\n<\/p>\n
Ole Miss<\/span>, as is perhaps well known, is in the heartland of beautiful girls. We know this to be true if we are followers\u2014however casually\u2014of something called RushTok, and we know it to be enduringly true because the above sentence was written by Terry Southern in 1963, in \u201cTwirling at Ole Miss,\u201d which was published in Esquire<\/em> and then included in Tom Wolfe\u2019s essential 1973 anthology, The New Journalism<\/em>. Let it be therefore established that among the various subcultures of the Deep South, even one as cotton-candy thick and Jolly Rancher wide as sorority rush is worthy of journalistic attention.<\/p>\n RushTok, which took off four years ago and chronicles the adventures of young women rushing the powerhouse sororities of southern universities, is now in its late-baroque phase. (Joan Didion was repeatedly told she arrived \u201cjust in time\u201d when she went to study the San Francisco\u2013hippie movement in 1967. \u201cThe whole fad\u2019s dead now, fini<\/em>, kaput<\/em>.\u201d) Those of us who got in at the beginning were observing something being freshly transformed into content, still trailing mists of its previous, unobserved state. This was before sorority rush was turned into reality television and podcasts and expos\u00e9s and brand endorsements, and before the introduction of new characters, such as rush mothers and rush coaches, and before rush became a launch pad not only to a successful social life but also to a chance at TikTok stardom and the busy, profitable life of an influencer.<\/p>\n Some of the most popular content on RushTok is the OOTD (\u201coutfit of the day,\u201d a term of the young) worn by the PNM (\u201cpotential new member,\u201d a term of the old, emanating, one assumes, from the managerial class up there at the organizations\u2019 national offices and at the almighty National Panhellenic Conference). The commitment to a dominant style by these southern PNMs is as unvarying as it was in the days of the imperial espadrille and the gold-circle pin, but in its substance, that style has changed completely. Only the mildest trace of southern prep remains, the rest replaced by its opposite: pure femininity. The new look is Hilton Head brunch, country-club Tennessee. It\u2019s sexy, but in a sense it\u2019s more of a mood than a look: a little bit pampered, a little bit willful.<\/p>\n The outfits are composed of bright little wisps of clothes worn with sparkly rain showers of delicate jewelry: bangle bracelets clacking together, Kendra Scott jewelry\u2014delicate must-haves with colored stones functioning more as amulet than as embellishment. The look is headbands, blowouts, lots of extensions, and enough bleachy highlights for an advancing army of blondes. We are face-to-face with \u201cconventional beauty standards,\u201d but we are alone with our phones and can freely think, Conventional though they may be, these girls look pretty good<\/em>.<\/p>\n On an OOTD video, the PNM\u2014alone or taking turns in groups of three or four\u2014stands in front of the camera, tapping a finger against every single thing she\u2019s wearing and reporting where she bought it. She likes lacy, girly dresses from LoveShackFancy, which seems to have a symbiotic relationship with RushTok: Over the past four years, it has become a major brand. She loves a venerable Alabama vendor called the Pants Store (\u201cThey started buying pants from me and they just called it \u2018The Pants Store,\u2019\u201d its founder said), which now includes a Rush Shop selling whimsy in the form of pastel rompers and minidresses with polka dots and ruffles. She likes canvas sneakers, flip-flops, loose shorts with tight belts, and blinding-white T-shirts. She likes hot orange and royal blue and lilac: madras deconstructed, an unwitting evocation of decades past.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a strong preference for cheap fashion from mass retailers, which are named without a trace of shame or of the bargain hunter\u2019s savvy. My shoes and earrings are Amazon<\/em>, she\u2019ll say. My belt is Zara; my skirt is Shein<\/em>. (Shein\u2019s extremely short, beaded miniskirts owned rush on a national level this year, and you don\u2019t want to be one second over the age of 22 if you try to wear one.)