Sorority rush is a tradition at many colleges. But in the South, rush inspires the same passionate zeal as collegiate football. Thanks to TikTok, the University of Alabama’s incarnation of that tradition — peak neo-antebellum white Southern culture on display — is now a global phenomenon.
The current sorority members choose coordinated outfits for synchronized dance routines to promote their chapters on TikTok. There is a lot of hair in these videos — standardized for length and blond in ratios impossible without chemical intervention; it swings exuberantly, signaling good health and traditional femininity.
Their robotic dancing to hip-hop songs showcases gymnastic athleticism instead of looser routines made for the club. Being cute rather than sexy protects them from the dreaded label “trashy.” Walking that fine line without mussing their hair is part of their popular appeal.
Their Southern accents are the linguistic equivalent of pointing a ring light at their shiny hair and tasteful makeup. For a mainstream culture struggling to adapt to the ways that gender is exploding all around them, that accent is seductive. It says these are ideal women from a regional culture that values traditional gender norms — and people cannot get enough of it.
These sororities’ annual viral juggernaut is counterprogramming to the Northeastern elite university brand. The Bama version is wholesome, nonthreatening, traditional femininity in Lululemon athleisure. For free. Welcome to Emotional Labor 101, Bama Rush ladies. You already aced it. These young women’s world — which exists outside the frame of a TikTok video — deserves to be taken seriously. Their emotional labor moves a lot of capital.
Sororities have a code of conduct to keep its sisters — and the wannabes — in line. How to talk, how to dress, how to act, and most important of all, how to aspire. The code is so elaborate that aspiring pledges can hire Rush coaches to learn exactly what it takes to be the right kind of woman
The Deep South’s sorority culture gets its power from the rewards that come from compliance. You get cool campus housing, cool friends, study buddies, social invitations, a defined dating pool and maybe a little social media fame.
Elite status cultures invest a lot in marriages, and that is no different in the South.
For all that the sorority sisters talk about bonding and lifelong friends, the power of these sororities is not sisterhood. It’s the brotherhood that desires it. Bama Rush codifies the many incentives behind marrying power and turns them into a long audition to become a handmaiden to patriarchal privilege.
One biracial rushee in Fleit’s documentary discovers the true qualifications to this culture when joining the sorority does not get her the same male attention as her white sisters.
In the case of “integrating” Bama rush, no one is talking about the radical roots of integration. They don’t even mean integration as an accommodationist principle. They mean the neoliberal branding of integration as cosmetic diversity. That would look like adding a few plus-size bodies, a racially ambiguous but nonwhite young woman, and some dark hair here and there and calling that fixing Bama Rush for our new sensibilities.
While there is no definitive proof of causation between the Bama Rush popularity and the University of Alabama’s fiscal health, the university is coming off record enrollment in 2022, even as the general higher education climate in the United States is being roiled by crises.
Tressie McMillan Cottom
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