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Feminism: a forward-moving contradiction

By Mary Williams, For The Miami Student

It's been taken down, reposted, blogged, tweeted, shared and watched to the point where the majority of the United States population is sick of hearing about it.

The Alabama Alpha Phi fall recruitment video first created controversy when it was the subject matter of an article written by A.L. Bailey a few weeks back, describing the video as "worse for women than Donald Trump."

Spectacularly clever, Alpha Phi's video featuring lively, beautiful women having fun together has the ability to offend those who find such combinations demeaning. With that being said, the video is not in any way a step backward for women and how they wish to be perceived in America's shifting patriarchal society.

Due to public outrage of the sorority video, a major, contradictory flaw has been revealed with what America views as the social norm. Recent opinions throughout the country and world are dominated by feminism, of which the main argument is for women to be able to do what they want, how they want.

We can't make progress toward equality with men when women are judging other women for how they chose to portray themselves and live their lives. For all the public knows, those women are doctors, lawyers and rocket scientists. To judge them on a video in which the goal is for them to show how much fun they are having in one another's company is ludicrous, especially when the judgment is creating an issue with how they look and doubting their intelligence.

Men are celebrated for looking good, but when females, or a group of women like the Alpha Phi members, make a video in which they look stunning, or God forbid wear a bikini, it is criticized as being 'oppressive' and 'moving backward for women.' Attractiveness is now a crime? Flaunt it if you got it.

As for the homogeneity, or overwhelming whiteness, of women in the Alpha Phi chapter, one could argue that the women in the video consciously chose to be there. In going through recruitment, those girls showed a specific interest in that particular sorority, for getting along with that group of women.

Nobody should judge women joining a group they felt comfortable with. If anyone is throwing blame around it should be on the recruitment process, and not the girls who are required to follow specific procedures to recruit girls they will get along with and see on a daily basis for the next three to four years of their life?

In judging the women in this video, those who voiced their opinions to this group of women are doing exactly the opposite of what feminism and women's rights have been fighting to eliminate in the past few years: Judging women for their decisions.

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