly, but be a Whore privately. Dating is manufactured and upon approval by the sisters—it must be the ‘right’ guy from the right fraternity.

What compromises Pledged as good journalism, or sustains it as gossipy beach reading, depending on your view, is its air of sensationalism—we skip from one party or event to the next (or misdeeds borne from such keg parties). The women featured are frankly not complex or interesting enough to carry a 300-plus page book. One girl, Sabrina, a middle-class African-American woman in a primarily white, upper-class sorority house who endured several moments of tacit racism, emerges as the only one with her head screwed on straight.

That is until she becomes embroiled in a hushed affair with one of her professors.

If what Ms. Robbins reports is generally true about sororities, my suggestion to the four women we meet in Pledged is run don’t walk to therapy; and a personal aside to parents who currently have children in the Greek system: it’s not too late to send deprogrammers.

© 2004 Deborah S. Esquenazi

Deborah S. Esquenazi is a freelance writer specializing in political and cultural topics. Deb is a regular columnist for How to Make a Family - read her at Demythologizing the Metropolis. She lives in NYC and can be contacted at desquenazi at howtomakeafamily.com.