I Would Not Be a Girl Again

ANONYMOUS

COME back,’ lilts the circular in colored ink, ‘come back and pretend the last ten — fifteen — twenty years have never been . . .’ And to show what fun we shall have, there is the class animal making a little face at us through the class numerals.

Early every year these missives from our class secretary begin to bob up in our mail. At first they are cheery and whimsical, then pleading, then they seek sternly to shame us. Their avowed and constant purpose is to raise money and to get us all back in record numbers for reunion, two ends which seem as one. If it is one of our class’s regular reunion years, — say our first, third, fifth, tenth, or so on, — a questionnaire is enclosed asking us what we want to do, whom we still like, and how many children we have. We are rallied by little scares — that some other class may be back in greater numbers, or donate more toward the beautiful new building the alumnæ are giving the college for themselves, or win the prize for the most effective and at the same time the most economical costumes. . . . Unthinkable that we should let another class win anything.

At the same time we get. more austere notices from the Alumnæ Association, enclosing the programme of what will happen the end of June anyway, no questionnaire about it, but including the alumnæ parade on the list of important events and also asking for money.

By April it is practically settled who is to room with whom and where we sit at class supper. It is all so emotionally keyed that it would be dreadful to find oneself away from one’s most intimate friends for such a meal as the caterers may provide in the basement of one of the town churches. The president will come to speak a word to us there, telling us that we look just as we did years ago, and disappearing with a little wave that leaves us with lumps in our throats. He is a scholar who has made the college twice the place it was when he found it, but the alumnæ pay the piper and must be handled tactfully.

Our secretary welcomes good ideas for organizing everything so thoroughly that there will be never one uncharted moment. Should we like to have a member of the faculty tell us what is happening in the world to-day, or an undergraduate tell us what is happening in the college to-day, or one of our really distinguished members tell us about herself, presumably to-day? Please check. And which of us will compete for the hundred-dollar prize offered by one of the older classes for the best song suitable for singing in the open air by unaccompanied female voices — praising Alma Mater, of course? And will we donate something toward the fund for those who cannot come back on this sentimental occasion unless the class pays their way? And then think of who needs the help. And please sign up for discussion groups on gardening, child raising, careers for married women, and how to fill time. AND put your name down for committees — witty sign committee, stunt committee, costume . . .

What shall we wear for costumes? Shall we go as cigarettes — are our figures equal to that? Or have we got to the stage where it is more comfortable and becoming to be gypsies? But why consider comfort — even that of the bystanders? We will go as grasshoppers.

Now it is not for the alumnæ of our great women’s colleges to question the stimuli for money raising, or even to reason why we are expected to pay for the rest of our lives for an education which cost the college, as the circulars always point out, so much more than our parents paid. But what will the money we give be spent on? Professors’ salaries, so that the men cannot buy the jewels straight out of our newly set crown? To raise the scholastic level of the college, so that there one can be sure of getting as good an education as can be found anywhere? Oh dear, no. We alumnæ don’t really believe in education anyway, you know — except in so far as it keeps up with that offered to men. All we ask is that the girls be Christian gentlewomen, able to cope with problems which will arise in their lives as homemakers, mothers, business women — good mixers, organizers, confident on their feet in public, knowing where to look up a fact if they need to, and conditioned, by short courses in drama, art, hygiene, music, the novel, and psychology, to hurdle all obstacles, at least in conversation.

Of course we have some alumnæ who do not think pure learning is folly, however happy we are now, and they rise in their wrath and lash us into giving a ‘chair’ or making appropriations for salaries; but most of us like to spend our money in a womanly way — on something we can see, like ourselves, or new dormitories with perfect plumbing and interior decoration. It costs money, lots of money, to organize alumnæ. If you question why we should be organized — to get money, of course. Whether this, like the church food fairs where everyone makes a cake and then buys someone else’s, really makes more money in the end than spontaneous giving, no one seems to know.