<\/p>\n If fast fashion provides the undercoat, the paint itself has many expensive touches. The girls love David Yurman bracelets in the famous cable style, which actually is preppy and starts at $275. (In fact, that bracelet is an economic indicator of whether you should be rushing at all: At Alabama, the average new-member fee is almost $5,000.) Golden Goose sneakers are still, somewhat witlessly, very popular. (Do they not know that the Ageist<\/em>, a magazine dedicated to the interests of \u201cany generation above the age of 40,\u201d ran an article three years ago reporting that \u201cGolden Goose Sneakers Have Hit Our People\u201d?) Most of those sneakers start at about $500 and go up steeply.<\/p>\n But she\u2019ll very often go from the highs of David Yurman to the airless heavens of Chanel, Tiffany, Dior, Gucci. \u201cMy necklace is Van Cleef,\u201d one woman says, tapping what looks to be an Alhambra necklace from Van Cleef & Arpels, which is the kind of thing a rich man gives to his wife when she turns 40 or catches him having an affair\u2014not to his 18-year-old daughter who\u2019s going to run around a college campus with it.<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t Dubai; it\u2019s Tuscaloosa.<\/p>\n Destinee Wilson runs a TikTok account that totals up the price of OOTDs, pausing the videos every time the PNM mentions an item to report its retail price:<\/p>\n \u201cMy dress is from Free People.\u201d (Wilson: \u201c$128.\u201d) \u201cMy shoes are New Balance.\u201d (\u201c$90.\u201d) \u201cMy watch is Omega.\u201d (\u201c$23,900.\u201d) \u201cMy bracelet is David Yurman.\u201d (\u201c$495.\u201d) \u201cMy necklace is from Tiffany.\u201d (\u201c$1,025.\u201d) \u201cThese bracelets are Enewton.\u201d (\u201c$206.<\/em>\u201d) \u201cThis is David Yurman.\u201d (\u201c$250.\u201d) \u201cAnd my cute little rush bag is from Case-Mate.\u201d (\u201c$100.\u201d)<\/p>\n The grand total for the look: $26,194.<\/p>\n Wilson is assiduously neutral on the question of whether these things are authentic or dupes. But why would the girls be so forthcoming about Amazon and Shein only to lie about Van Cleef & Arpels?<\/p>\n Wilson\u2019s account has received many ugly messages from people upset about its existence. That she is Black and the PNMs are almost entirely white lends some tension to her videos. Last year she made a defiant post: \u201cI will no longer be taking down any price breakdowns,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m trying to destigmatize talking about money, talking about prices. Things cost money, you guys.\u201d In August, People<\/em> reported that she earns up to $8,000 a month from her social media and her storefront on Amazon, where she offers low-price alternatives to some of the items featured in the videos.<\/p>\n Her account feels like a revolution; it\u2019s definitely the best thing on RushTok. That she\u2019s also the assistant director of a high-school marching band in North Texas, with an Amazon wish list of things she would like for her students\u2014glue sticks; hair spray; 21 large, white hair bows\u2014makes its own quiet statement.<\/p>\n In the category of \u201caffordable luxury\u201d that PNMs want, one item stands tall: the Case-Mate jelly totes many of these girls use to carry everything they might need for a day\u2014and night\u2014of rushing. (The oil-blotting papers! The extra shoes! The portable fan, portable charger, Listerine strips, mini perfume, touch-up lip color and blush, body spray, deodorant, water bottle, auxiliary battery packs for the iPhone. Don\u2019t forget the Band-Aids and\u2014God forbid!\u2014the tampons.) These translucent carryalls (about $100) come in a range of colors, with coordinating grosgrain ribbons\u2014the widest, most luxurious grosgrain ribbons you\u2019ve ever seen in your life\u2014for tying the bag closed with a big, loopy bow. The first time I saw one, I thought I would faint; it was like seeing heaven.<\/p>\n Rush moms<\/span> are apparently fried with anxiety, and I don\u2019t blame them. My life has been rich and uncomplicated because I have only sons, but if I did have a daughter and her very first college hurdle was going to be\u2014let\u2019s cut the shit\u2014a beauty contest, I\u2019d be out of my mind too.<\/p>\n Given how freaked out these families are about rush, I wondered how they stood up to the knives-out stress of college admission itself. But then I discovered that many of these schools aren\u2019t very hard to get into. The University of Alabama admits about 75 percent of its applicants. All you have to do is fill out an application and send in $40 and your transcript. Test scores are optional. No essay, no recommendations, no emergency calls to the marriage counselor.