WATCH ABOVE: A recruitment video posted online by the University of Alabama’s Alpha Phi sorority is receiving backlash for a lack of diversity. The video has since been removed from YouTube.
TORONTO — The University of Alabama chapter of the Alpha Phi sorority is getting heat for its recruitment video, which according to one critic is not only “unempowering” but also objectifying and “racially and aesthetically homogeneous.”
Translation: the women featured in the video are mostly blonde, very tanned and fit. They also really like to blow kisses, give each other piggyback rides and bounce around. Often while wearing bikinis.
“No, it’s not a slick Playboy Playmate or Girls Gone Wild video. It’s a sorority recruiting tool gaining on 500,000 views in its first week on YouTube,” wrote A.L. Bailey in the opinion piece titled ‘Bama sorority video worse for women than Donald Trump.
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“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. The video lacks any mention of core ideals or service and philanthropy efforts. It lacks substance but boasts bodies.”
The piece thrust the video, which Bailey referred to as ‘Stepford Wives: College Edition,’ into the spotlight. In the wake of criticism that’s followed, the sorority chapter has taken down both the video as well as its social media pages.
The controversy doesn’t seem to have had any negative effect on overall recruitment, though. On Saturday, a record 2,261 women were added to the university’s sorority system, which according to NBC may be the largest pledge class in the U.S.
Of the more than 2,000 women who accepted bids, the university said 214 were minorities.
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