It happens almost every weekend.
My two good girlfriends and I get together and begin getting ready for the night. We play the “Thank God Its Friday” station on Spotify radio, curl our eyelashes, exchange outfits, and slide on our heels before we head over to the boys’ room for the pregame. As 10:00 p.m. rolls around, the inevitable question is asked, “Where are we going tonight?” The rush and anticipation to make plans before 11 p.m. makes the room feel tense. Time passes and the countdown begins. Eventually, someone jumps up and says, “We have plans! Grab your coats the bus leaves in 15!” All of a sudden the mood shifts, and there is a joyous moment amongst my friends and I, as we race to get our things together to leave. A high, which is soon diminished as we get into the elevator and receive a text that reads, “no guys allowed, unless you have a good ratio.” I look up from my phone and into the faces of an unsuccessful girl to guy ratio.
In college there is something known as the “guy to girl ratio”. It’s a phenomenon where girls are considered currency, and the more currency you have means the more boys you can bring in. The ratio is usually reliant on a group consisting of a majority of women compared to men. Considering that sex is a large part of the college culture, a good ratio means more chances of success of going home with someone.
The ratio is beneficial to the male perspective, or anyone is who is attracted to the female gender. By having a larger female to male ratio, men have a higher chance of opportunity for intercourse. It’s all about opportunity. Men are usually the host of social gatherings in college, whether it's because they can handle the aftermath of the party or that they just enjoy being hosts, this tends to be the case. Whatever the reasoning may be, since it is the men who are throwing the parties, other than their close male friends, they would rather have more women than men shaking it on their dance floor.
As women, our desperation to adhere to these ridiculous “rules” has made us do some absolutely crazy things just to go to parties. Say someone in our group gets a text notifying them of a party that is happening, we know that we cannot get into said party with three girls and ten guys, so we scramble to try to make temporary girl friends for the night. I can speak from experience when I say that riding in an elevator, all the way to 22nd floor and back, in your friends dorm and knocking on random girls rooms asking them if they want to come to a party, is pretty much as low as it gets.
We used to go up to random girls on the street and ask them if they would help us get into a party. Sometimes they would keep on walking without acknowledging us, but every now and then some girls would be nice enough to help us out. Hypothetically, if we had five boys and three girls, we would need around seven more girls in order to give us a fighting chance of all of us getting into a party. I don’t know about you, but figuring out the appropriate guy to girl ratio every night was far more math than I ever really cared to do.
Fraternities are by far the worst. I’m sure I speak for everyone who was ever a freshman when I say that there was nothing that I dreaded more than getting all dressed up only to be yelled at by a boy standing in the doorway asking me, “Who do you know here?” Since I was a freshman, as most kids who go to frat parties are, I knew absolutely no one. I was lucky if I even knew what the letters on the house stood for. When I replied “no one,” the boy always shouted back the same question, “Well, how many guys and girls do you have?” If I responded with “four girls and no guys,” then I was welcomed in with a smile. If I responded “two girls and two guys,” there was a laugh and a “don’t let the door hit you on your way out,” or something along those lines.
Every weekend night becomes the college version of Sophie’s Choice. Either I could go into the party and abandon my guy friends or I could stick with them and walk back to campus disappointed.
Now, a year later, we consider ourselves too mature to set foot in frat parties, so we don’t even bother going out unless we have definite plans. We still get dressed up in the hopes of finding some party willing to let our large group of guys come in when we only have three girls, but our expectations are far lower. These ridiculous standards for us to have two girls for every guy has become the sole reason that we spend every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night crammed in a small dorm room twiddling our thumbs and wishing that we had made more girl friends earlier in the year.
I understand men’s logic behind the ratio issue. They assume that if there are more girls than guys then they have a better chance of “scoring” for the night; their odds increase. However, the problem that I see with all of this is why, in their right minds, would any girl want to go to a dance party composed entirely of females? The logic behind the ratio phenomenon is illogical. Think of it from the other way around, would a guy want to go to a party just to dance around in a sea of men while a bunch of thirsty women stare at them from a distance until they pick their victim of the night? I think that I can confidently answer both questions with a big fat no.