<\/p>\n In contrast, the sororities have developed a parallel, dream-time system of admission. You cannot believe how many things you have to submit to the Alabama Panhellenic Association to rush. I will say only that it includes $375, something called a \u201csocial resum\u00e9,\u201d and a digital photograph\u2014\u201cpreferably a headshot (no selfies).\u201d<\/p>\n RushTok has hours of advice on how to conduct yourself, usually posted by young alumni of the system, one of whom explains: \u201cYou want your recruiter\u2019s first thought to be, \u2018Oh my gosh, this girl is so sweet.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n One video says: Don\u2019t get too hung up on your wardrobe; it\u2019s really not that important. What does matter? Accessories. \u201cIf you have a cool hair clip or piece of jewelry that someone can compliment you on and be like, \u2018I love your necklace, that\u2019s so pretty. Where did you get it?\u2019 and you can turn that into an interesting story.\u201d (I got it off Amazon, and\u2014funny story\u2014I was watching <\/em>The Yogurt Shop Murders at the same time<\/em>.)<\/p>\n The PNM must present herself as an innocent, or at least willing to approximate innocence, in part by avoiding strapless dresses and in part by never mentioning the four horsemen of recruitment apocalypse, the B\u2019s: boys<\/em>, booze<\/em>, bucks<\/em>, and beliefs<\/em>.<\/p>\n Politics, sex, religion, and money are what\u2014we are often told\u2014one was never supposed to discuss in polite society during some more restrained era of American life, so these girls will be set if they get invited to a Charleston supper club in 1957. It raises a question: What kind of future (or past) are these young women preparing themselves to enter?<\/p>\n Tradwives<\/em>, I hear you yelp in horror. They\u2019re all going to be tradwives! <\/em><\/p>\n It\u2019s true that these sorority girls are more likely to marry and less likely to divorce than the average American woman, but probably no more or less so than the young women who rushed \u201ctent city\u201d at Columbia. It\u2019s the college degree that is most predictive of these behaviors.<\/p>\n Educated and ambitious young conservative and MAGA women, such as many of those who pledge southern sororities, have every reason to consider a big professional life, a professional-class husband, and a nanny as being in their future. Some of the biggest jobs in the Trump administration are held by women, including: White House chief of staff; U.S. attorney general; director of national intelligence; secretaries of homeland security, education, labor, and agriculture; and the administrator of the Small Business Association. Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, went back to work four days after giving birth and has said, \u201cI would reject that you can\u2019t be a good mom and be good at your job.\u201d<\/p>\n For a Wall Street Journal<\/em> article called \u201cThe Conservative Women Who Are \u2018Having It All,\u2019\u201d Pamela Paul interviewed more than a dozen young conservative women, all of whom said that the tradwife lifestyle was never a choice they seriously considered for themselves; Paul writes that \u201cthey always knew they wanted children and that they also wanted a meaningful career.\u201d<\/p>\n One of the women she interviewed is Katie Britt, the youngest-ever Republican woman elected to the Senate. Britt attended the University of Alabama, where she was president of her sorority and of the student body.<\/p>\n As cowed as the Bambi-like PNMs may appear in their original videos, membership itself seems to make showgirls of them all. Have you seen the huge production numbers these places make as recruitment tools? To a pumping beat, an entire sorority appears in front of the house. The front line performs the kind of explosive, acrobatic moves we first learned about in Cheer<\/em>, Season 1, while the others commence something like a Las Vegas revue from the 1980s. They look strong, sexual, unafraid of underage drinking or boys. They will not be driven out of public life easily\u2014not after learning all those dance numbers, gathering all that bravado, and cultivating the kind of personal style that clearly opens doors these days.