"You show up to a bar or a party at an apartment. It tends to be, everyone you've ever met there [laughs] in one spot.  You'll find a guy you think is cute, and you like, kind of already know who he is and he kind of already know who you are and you'll just spend the whole night talking and flirting, and he'll probably buy you a drink and like, who knows where your friends will be because, he's kind of become your focus and then he says ‘Do you want to get out of here?’" 

Like clockwork, there are no surprises in this order of operations of hooking up with someone new for Chiara. Since I met her during Welcome Week of freshman year about three and a half years ago, she has opened up my life to the fascinating and complicated world of Greek life on campus. She has explained a lot to me about “chapter meetings”, “standards” and “big/little reveal”  but there is a lot I still do not know or understand about Greek life, specifically how hookup culture presents itself within that context at NYU. I expected to hear about the stereotypical jerk frat boy (which did come up), but I was not prepared to hear about just how much Greek life can make a school as large as NYU feel like a highschool.

I asked Chiara about the "do you want to get out of here?" question, and whether she ever asks. She says she never initiates because she needs to seem “cool”. Emotionless. Like she wouldn't care either way. This surprised me—wouldn't you need to express some kind of interest in order for them to know you are into them? She said, "You obviously want to be like, down to f*ck or whatever. But you don't want to seem like you're into him. Just seem like ‘I'm cool with it, whatever happens, happens. You're into me? Okay, sure, I guess.’” 

But once you’ve hooked up with someone once, this starts to alter and it becomes a back-and-forth. She told me about her most recent hookup, a frat boy who is a roommate of one of her friends (in the same fraternity). He initiated them leaving the bar together the first time, so she felt it was her “turn” to invite him out somewhere the next weekend. Communication that doesn’t revolve around the next social outing seems to be risky for Chiara. She says she would never text a guy during the week just to say “hi”, ask how his day is going, etc. This goes back to the idea of being seen as “cool” and not too eager. This would also bring their hookup-only relationship into the territory of something more, which often makes boys drop it altogether, Chiara says. Being emotionless is key, after all, it’s just sex. It’s a fine line, Chiara explains, between seeming emotionless and cool and being boring and uninterested.

I asked Chiara about what she perceives hookup culture to look like within the context of Greek life at NYU, and I expected to hear about the stereotypes of frat boys I have seen in movies and early 2000s TV shows; the jerk frat boys who treat girls terribly, sleeping with more than one girl every weekend, etc. Chiara says this is definitely common, but not as bad at NYU as it is at larger schools where Greek life is more popular (just 12% of the NYU population is involved in Greek life). At those schools, fraternities control much of the entire college population’s social scene, whether you are involved in Greek life or not. 

How can a school with 24,000 students feel like highschool? “Everyone has hooked up with everyone,” Chiara says, “ You can look at a girl and connect yourself through hooking up with the same guys.” Even if she has never spoken one-on-one with a boy in a frat, she says she knows who he is, can list the girls she knows that he has hooked up with, and he could most likely do the same for her. I asked her if this reduces the “pool” of eligible boys to hook up with, being that it is likely one of her friends has also hooked up with him. “Most of the time you just can’t worry about it,” she says, “Basically every guy you hook up with—you know a girl he has hooked up with.” I assumed this likely causes rifts between girls, especially when feelings are involved. Chiara tells me there is no way around it. Girls might get upset, but they know it’s the drill, and mostly unavoidable. Also, making a big deal out of a girl hooking up with a boy you hooked up with would show everyone that you “caught feelings” which is seen as taboo. Emotions cannot take over, because that would likely “scare” the boy and keep him from wanting to hook up again. 

Although boys do not seem to care about their friends hooking up with the same girl as them, Chiara says, “You're going to get sh*t for that behind closed doors. Like ‘that girl f*cks everyone in this frat’” (as her male friend has told her). The results of Paula England’s 2008 study support this aspect of hookup culture; 34% of men surveyed said they respected someone less because they hooked up with them. Women are aware of this, 55% of women asked said they had the feeling someone respected them less because they hooked up with them. One way Chiara sees this disrespect is the way boys talk about their girls they slept with, as just numbers that rake up their body count, or the number of  girls they have slept with. In her interview with a man in his twenties in New York City, Nancy Jo Sales found an example of the kind of behavior Chiara described. He told Sales, 

“You could talk to two or three girls at a bar and pick the best one, or you can swipe a couple hundred people a day—the sample size is so much larger. It’s setting up two or three Tinder dates a week and, chances are, sleeping with all of them, so you could rack up 100 girls you’ve slept with in a year.”

