Tuesday was sorority bid day, which means all UCSD’s wannabe
celebutantes are out in full force — along with every styled lock freshly
highlighted and each tiny, manicured digit a perfect glittering pink — sporting
their brand-new gold-and-magenta printed tanks.

And I’ll just come out and say it: I’m judging you sorority
lemmings. With your unnaturally dazzling smiles and your shoe-matches-barrette
coordination, you’re so uniform it makes me want to scream. This is why when my
little brother, a freshman at Cal State Northridge, called me a few days ago to
say he just rushed a frat, I was stunned. My perpetually-proud elder-sister
heart sank.

“Don’t worry,” he assured me. “This is like, a cool frat.”

A cool frat? What the fuck? Isn’t that like, a fun root
canal?

I wasn’t convinced. However, not wanting to crush his
wide-eyed first-month-of-college spirit, I gently asked what he meant. He
explained that the other guys seemed nice, and that he wanted to get involved
in something the way he’d joined marching band in high school. Then, just as I
was about to say something snarky regarding the difference between synchronized
marching and binge drinking, he added something that stopped me in my tracks.

“You know, like the way you’re all into the newspaper,” he
said.

Hmm, touché.

I guess when you put it that way, it really isn’t fair at
all for me to judge the hot-girl brigades. These fashion-centric crowds, though
shallow and highly decorated, are similar to any other group of friends.

And maybe I’m just taking out my nonconformist aggression on
an easy target.

While these type-A sorority and fraternity people express
themselves by being matchy-matchy with their 40 best friends, I prefer
something different. I rock the too-big-band-sweatshirt-and-dirty-Chuck-Taylors
look because, you know, I’m so original and anti-mainstream.

I read nonfiction books and newspapers, not gossip
magazines. I work two jobs and never go to the gym. If I could have chosen
anywhere for vacation last summer it would have been Winslow, Arz., not Cancun.
I think my dysfunctional family has given me depth and a good sense of humor,
which I use to scoff at girls who dream of a white picket fence and oven-baked
cookies. And I wouldn’t be caught dead listening to whiney-boys Good Charlotte
or James Blunt — it’s only Cheap Trick and Bob Dylan for me.

But that’s just a different kind of uniform.

My whole fight-the-man think-for-yourself approach — though
sincere — is really just another standardized way of flaunting my values. Just
like the way emo-indie types have their shaggy bangs, tight black jeans and
Panic! at the Disco. Or the way artsy types have their thrift-store cardigans,
Moleskine notebooks and foreign cigarettes.

In a way, these uber-trendy sorority people aren’t being
fake; they’re actually more honest. They’ve got spirit (yes they do!) and they
aren’t afraid to come out and say it, even if by doing so, they become an easy
target for assholes like me.

I’ve surrounded myself by people with the same beliefs and
interests as me, and in doing so I’ve convinced myself that we’re different —
and in some way better — than them.

But though the crowd I roll with may be quirkier and more
left-of-center, we’re still just as concerned with what’s happening on MTV,
even if it’s to fuel our mockery of conventional America. And what makes that
any better than those who embrace their consumerist nature, parading around in
Juicy Couture and Greek letters?

Maybe we indie/artsy/original types are more bogus than we’d
like to let on — after all, by deliberately setting our styles against the
pop-culture grain in an attempt to be avant-garde we’re really just giving
credit to the very thing we’re trying to subvert.