And anyone interested in why our women’s colleges are as they are has only to look at American men’s colleges. We cannot bear to have men have anything we cannot have, not even higher education wholesale. We can’t even be so original as to have a great women’s college that is just a great women’s college bent on educating women fit to be educated. We must have it the way the men have it — education spread thin enough to go around. We don’t even dispense with the foolish and provincial trappings of the men’s colleges. We sing songs copied from Yale that Yale copied from King’s College, Cambridge.

At college American women learn, by experience, how to run things, including each other. Executive ability is rated high as one of the saner manifestations of genius. This explains the interlacing and overlaying of women’s clubs throughout the country, our welter of organizations. College clubs, garden clubs, political clubs, clubs for every profession (including parenthood), reading clubs, just clubs — all presided over flawlessly by gayly confident women versed in the last flicker of parliamentary procedure. American college women are conditioned to listen to speeches, to receive information from a platform. Committees are home pastures. There is often no time left for reading, even the newspaper. Most of us have never learned how to read a newspaper, anyway.

But if one belongs to enough organizations one need never think for oneself. With one’s knitting, or the seventh needlepoint chair seat, one can listen to the lecture on current events, weekly — so informing. And there are plenty of other lecturers to tell us what to read, or to see, or where to go, and how to get the most out of life or love. At college, although we may not have learned to think for ourselves, most of us acquired a conscience about the printed word. We know it is more laudable to spend an afternoon with a good book than to waste it playing bridge. So we subscribe to several digests and a club that chooses a book a month for us — and settle down to bridge with clear consciences. We are still hungry for learning. We ask the professors for reading lists. Teacher, what shall I do now?

If you think that we have any ideas beyond imitating men, come to see us at reunion time. The only difference between us and the men then is that we go through the whole proceeding cold sober. Sentiment alone must wave the magic wand and make us girls again. Where in even the most distinguished men’s colleges and universities, with the most enviable reputations and endowments, fat men in tarbooshes can think they are a circus complete with hoops and horses, we women must rely on song and laughter. But we march like the men, and dress up like the men, and act funny like . . .

So here we go while you read this, thousands strong, for our march past the president, our skirts all carefully planned to hang the same height from the ground, to look nice. First, elderly ladies in shawls, getting watery cheers like the oldest G. A. R. veterans. Next the stout, slightly younger ones, graduated before it was de rigueur to look sixteen at sixty. Rather comfortable and jolly they are, dressed as gypsies. They sing fast and high. ‘ Yip-I-Yoddy.’ Now comes the class that had so much class spirit and pep, qualities so outmoded even in our time that their red-faced joie de réunion embarrasses us all. They are dressed as coal miners and give more money than anyone else. They sing in Negro dialect, trying for bass notes.

And now the classes come in larger numbers, more signs carried high and crooked. Some have the class baby marching in front. (The class gives a college education free to the first girl born after graduation.) The signs always begin by telling how many husbands the class has, how many children, how many jobs — in that order. One year a class back for its first reunion pushed a typewriter in a gocart at the head of the procession. Almost not a joke — a whole year out and no baby. (That was the class that had so many jobs.) Some signs, especially among the older classes, brag a little about the accomplishments of their members — a college president, a Senator, or someone married to one; for it counts to mention the husbands’ attainments, too.

And after the alumnæ, what? Girls in white marching slowly, each carrying a rose, between lines of girls in gardenparty clothes bearing long ropes of laurel — an idea we alumnæ had for making Commencement even more movingly beautiful and mawkish than it was before. The way to raise money for a women’s college is to keep things emotional.

So we all go back, acting and talking the way that was fashionable when we were in college, just as elderly society women persist in arranging their hair in the style that marked their years of greatest triumph. What we all seem to the modern girl, I dare not think — psychopathic cases, probably. We look to her, with our American faith in the young and female, to release us from our cambric revelries. But she too, next year, will be marching past dressed as something. . . .

Sentiment takes us back, willy-nilly. Curiosity and exhibitionism, if you will, and a sort of landscape love that makes us want to walk the ways again and see how trees have grown or gone. And we always look at our old rooms. The current occupant rises politely and says, ‘Did you have this room last year?’ and the gray-haired tin soldier reels joyfully away down the staircase, for one moment actually made a girl again.