On one of the last reading days before finals, my group of friends gathered around an SDH table to enjoy one of their few remaining long-winded and pointless conversations before the end of the school year. Everything had been said, everything had been eaten, but then someone suggested fro-yo, another person rapidly disclosedand a new development in their love life, and the conversation began again. But instead of re-hashing the same topics as before, one of my guy friends launched into a discussion of his latest crush– someone he’d met only last weekend with just a week left of the semester. They’d hung out twice in the past week. Twice! During the week?! Was she in his classes? Yes, twice. She was a business major, and they did not have classes together. Both times unrelated to classes?! Was she pretty? Yes, a ten. A ten?! A Notre Dame ten.
It was the first time I’d ever heard of the Notre Dame Ranking Scale. The typical ranking system that men have created for women, ranking them on their looks from a scale of fugly one, to perfect ten, has been scaled down and readjusted for Notre Dame’s women. Any girl who goes to Notre Dame gets two added to her score, not because attending a prestigious school makes us two points more attractive, but because we don’t have many high scorers and thus a curve has been applied to make it “fair.” A ten at Notre Dame is an eight in the real world. Excuse me?
We’ve all heard it before, the girls at other schools are better looking. Girls at state schools are hotter. Women in the South have more charm. Sorority girls are cuter and more fun. The women everywhere else are more attractive than our fine ladies here, and the grass is always greener at state schools, at fraternities, and in the South as well.
But let’s examine this a little further. First, let me say that I think this ranking system seems like the result of a lot inter-gender awkwardness and sexual frustration and that I feel for those poor guys battling parietals and single sex dorms. Really, I do. However, have they considered that the women at Notre Dame are evenly matched with the men? Think of a Notre Dame couple you know, it’s not just a cute guy and a hideous girl, is it? If the women at Notre Dame really were two points less attractive than the normal population of all other college students, then the men are too. Even if more attractive women than attended our school, they probably wouldn’t be interested in our sub-standard looking men.
So that’s one example of why the logic behind this system is completely off. I mean, there isn’t even a cohesive set of criteria for what constitutes a ranking spot because men at Notre Dame seem really picky, and not just about looks. I have friends who aren’t interested once they find out a girl isn’t a virgin, or that she drinks too much, or not enough, that she isn’t smart enough, or studies too much and tries to hard. Would these standards slip aside if the girl were two points more attractive? Or are the same set of expectations applied to every female, those rated on the real world scale, and us — the poor ND +2s? I’m just confused here. Because after thinking more about the scale and its flaws I found another fault: the fact that so many men at Notre Dame want a relationship.
Boys I know at Notre Dame, even if they are superficial, seem to be searching for relationships, which simply isn’t the case with men at other colleges. This could be for several reasons: that our social atmosphere simply doesn’t lend itself to casual hook-ups, and therefore everyone is pushed toward relationships and commitment; that the men at ND are so starved for sexual attention that if they actually find a decent girl they’re going to keep her forever; or that there is something about the well rounded awesomeness of Notre Dame women that make us girlfriend, and future wife material. I’m just saying that if we really are less attractive, universally frigid, bookish, and un-fun, how come so many guys at ND want to wife us? Why does the ring-by-spring proposal phenomenon keep happening?
At this point it’s clear that this ranking system is a farce and that either we have to adopt the idea that there is an inherent “ND Ranking System” for both men and women on campus or just get over ourselves and realize that there are so many factors and individual preferences that a ranking system is pretty much useless, not to mention degrading. Because the sad truth of it is, Notre Dame is not the only campus housing sexually frustrated, bitter men with poor conceptions of data schematics. After talking with guy friends at other schools, it seems that collegiate men everywhere think that these hypothetical women– these nonexistent tens– are more attractive. And that just makes me sad.