Every year the Princeton Review releases the highly anticipated rankings of the Best 357 Colleges according to academics, student life, extracurricular activities, and administration. Overall rankings are released alongside other unconventional categories selected by the board in conjunction with student feedback.
It is no surprise that Boston College is among those top ranked institutions of higher education. It is also unsurprising the Princeton Review's rankings is that the BC campus is consistently ranked No. 1 for looking like a J. Crew catalog.
But is it?
Although the student body of BC has traditionally been known for their ubiquitous pastel colored polos (with the collar popped, of course), their pearls, and their clean cut Abercrombie-esque attire, I was surprised to find that not everyone believes that the BC population fits this cookie cutter mold.
The other day I found myself in a conversation with a male friend (who shall remain anonymous for his protection against angry BC females who invest quite some time into perfecting their hair and makeup hours before class) about the fashion sense of the undergraduate population.
His reply was that they had none, end of story. "Girls on campus roll out of bed and go to class in sweats with sheet marks on their cheeks."
I wondered if all guys at BC really think this way about the appearance of girls on campus. It was something worth further investigation.
After I picked my crushed ego up from off the ground, I talked with a group of seniors, who have seen it all over the past four years, for their worldly perspectives.
Will Imbriale, A&S '05, lived with two girls last year and testified that "girls dress for other girls more so than they do for guys. Guys aren't impressed by what brand of jeans a girl is wearing or what kind of bag she has. If a girl is well put together, then a guy will find that attractive."
Colin Kindgren, A&S '05, agreed with the idea that girls dress to impress their female cohorts rather than to catch the eye of that stud in the back of chemistry class. "The last thing that comes into a guys mind when they walk into a party is 'Look what that guy is wearing, can you believe that?', but for girls, the first thing they do is look at other girls and assess how they are dressed."
These points had never crossed my mind but the more I thought about it, the more it rang true. When I asked Michael Stratis, CSOM '05, if he thought girls walked around in sweatpants all the time, he answered that he loves "when girls wear sweatpants and no makeup. If a girl can look good in sweatpants and no makeup then that's the best thing a guy can hope for. It shows confidence and that she isn't uptight, and she doesn't constantly have to make herself up."
Feeling reassured that my lazy days could be considered acceptable by some, I still hadn't gotten to the core of this intangible truth.
Pete Lundberg, A&S '06, cleared this one up for me in one succinct sentence: "The girls here are all eye candy. I don't know what they wear but it looks good and I like it." Fair enough.
After mulling over these various opinions, I came to some conclusions of my own. Dressing up should be fun, not forced. What you wear is a projection of who you are to others and what makes you unique.
Instead of dressing to please other girls, attract a guy's eye, or conform to a university's stereotype, dress for yourself. If you feel more comfortable wearing sweats, then do so. While there will always be a naysayer or two out there, there will also be those that find sweats very sexy.
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