University of Alabama’s Alpha Phi sorority recruitment video slammed

But “rush season” turned sour for the University of Alabama’s Alpha Phi sorority after its recruitment video — filled with white, blonde, bikini-clad college students — was labelled “worse for women than Donald Trump” in a widely-shared opinion piece.
The video was viewed more than 500,000 times after being uploaded to YouTube last week, but was removed on Sunday after writer A.L. Bailey slammed the clip as “objectifying”, “forced” and “unempowering”.
Bailey’s piece on news site Alabama.com, titled ‘Bama sorority video worse for women than Donald Trump’, has been shared more than 18,000 times on Facebook. Alpha Phi has since deleted their Twitter and Tumblr accounts and made their Facebook and Instagram pages private.
Bailey describes the video as a “parade of white girls and blonde hair dye, coordinated clothing, bikinis and daisy dukes, glitter and kisses, bouncing bodies, euphoric hand-holding and hugging, gratuitous booty shots, and matching aviator sunglasses.
“It’s all so racially and aesthetically homogeneous and forced, so hyper-feminine, so reductive and objectifying, so Stepford Wives: College Edition. It’s all so ... unempowering.
“These young women, with all their flouncing and hair-flipping, are making it so terribly difficult for anyone to take them seriously, now or in the future,” she writes.
Sororities often have a significant focus on service and charity work, writes Bailey, but the video lacks any mention of these core ideals.
 “It lacks substance but boasts bodies. It’s the kind of thing that subconsciously educates young men on how to perceive, and subsequently treat, women in their lives. It’s the kind of thing I never want my young daughters to see or emulate.
“To the incoming PNMs [potential new members], this video has a clear sales pitch: beauty, sexuality, and a specific look above all,” she continues. “They’re selling themselves on looks alone, as a commodity. Sadly, commodities don’t tend to command much respect.”
Bailey questions whether the 72 women who live in the Alpha Phi house thought about the message they were selling in the video.
“Did they think they were selling the kind of sisterhood that looks out for all women? Or were they focused on having the hottest video in the popularity contest that is sorority recruitment?” she asks.
“Were they satisfied with being perceived as selling a gorgeous party-girl, cookie-cutter commodity? Were they satisfied with being the commodity?
“Most importantly, did they realise they are a group of young women blessed with potential who are selling themselves, and each other, short?”
According to the university, over 2442 women registered for formal recruitment this year and 93 per cent of those — 2,261 women — received ‘bids’ and were selected to join a sorority.
The number of women who registered increased year-on-year by 7 per cent, and the total number of bids increased by 10 per cent.
The university responded directly to criticism of its lack of racial diversity in a statement: “Of the total number of women who accepted bids, 214 were minorities, a number that increased by nearly 13 per cent.”