Everyone knew that girl in high school. The one who had an older brother with a fake. She inevitably showed up housed to the 8th grade dance after drinking too much luke-warm green apple Smirnoff out of a Nalgene bottle. She was also the same girl who dated the senior dealer and read Cosmo long before anyone else had the vocabulary or body to understand the actual articles. That girl isn’t the one that surprises everyone after freshman year. It’s the girl who had a 12 a.m. curfew and was captain of the volleyball team that comes home different. The goodie two-shoes of the class that suddenly knows how to pole dance at clubs after one too many vodka tonics is the shocking one. Not three months before she was the teachers pet, and now she is sitting in her 9 a.m. trying to decipher between the real professor and the one brought upon her by the spins from the pulls of Jack still haunting her. Why does college force the All-American Girl to morph into a full blown reality TV show contestant?
For many freshmen, this is the first time out on their own and away from their parents’ iron fist. So now there is no curfew and nobody to fake sobriety for after stumbling in the front door. This is probably where it starts for most. The kids that didn’t have to fake it during their teen years aren’t fascinated by the thrill of “getting away” with a night well spent on Greenville. The feeling of victory is inevitable for students who have spent their lives hiding their mediocre bad decisions generally made by the good girl. In high school, many nights were spent hoping your mom wouldn’t call your friends house to realize that you actually weren’t spending the night there. Now, you can hit ignore when “Home” pops up on your cellphone. You are almost as cool as the girl who’s parents gave up on their youngest of four and let her do whatever she wanted without much interrogation. But would this freedom push the squeaky clean prom queens to doing body shots? Doesn’t seem right.
New boys? Are the boys pushing girls to mix uppers and downers and run around frat houses in outfits Paris Hilton would approve of? Probably not. That pretty much leaves other girls? And although girls can be catty and attempt to play mind games to hurt others, that doesn’t seem likely. It must come from within. There is no way debutantes can rebel against their parents that much in a way they will never actually see. And boys will barely hookup with let alone date the girl falling off the party bus. Girls don’t want to have to hold the hair of the puking girl who blacked out before the party bus.
So what is the reason behind an almost universal fall from grace? Why do some girls feel the need to prove their independence by what there are willing to inflict on their bodies? The answer can only come from within, the need to be special or in the spot light doesn’t need to come before some of those morals your parents nailed into your heads. Pick some morals, any morals and stick to those. No need to try it all in the first month, don’t lose that “Most likely to succeed” yearbook title.
