For the record, I’m not a SWUG. I’m a female student who is a senior; that’s it. I’m not washed up, I’m not “over the hill”, and I’m not at the bottom of the social ladder; I am simply just a senior girl. For the first two weeks of senior year, the acronym “SWUG” (Senior Washed Up Girl) has taken over social media and everyday conversation all over campus. As senior girls, we cannot escape the conversation about this word and why it is easily one of the most damaging things we can refer to one another and ourselves.
It is certainly no secret that many young women at Boston College struggle with body issues, insecurity, and overall negative feelings towards themselves. In fact, an incredible study conducted at BC by the Office of Institutional Research, Planning, and Assessment in 2003 demonstrated that senior girls at BC left the university with less confidence than when they began their journey as freshmen. It is hard to believe that words like “SWUG” and “washed up” don’t contribute to the negativity those female students feel about themselves after completion of their undergraduate degrees. Yes, we are the oldest young women at the school and yes, we may not have as much of a “party hard” attitude as we did our freshman year of college, but in no way are we less desirable, less beautiful, or less deserving of positive comments from our peers and from ourselves.
It’s hard enough to be a girl in today’s society when young women are constantly bombarded by contrasting images of who we should be and not be: don’t play too hard to get but don’t be too easy, be headstrong but be polite, be skinny but don’t be too thin, have muscle but don’t be over-toned, and my personal favorite, be yourself but be your “best self”. Seriously? To top off all of this social pressure and expectations, we now have our friends and ourselves calling each other “washed up”? We are only digging our graves for ourselves by subtly bringing each other down with just a simply little acronym that has become a very large problem.
It’s not that senior girls are “over” the college life and are therefore “washed up”. It’s because simply put, they have bigger and better things happening in their lives. They’re applying to graduate schools, taking the most difficult courses in the major, having a part-time job, balancing a boyfriend, a full friend group, and maybe sometimes they just need a little time to just be to themselves and not go to the bar/party/Mod/etc. It’s not that senior girls are “washed up”, it’s that they have already started the process of moving on to post-grad life and are trying to find an identity for themselves outside of the small bubble of college that they have thrived in for nearly four years. So before you call someone else, or perhaps most importantly yourself, a SWUG, think twice. You’re a senior girl with a future, a beautiful personality, and a whole lot to offer still to the BC community. That, in my book, definitely doesn’t make you washed up, it just means you are growing up and looking forward.
Photo Sources:
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