When I was younger, I thought being in a sorority would make me somebody. In my head, sorority girls were these beautiful young women who were able to enjoy their lives together, support one another, and have fun. They were the kind of people whose lives just worked. I wasn’t anywhere near that growing up. I was too big, too awkward, too unwanted. 

But I told myself that college would change everything. Everyone “glows up” in college. I thought, I’ll shock everyone by being in a sorority, which to me felt like I was proving to everyone that I was actually pretty. 

I knew I wasn’t the stereotypical sorority girl. I wasn’t blonde or thin. I didn’t have a perfect Instagram aesthetic. In high school, I didn’t drink or even go to parties. But I wanted to recreate myself in college to emulate the girls in the sororities that I envied. So, I tried out for recruitment. I went through spring informal recruitment my freshman year, and I didn’t get a bid from any sororities. I decided to try once more during formal recruitment in the fall of my sophomore year. I didn’t get a bid from the sorority I originally wanted, but there was one that did want me. It was the sorority that was considered “bottom-tiered” on our campus.

When they were the only ones that accepted me, it felt like validation of what I had always feared: that I was stuck being the weird, fat girl because the only sorority that wanted me was undesirable to others. I went into recruitment in order to reinvent myself, but instead, it felt like I was always going to be pulled back into the version of myself that I hated.

Although I was hesitant, I still accepted the bid and met the girls that wanted me. After meeting them and realizing how much I truly loved these women, I slowly began to see that getting in was the easy part. The hard part was trying to convince myself that I deserved to be there. 

I knew hazing was a possibility – trust me I wasn’t naïve. I’d heard the horror stories of girls being forced to sit on a washing machine while older sorority sisters circled parts of their body that jiggled with a Sharpie. A part of me was terrified of that. But an uglier, more desperate part of me thought, maybe that wouldn’t be the worst thing. Maybe if I was humiliated for my weight, something in my brain would finally snap and I would be forced to change. In my mind, I would see that as an act of love from my sisters, and not the atrocious hazing that it is. 

As it turns out, my sorority never hazed me. They never made me feel unwanted or that I didn’t belong. If anything, they were the most supportive group of women I ever met. Still, I was waiting for the moment where someone would tell me that I wasn’t good enough, that I was the one thing holding our chapter back from climbing up the ranks. Here’s something to know about Greek life, all members of fraternities and sororities are ranked. Once you’re in a sorority, all the reputation behind that sorority is applied to you and vice versa. Your reputation gets applied to your sorority. You are making yourself a “public figure” on your campus. People will have opinions, and they will share them. Everyone is watching you because you represent your chapter. Every time someone on Fizz (our campus’ anonymous social app, like Reddit and YikYak,) would talk negatively about our sorority, I thought it was my fault. Every time a fraternity rejects a mixer with us, I kept thinking to myself: This is your fault. You’re the reason people think our sorority is weird and ugly. 

Every major event required us to dress up and wear our letters proudly. I would look at the photos we took to promote our events; all the girls looked beautiful right next to me, and I felt I was the only hideous one. But what made it worse was that no one would tell me if I actually looked bad in the photos. My sorority prided itself on being inclusive, which was something I loved about it – until I needed them to be honest with me. If I didn’t look flattering in a picture, I wanted someone to say it, so I could fix it. But no one had the courage to say something that might offend me, so I get back the photos and hate all of them. I already knew I was fat. I didn’t need reassurance – I needed honesty. I started feeling angry. Why did they let me look so bad in these photos—photos that could end up on Instagram for anyone to see? How could they let me put something out there that made me look so awful? 

But then I force myself to wonder – maybe they genuinely didn’t see what I saw. Maybe they thought I looked fine. I was the only one obsessing over every little thing, picking every angle that would best hide my stomach and arms. Maybe they weren’t ignoring the problem because they didn’t see one at all. 

Every year, our chapter struggles with recruitment because of the labels we get from people in other Greek chapters. Because I feel like the representation of those negative labels, recruitment becomes a difficult time for me because I don’t want to be the reason for holding our chapter back from getting new members. I wished I could be a “basement girl” during recruitment – the one who doesn’t recruit and doesn’t meet the potential new members until bid day. I thought, maybe if they didn’t see me, they’d want to join.

I told myself that if I were thinner, maybe we’d be ranked higher. Maybe we’d get invited to more events. Maybe people would see our chapter and want to join us. My “sisters” would never say it, but deep down they must have thought it was my fault, too. They had to have regretted being “accepting” of me and not caring about body image. 

The truth is my sorority rankings don’t have anything to do with me. But when you’ve spent your whole life thinking that your body is a problem, you start seeing proof of that everywhere – even when it isn’t there. No sister in my sorority ever made me feel like I was less than they were. The only person making me feel unworthy was me. That’s been the hardest part of being plus-size in Greek life. Not the rejection, not the stereotypes, not even the anonymous bullying (which I faced, too). It’s the battle in my mind and fear that even when no one is saying it to my face, they’re all thinking it – I don’t belong here. 

So, should you join a sorority if you’re plus-size? My honest answer, yes, but only if you are strong enough to fight battles that no one else will know you’re fighting. If you join the right sorority, you will find women who support you, love you, and encourage you. Don’t expect that to magically erase the lifetime of feeling like you take up too much space. Don’t join a sorority in order to prove to yourself and everyone else that you’re pretty. It won’t do that for you. You have to accept yourself first. If you don’t, you will always feel like the outsider. Through my sorority experience, I was lucky enough to find a group of girls that I am comfortable enough with to confide in about my insecurities. I am able to reflect and tackle these issues with a group of supportive women.  My hope for any plus-size women thinking about sorority recruitment is for them to simply try it out. You won’t know if you can find that support in college until you take the first step. For me, it was worth it.