<\/p>\n The girl who more or less created RushTok and became its breakout star is Kylan Darnell. She entered rush as a freshman who had pageant experience and brought a lightly professionalized manner to her OOTD, in which she looked very young and very pretty. She eventually consolidated her extremely positive approach to life in the mantra \u201cI hope you\u2019re having a great day, not just a good day.\u201d<\/p>\n Now she is a senior, that fleeting, fragile state in which college seems at once too small for you and more precious than rubies. She recently posted a video while walking across campus in a halter top. \u201cY\u2019all, my life is so weird,\u201d she said. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t feel real. Because how do you go from being at probably the best nightclub in Vegas, sitting at the most expensive table, getting everything for free just because of the way that you and your friends look, and dancing with Heidi Klum\u2019s daughter and Marshmello\u201d\u2014the DJ, not the confectionery\u2014\u201call at the same time that night to me having an eight-page essay due tonight?\u201d<\/p>\n There was a time when this kind of exploit would horrify parents, making them fear that their daughter had become cheap, ruined. But today? Secretary of energy.<\/p>\n We have a sense<\/span>, sometimes, that America has become so homogenized through consumer culture and generalized depravity that we\u2019ve lost any sense of regionalism, of ways of speaking and doing things that are particular to only one part of the country. But rush in the SEC schools is proof that certain old southern patterns endure.<\/p>\n The system reinforces many long-standing southern ideals: the importance of social connections over academic excellence; the notion that strong relationships flourish in closed societies; the emphasis on regional belonging over national competition; and above all the cloistering of young white women.<\/p>\n We can hardly leave this subject without noticing that the sororities of RushTok are the historically white ones, although, when it comes to several of these schools, they might also be called the currently white ones. It\u2019s very hard to find a nonwhite girl in those production numbers and OOTDs.<\/p>\n You would think that the University of Alabama, in particular, would have some anxieties about this fact, considering that just more than 60 years ago it was where George Wallace made his most famous stand against integration, blocking the doors of an administration building to prevent two Black students from registering for classes and budging from his spot only when forced to by federalized National Guard troops.<\/p>\n In 2013, according to the university\u2019s student newspaper, a very qualified young Black woman rushed these sororities at Alabama and didn\u2019t get a single bid. A former director of Greek life told Time <\/em>magazine that it wasn\u2019t the current sorority students who had kept her out; rather, it was pressure from alumni: \u201cThere\u2019s definitely some fear, whether real or imagined, that there would be some repercussions if a sorority took an African-American member.\u201d<\/p>\n These sororities, like the historically white fraternities, stand on their members\u2019 right to freedom of association, which allows them to socialize with whomever they want. (The segregationists\u2019 rationale: freedom of association.) But after the story broke in 2013, the university ordered sororities to reopen their bidding, and offers were extended to several Black women. The university did not respond to a request to comment, but as of a few years ago, of the 7,481 women in the Alabama Panhellenic Association, just 56 were Black.<\/p>\n But enough of all that! We are having fun. We are looking at pretty girls dressed up in LoveShackFancy dresses. This is America in 2025, not 1963. Lighten up, reader!<\/p>\n The conclusion of Alabama rush is an event in which all of the PNMs open their bids at the same time and then run to their new chapter house. These buildings are giant wedding cakes, and they are fortresses, and many of them have crystal chandeliers and wide, sweeping staircases big enough for a hundred Scarlett O\u2019Haras to make a thousand dramatic entrances.<\/p>\n Let us be among them, thundering across campus in our Golden Goose sneakers, tears of excitement and relief in our eyes. By midnight we have to come up with the money, but our parents are good for it. The sisters are ready for us, they\u2019re clapping us inside, and finally\u2014finally\u2014we can set down our heavy Case-Mate bags in the massive, marble foyer because now it is over, and now we can belong.<\/p>\n