Caitlin Flanagan has written for The Atlantic and New Yorker, and today for The Free Press, on the subject of why college girls go to drunken parties at college fraternity houses, a fraught behavior to say the least. The late Connie Francis had the answer all those decades ago: it is "where the boys are."
More specifically she notes.
Fraternity members tend to be many of the things college women don’t like: conservative, suburban, usually white, almost always straight.
And yet, year after year after year, young women of all political and ideological stripes flock to their parties, even though they know how dangerous those places are.
Decade after decade, they go to fraternity parties. What are they looking for? It’s the very force they claim to be “so over”: masculinity.
I have only one quibble with her analysis, and it is her omission of something Americans don't like to discuss - social class. Members of fraternities tend to be from more affluent, upper middle class families. Also, frat parties enable lower division women to meet somewhat older men.
The formal name for this motive is "hypergamy," defined as a "structural practice in which an individual (typically a woman) marries a spouse of higher social caste, socioeconomic class, or educational attainment."
Marrying a man several years older is another form of the same thing. It enables a young woman to assess whether his "life trajectory" is headed in a direction she finds agreeable.
I spent most of my adult life on college campuses, watching attractive, smart young people find both a life partner and a career, Plus doing so myself. It was good.
