By Mia Bonifazi

Across the internet, videos surface of young girls adorned with mountains of Ulta products, Bubble Skincare, Sol de Janeiro perfume and Drunk Elephant creams, viral on TikTok and Instagram. Online, people lament the loss of childhood and the cruelty of the internet, turning young girls into demanding demons. Overdramatized, the reality of this ‘issue’ is rather much simpler, and it isn’t that the internet has corrupted these tweens. Instead, it is simply the new shape girlhood has taken, always a fan of a fab fad and layered with pressure, only now documented by an endless amount of ‘journalists’ prepped with an iPhone in hand and a lack of parents teaching kids about the permanence of what they post. Ulta products are Gen Alpha’s Urban Decay Naked Palettes and Justice Jo-Jo Siwa branded bows.

Girlhood is currently more important than ever. With rising publicity around cases like the Cornell 7 and the United States polarized about to what degree women should have autonomy over the bodies they live in, it’s vital that women understand the intrinsic connections they share just by being members of the same sex.

Yet, in a modern age of connection brought on by the internet, it has also served to highlight the differences between the perfect, controlled image of sorority girls and the less polished reality of non-sorority members. This divide in media styles at a time when public opinion is based on a group’s online image has also created a stereotypical image of sorority girlhood far from what most (sorority or not) experience, to the point where the phrase sorority girl brings a potent image to mind, leaving non-sorority members to feel immediately othered by a group they have yet to interact with. This is in part due to the hard to live up to hyper femineity of sorority life, leaving other women feeling that their expression of femineity is incorrect in some way. So, while childhood may have united young girls over common interests, college life has served to separate them by creating, through the internet and rumor, ideas of two kinds of women: Sorority girls and everyone else. Yet this difference is mostly imagined. In reality, sorority membership does not often translate to a difference in perspective on girlhood.

Kylie Rodelander, a freshman public health major and non-sorority member, described girlhood based on what it lacked: men. She defined girlhood as “uniquely feminine experiences that a man will never understand, no matter how hard he tries to envision it.”

Rodelander highlighted, in addition, the more tangible aspects of girlhood. She said “When I think of girlhood, I think about the magazines and doing your nails and even though that is very stereotypical … It is kind of true. For me personally, that stereotype of girlhood fits.”

Neither she nor her roommate, Sophie Vang, a freshman finance major, decided to join a sorority upon coming to the U of A. Similarly, they both said that a reason they decided not to join a sorority or rush was that it would result in a lack of free time to join other on-campus communities or continue with hobbies already strained by the workload of their college courses.

“I just didn’t think of my crowd,” said Vang. “And also I think there’s too much time that I have to spend away from other things I’d like to do … I have sorority friends and they are always out meeting with their big and they’re going to their events which seems fun but … I just like doing other stuff that I can choose.”

University is already a game of time management between studying, going to class and keeping a social life alive. As the common turn of phrase states, college students need sleep, a social life and good academics, but only ever manage to have two of those at a time. Greek life – known for its high hours of community commitment and constant sorority meetings – would put even more strain on the tight rope university women walk.

“Girlhood is also having your own unique identity within the group,” Vang said, noting a trait she and Rodelander worried was partially lost by joining a sorority.

Rather than being based on our similarities, girlhood is based on something mostly unchangeable about the things experienced by women. Rodelander described girlhood as partially about women cherishing the parts of themselves and their friends that men may overlook, which include the individual aspects of their personality perhaps brushed over, ignored or missed by the average guy. In a sorority, with so much of someone’s life dedicated to it, it’s hard to ignore the possibility of other aspects of a woman’s life being eaten up by her commitment, slowly pushing other parts of herself aside as she focuses less on her hobbies.

“The overarching identity of being in a sorority can kind of take away from your personal identity because you’re expected to fit into like a certain box,” Rodelander mentioned. The potency of ideas about what a sorority girl needs to be can overtake, at times, one’s reality.

Rodelander and Vang commented on how they thought it wasn’t their scene; their interests differed from those common in sororities, so they decided to skip out on joining. Greek life, the consensus seemed, was simply a larger club. And like any club, they didn’t join because they weren’t interested in its content, the same way a Computer Science major is less likely to join Phi Alpha Theta, the U of A founded national history honors society.

In contrast, Maddy Moran, a freshman majoring in animal science and biology and another non-sorority member, had a slightly different perspective.

“I feel like we all can find beauty in small things and … the friends you make really shape your girlhood,” Moran said. “You feed off of one another to kind of become who you are. And I would say those friendships are really meaningful,” adding that while she wants to avoid being cheesy, Moran truly does love being a woman.  She hadn’t joined because of the large time requirements.

Moran felt like she would miss out on time to explore some of the university’s over 400 RSOs, or registered student organizations. Instead of exploring campus and possible clubs on campus during her first couple of weeks, her life would have focused on rushing and getting introduced to her new sorority. While she felt it might have been a nice experience, she is content with her choice, partly because she still gets to see and experience sorority life through her roommate, Juliana Neesvig, an active sorority member.

“With Juliana being a sorority and me not being a sorority, it’s been really cool because I … see how our experiences going to college and making connections have differed. We’re both doing really well …we’re just in like two different places,” Moran said.

Juliana Neesvig, previously mentioned roommate, highlighted how joining a sorority has allowed her to embrace her girlhood, while still making the most of her college years. As Rodelander, Vang, and Moran mentioned briefly, she described girlhood as the feeling of being connected to each other on a larger scale; it’s something greater than you that exists everywhere, a birthright.

“[Its] this shared love of each other and looking out for each other and … maybe we haven’t talked, maybe we don’t necessarily like quote unquote like each other, but like we’re still there. And if anything goes wrong, … they’re still looking out for you whether you realize it or not,” Neesvig described. It’s also, she added, a shared experience, describing similar girlhood icons as Rodelander: magazines, nail polish and Barbie dolls. Neesvig felt that it made the world less isolating, noting the influence of social media in disconnecting us from each other.

Neesvig saw sorority life as another addition to her college life, rather than something that takes away her ability to be part of other things. She gets the same experiences many women attending U of A will, but hers are encompassed by this group of women connected through a legacy to uphold the unbreakable bond of sorority sisters.

“It’s a shared identity with history. [You] learn about the founders of the sorority you’re in [and] they founded [it] for a reason … And I think that’s just so cool because one day … this girl decided to make [my sorority], and now in 2026 … We’re still following the same values,” Neesvig explained with enthusiasm.

While she understands that some sorority girls, at least according to social media, may cut out non-sorority members, she highlighted how she felt it allowed her to connect with both sorority and non-sorority members. It gave her greater opportunity, rather than confined her, even if it does take up a good chunk of her time. In addition, she admitted that she felt that non-sorority members didn’t miss out as much on the experience of sorority life as the specifics.

“If you look at the day-to-day, [the] specific experience of getting ready in the house on a game day, technically girls who are not in a sorority are missing out on that, but it doesn’t mean they can’t get ready in a dorm together for a game day.” Neesvig explained, highlighting how deeply feminine connections like these can come in a variety of shapes.

At the end of the hour, while everyone had slightly different interpretations of what girlhood meant, they all agreed it was deeply important to them. While Neesvig’s experiences may include those of the Sorority house, she’s still participating in other aspects of non-sorority life, such as her honors college curriculum and Fellowship events, in the same way Rodelander, Vang, and Moran, while not in a sorority, are still experiencing sorority-like events, feelings, and connections.