The concept of the MRS degree is nothing new.
At Ole Miss, the stereotype that the women in specific academic programs are only looking for a husband stems directly from the old idea that this was the norm for all women at our university.
While it might have been common for our grandmothers’ and great-grandmothers’ generations, the concept of the MRS degree as the social norm at Ole Miss certainly does not stand true today. While relationships may come into play during their four years of undergrad, women come to Oxford to walk across a stage at graduation, not to walk down the aisle of a church.
Though the MRS degree stereotype is definitely not unique to the history of The University of Mississippi, the last place I would look for signs of the phenomenon would be a top-tier, “prestigious” Ivy League school like Princeton.
But as a letter published in The Daily Princetonian last week clearly demonstrated (and which has since gone viral), no school is immune to this sexist ideal.
In her letter, 1977 Princeton grad Susan Patton gives female students surprising advice: “Find a husband,” and fast.
Patton goes on to explain that finding a husband should be every female student’s goal before she graduates since she will never again have access to such a deep pool of “worthy” potential mates: “You will never again be surrounded by this concentration of men who are worthy of you. Of course, once you graduate, you will meet men who are your intellectual equal — just not that many of them.”
She even has the audacity to tell freshman women that they have the best chances since all Princeton men are either their age or older and that senior women are short on time. Because, of course, women of 21 or 22 years old are undesirable old crones.
I’m not even going to discuss the rampant Ivy League elitism in her letter — I could write an entire column on that topic alone. But beyond the elitism of her pedigree, Patton is shallow enough to blatantly use intellectual elitism as well: “Smart women can’t (shouldn’t) marry men who aren’t at least their intellectual equal.
As Princeton women, we have almost priced ourselves out of the market. Simply put, there is a very limited population of men who are as smart or smarter than we are.”
The thesis of Patton’s letter is that modern society has put too much pressure on women to focus on their careers. I couldn’t disagree more.
The purpose of four years of undergrad is to get an education that (surprise!) leads to a career.
Women have fought hard over the past few decades to minimize the MRS degree stereotype and legitimize their college enrollment, and Patton’s letter is an example of the forces that could set back progress.
But pushing young women between the ages of 18 and 22 years old to make a commitment that is supposed to last the rest of their lives is a terrible, demeaning idea. Most of us do not even know what we want to do in our careers, let alone who we want to marry, and we have our entire lives ahead of us.
Patton’s argument furthers the ideas that women are only desirable when they are young, that their “marriageability” has an expiration date and that their social status is completely dependent on their husband.
Should a female student so happen to find a relationship or even a husband while in college, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that — because it is her choice, not society’s requirement.
While I hope that we are all mature enough to dismiss Patton’s letter as sexist, elitist nonsense, we must bear in mind that it shows how old, outdated ideas of what a woman “needs” to be happy still exist today.
In order to keep moving forward in the fight for equality in school and the workplace, young women need to focus on what makes them happy on a personal basis, not what society or other outside pressures expect of them.
Lexi Thoman is a senior international studies and Spanish double-major from St. Louis, Mo.
