We are all strong, beautiful women

I don’t go to Barnard, but I am also a “strong, beautiful” woman. And so is every woman posing Downward Dog in my Life in Motion yoga class, eating beside me at Community Food & Juice, taking notes (and checking Facebook) in my art history lecture course, or explaining anthropological theory to me in office hours. Whether we are labeled BC, SEAS, CC, or GS, we female undergraduates of Columbia, know what it’s like to be women better than any guy in SEAS, CC, or GS.

So when Oprah Winfrey and Gloria Steinem summoned Barnard students—and only Barnard students—to talk about “the status and circumstances of women, both domestically and internationally, and your ideas about the future of feminism and women’s activism for social change,” I overheard a few of my fellow CC classmates lament that this opportunity was only offered at the women’s college.

“Why is it just Barnard students? Just because I go to Columbia College doesn’t mean I don’t understand or think about what it’s like to be a woman and a feminist,” my classmate cogently remarked.

I let her words steep in my head for a few days. While I am fully aware that I may be biased as a CC student, I am also aware that I am a woman who thinks about feminism and women’s activism on a daily basis.

Whether we attend a women’s college or not, when we graduate and say goodbye to Alma Mater for the last time, we are faced with the same problems of discrimination in the workspace. Sexism doesn’t care whether you are a Barnard Bear or a Columbia Lion. When CC accepted female students for the first time in 1983, sexism did not magically disappear. We should acknowledge that while there are advantages to attending Barnard and there are advantages to attending Columbia, women are still excluded from the old boy’s club. Women are still subjugated by the media and still expected to be passive and feminine regardless of what their diploma says.

Here is an example of a situation that both Columbia and Barnard women can offer varying—but equally important—insight into:

At a fraternity party my freshman year, a brother walked up to me and said, “You’re so pretty. You must go to Barnard.” After I told him I was actually a Columbia student, I walked away.

“I can’t decide whether you should have been flattered or insulted,” my friend remarked, trying to keep her smirk to herself. (It didn’t work.) I told her that I was insulted for both Barnard and Columbia women.

Barnard women shouldn’t feel that they have to be conventionally pretty to represent their school properly, and Columbia women shouldn’t feel that they’re the ugly hags of Morningside Heights just because their school has a lower admissions rate. Dumb and pretty, or smart and ugly: These are the two dichotomies we’re forced to work with. Ladies, it’s not our fault—you heard what the fraternity brother said—but we can’t perpetuate this ideology between ourselves either. We shouldn’t duel over which side of Broadway is better—instead, we should acknowledge that we share the same ambitious aspirations and that we face the same challenges. We shouldn’t judge each other when society is already judging our dress size. As cheesy as this sounds, I hope Barnard and Columbia women unite and forget our so-called differences.

I regret every moment I didn’t stand up for my Barnard friends because I stupidly thought I was doing myself, as a CC girl, a favor by letting Barnard get teased and stereotyped. I realize now that making fun of women sets us all back because we have much more in common than what divides us.

The application form on the website asks, “If you could ask Oprah Winfrey or Gloria Steinem each one question, what would it be?”

I am not a Barnard student, but I have a voice too. And here is my question: Why aren’t all Columbia women included in the criteria for a “few dynamic, smart, outspoken and independent-thinking young students who can speak about the challenges and benefits of being a woman in today’s culture”?

With all due respect, Ms. Winfrey and Ms. Steinem, as someone who shamelessly rushed home to watch the Oprah Winfrey Show in middle school and saved every copy of Ms. Magazine until I ran out of closet space, I feel let down. I wish you had asked all of Columbia’s female students. Because it’s not a women’s college issue. It’s a women’s issue.

And we, young women of the 21st century at Columbia and Barnard, think about these issues all the time.

Noel Duan is a Columbia College junior majoring in anthropology and concentrating in art history. She is currently studying abroad in Paris and is the co-founder of Hoot magazine. You Write Like a Girl runs alternate Thursdays.