This is not to say that girls aren’t interested in a no-strings-attached hookup, but this way of talking about past and future hookups is more common with boys, Chiara says, “You don’t hear girls talking that way.” Even though sometimes it is feeling-driven and she hides it, sometimes a hookup is just a hookup for her. It reminds me of a similar sentiment expressed by a college student that Natalie Kiteroeff interviewed, who said, “hookups are often much more about two people giving each other the sense of intimacy, however brief, they need to get through the week.” Chiara says she is not usually looking for something more than sex when hooking up with someone. It is often just about the physical connection with another person.

Both sororities and fraternities have events a couple times a year called “Date Party.” Members are encouraged to bring a date to this party that is held at a club or bar that the sorority or fraternity rented out. Chiara has not brought a date to these events (she usually brings me), as bringing a friend instead is not looked down upon. She says, “Even if you do bring a guy to a Date Party, eight times out of ten he's not your boyfriend. You're probably not even exclusive with him. He's just the most recent guy you've had sex with. But also, he's willing to hang out with you in a setting that's not just hooking up. But he knows that you will [hook up] right after the event is done.” Chiara explained that for her friends who go to other universities with a larger Greek life population, bringing a boy (most likely in a fraternity) to a Date Party is almost mandatory, and she is happy to be at a school where that is not the case. 

So where does this leave Chiara with relationships? “Yeah [laugh], I mean I do want one. But I’ve come to the realization that it's simply not going to happen in college.” She says the culture [in Greek life] doesn’t allow it, but also the guys she goes for “aren’t in that place, mentally.” She describes her type as “Finance Frat Boy A**hole.” The Finance Frat Boy A**hole, Chiara says, is attractive, and he knows it. He is in some kind of finance field, and “you need a certain kind of arrogant confidence to think you will succeed in that field,” she says. They are interested in hookups only, and rarely more than once or twice with the same girl. She knows very few girls in Greek life who are in long-term relationships. 

Chiara told me that the closest thing she could get to a relationship in college is consistently hooking up with the same person. When I asked what a guy would need to do to make her want to see him consistently, she laughed and said “not much.” She would like them to be attractive, the sex is not “awful,” and she enjoys talking to them (to an extent). It does not surprise me that Chiara is looking for something more regular, England’s study found that women reach orgasm more often when they are in a relationship. I read Chiara this line from England’s paper that quotes a male student who says “I mean like if you’re just like hooking up with someone, I guess it’s more of a selfish thing…”. Chiara laughed and said, “Sounds about right.”

When it comes to a real, exclusive relationship, she really just wants a companion. For her, a boyfriend is someone who is your best friend, but one step further. “Someone you can hang out with and say all your weird sh*t to and also sleep with.” Chiara prioritizes friendship and emotional closeness, or intimacy, but it is clear that passion is a driving factor in her ideal relationship. She hopes to get married one day.

What stood out to me most when reflecting on our conversation was how insulated this world seems to be. Chiara is one of two friends of mine involved in Greek life at NYU, and most of my other friends are not close with anyone in a sorority or fraternity. It perpetuates the highschool feeling that Chiara describes; 90% of her social outings are with only those who bear Greek letters. It creates an environment where everyone knows each other (in more ways than one), which, as she told me, can result in conflict. It makes girls repress their feelings in fear of scaring the boy away. And for Chiara, this led her to give up on finding a boyfriend in college altogether. She tells me it is much worse for her friends at larger schools where the hierarchy within the different sororities and fraternities makes situations even more complicated. In the end, I was not surprised to hear that most of the frat boys Chiara has interacted with live up to their stereotype of being misogynistic and arrogant. But what I did not expect is the dynamics between men and women after the hook up. The back and forth, the lack of emotion, the pressure to always seem “cool.”

Yes, Greek life offers fun activities and opportunities, but it also perpetuates a rigid division between men and women that leads to this toxic culture. When a frat boy disrespects a girl for hooking up with him, the double standard is clear. I hope something changes soon, because being the “cool” girl sounds exhausting. 

References

England et al., “Hooking Up and Forming Romantic Relationships on Today’s College Campuses,” in The Gendered Society Reader, ed. Kimmel & Aronson, 2008.

Kitroeff, Natalie, “In Hookups, Inequality Still Reigns” NYT Nov 11, 2013

Sales, Nancy Jo. “Tinder and the Dawn of the Dating Apocalypse”, Vanity Fair, September 2015

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