Chapter 14
“I hate those shirts. You know the ones. Fierce female. You go girl. Girls rule the world! God, it’s so frustrating.
It’s … it’s infantilizing, you know? Like, in what way do girls rule the world?
Be specific. Because we can’t even get our abusers to serve prison time.
You know? So, like, what are you talking about, exactly?
It’s this absolutely bizarre collective delusion where we buy shirts and maybe one white female CEO gets rich but more likely it’s a man.
And we can’t have equal representation in politics, we’re too emotional for that.
We get too excited about T-shirts. We get one good pop star but if she gets too rich then she was overhyped the whole time.
Like, it’s exhausting! Take off the shirt! Grow up!”
“I thought you were a feminist?” said Nina, for fun. There was nothing else to do with Jas except let her tire herself out. Sometimes it was more expedient to get her angrier faster, sometimes not. Either way, Nina was curling her hair, so she had nowhere else to be.
“I am a feminist, Nina, that’s why the anger is righteous.” Jas slammed a fist down on her desk, rattling the screen of her phone. “And you’re over there participating in the rituals like a fucking sheep. You’re not even listening to me.”
“Mm-hmm,” said Nina, partitioning another section of hair. “That sucks.”
“I feel like I need to get off social media for a bit,” said Jas.
“Yes,” Nina agreed.
“It’s stressing me out.”
“Yes.”
“Well, the world is stressing me out. I feel like we’re not meant to know this much, you know?
About sex trafficking and why things that seem good or at least different are actually problematic, and, like, sometimes I think about the fact that I’m safe and fed and healthy and somewhere out there a woman is probably being abused or attacked and the only solution anyone has to any of it is to donate the money I don’t have to an organization where the CEO is almost definitely overpaid—or to, I don’t know, vote.
Like—!” Jas threw her hands inconclusively in the air.
“Incremental change this, incremental change that! I get that any Democratic candidate is better than a Republican but, like, how much better, you know? How long do we have to settle for ‘equally warmongering but not actively a bigot’? Why are those the only choices? It’s exhausting.
I’m exhausted.” Jas slumped over at her desk, staring off into the middle distance while Nina wrapped a section of hair around the curling iron.
“I really think the infinite scroll is ruining humanity.”
“Maybe you should talk to someone,” Nina said.
“I’ve been going to the counseling center,” Jas confirmed with a sigh. “I sense I should probably take advantage of University medical services before I wind up working for a nonprofit that doesn’t offer health insurance.”
“You could … consider a different career path?” Nina posed as a revolutionary perspective.
“Well, you’re fundamentally a sellout, so I can see I’m barking up the wrong tree.” Even from the tiny phone screen, Jas looked morose.
“There’s no need to take it out on me,” said Nina. “That’s not very feminist of you.”
“Feminism is about allocating resources, Nina. You have the exact same resources as me. Maybe even more resources, since your nose is better.”
“So you agree that beauty is a resource?” That was an interesting idea to Nina, more so than whether Jas approved of The House’s homecoming T-shirts. (She didn’t.)
“Why are you saying that in a meme voice?” said Jas.
“Well, you say you can’t understand why I’d join a sorority, but being in the sorority is exactly what gives me more of the social capital you seem to think all women lack. Right?”
“No,” countered Jas stubbornly. “So what if a bunch of girls think you’re hot enough to party with them? That’s not power.”
“Isn’t it? I get access,” Nina pointed out.
“To the exclusive networking events where I meet future executives—the exact future CEOs who will profit off your exploitation as a soon-to-be underpaid woman of color.” She meant the exchange party she was getting ready for, which was a social event with a fraternity, where the entire fraternity collectively invited a whole sorority out on a date and they rented out an expensive venue and drank on the boys’ tabs.
Deeply gendered, with certain expectations implied.
Without question, some of the girls would hook up with some of the boys, and that was basically the desired outcome. The exchange of money for sex.
Nina obviously didn’t say that to herself in the same voice Jas did; being aware of something didn’t mean it was a problem. It just was what it was. Beauty was a resource. So was desire. So was the supply of premium booze.
“What are you planning to wear?” said Jas desperately, with a hint of depression. As if she hated herself for being curious but couldn’t help but ask, which was essentially proving Nina’s point—that fuckability, too, was a resource, and therefore an allocated power.
The answer was a glittery silver bra, a pair of wide-legged jeans, and cheap platform heels that Nina was borrowing from another girl in The House, who’d donated them to a free-for-all supply of previously worn costumes.
The exchange was seventies themed. Prior to the event, Nina had gone thrifting with a few other members of her pledge class, many of whom she was beginning to genuinely look forward to seeing.
She understood in some hazy, objective way that while the twelve of them—“Oh, so like Jesus,” had been Jas’s snorted comment about that—had technically been won over by the established members of The House, what they had agreed to in practice was actually friendship with each other.
As a pledge class, they did everything together—they saw each other multiple times a week, and it was understood that as a result, the experience of preparing for initiation and going through everything together first was a sort of binding ritual.
It was why Tessa and Fawn would always choose each other over Nina, which Nina was not taking personally—would not take personally. Because that would be irrational.
So instead she focused on Dalil, her pledge sister whom she’d liked right from the beginning, and who was honestly very dry and funny in addition to being the same size as Nina, albeit with slightly shorter legs.
“Why do you think we’re not allowed to get ready at the house?
” Dalil asked Nina when they met up to walk to the row, Dalil’s hair in wild, suggestive bedroom waves with glitter so thick on her eyelids it seemed an effort just to blink.
Nina had gone for more of a feathered thing, hair-wise, and a smoky eye that looked potentially too daytime. She was trying not to think about it.
“Probably the same reason we can’t go into the chapter room,” Nina said. A few places in The House were off-limits, belonging only to the initiated members. It felt fair to Nina to create a sense of exclusivity. (That, too, was a resource.)
“I like how everything toes the line of maybe normal, maybe sex cult,” Dalil joked. Nina laughed.
“What, you think they have naked pillow fights before every event? Very male-gaze of you.” Oops, she’d spent too long talking to Jas.
“I was thinking more like female pleasure-centric orgy. Much more sex positive,” Dalil said, so maybe she was excessively online, too.
Nina laughed again, the brief image of Tessa and Fawn applying each other’s eyeliner to a bow-chicka-wow-wow porn soundtrack filling her mind until she realized that she and Dalil were catching stray glances from passersby, given that it wasn’t yet dark out and they were both dressed like some pubescent teen’s idea of a hooker.
“Does it ever feel weird to you?” said Dalil, who had probably clocked the same thing. “The dinner recitation, the whole concept of ‘pledging,’ the secret room in the house reserved for creepy rituals…”
“They might be sexy rituals,” Nina reminded her.
Dalil laughed. The whole thing felt airy, light, comfortable.
Nina did not plan to ask if Dalil, too, felt a slightly sinister energy from time to time, a quiet insinuation of violence.
The constant presence of an indeterminate hunt that lived in The House’s walls like a host of silent ghosts.
It didn’t seem productive, first of all. Secondly it made her sound like a dork.
With Dalil, Nina was reminded of the high of making a female friend, which wasn’t unlike having a crush on a hot professor.
She wanted to get an A in this conversation.
She wanted to be pretty and mysterious to Dalil forever, despite falling harder for her platonically the more she psychologically undressed, revealing the comfort of her true self in layers.
Nina was almost disappointed there would be boys at the exchange—it added a layer of performance that she was tiring of.
Sex, a thing she liked and had sought to generally mediocre outcomes, now paled beside the pleasures of Monday night dinner with her friends.
“I guess it just feels a little silly sometimes—I don’t know. Sometimes my mom asks me what the fuck I’m doing and my answer is, like, I’m playing dress-up, Ma! Leave me alone,” joked Dalil.
“My sister doesn’t get it either,” Nina admitted. “But I don’t know, what is there to get? It’s fun. The little rituals are silly and weird but I don’t mind. I like being part of it.”
Dalil looked thoughtful. “Me too,” she said eventually, in a slightly different tone of voice.