The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 41, No. 2 & Volume 42, No. 1 - 52

attends her graduation and says that he will
wait for her to ﬁnish completing her academic
goals. Paige exclaims, "this has all been extraordinary. A real-life fairy tale." In this way,
PM creates a happy union between marriage
and career goals in college life.

Experimentation: Excessive Alcohol and
Lesbian Behavior
As presented in these ﬁlms, alcohol use and
lesbian behavior appear to be deviant actions
resulting from a desire to experiment. These
ﬁlms present these activities as deviant
because "good college girls" do not partake
of them, yet all these ﬁlms have at least one
party scene where attendees visibly consume
alcohol. In FD, Samantha rebels against her
father, the president of the United States, and
her ex-boyfriend/bodyguard by participating in underage drinking at a bar. Samantha
even responds by saying, "the life of a college
student is really growing on me," thereby characterizing drunken bar behavior as an expected
element of college life. In a more extreme depiction, Alicia in NBF begins binge drinking
and abusing drugs to gain membership in a
clique of popular women, resulting in the devastating consequence of a coma.
According to the perspectives promoted
in these ﬁlms, same-sex attraction or lesbian
labeling is a highly problematic behavior
because it directs college women to disregard
college men. Most of the ﬁlms ignored samesex attraction altogether. Only the independent
companies and the least grossing ﬁlms offered
a broader range of themes that diverged from
the top grossing ﬁlms. For example, only two
of the three independent ﬁlms (DEBS and
NBF) portray or address lesbian characters,
which were absent from all the mainstream
52

ﬁlms. Throughout both ﬁlms there is a limited
usage of the word "lesbian," usually to denote
a negative connotation. For instance, in DEBS,
the head of Amy's institution chastises her for
using school and government resources to
pursue her "collegiate lesbian ﬂing in style."
Likewise, upon discovering that Amy left her
boyfriend for another woman, Bobby, the exboyfriend, tells her "that whole lezzie thing,
it's hot." Coupled with the overlap between
insatiable promiscuity and lesbian love affairs
established in NBF, both of these conversations serve to stigmatize and devalue the
lesbian identity as either a passing phase or a
construct designed to draw attention from and
to arouse men.
Stemming from the male objectifying gaze,
"good girls" do not drink to the point of excess
or establish romantic relationships with other
women. While these ﬁlms present both of
these activities as relatively common in college,
only DEBS offers any indication that either
behavior could ever be reasonable or acceptable. From the view of the objectifying gaze,
alcohol consumption and same-sex relationships represent similar violations by inhibiting
male attempts to exercise control over female
bodies. As Bobby (DEBS) suggests, female
same-sex relationships offer some appeal to
men, but only if they have the opportunity to
obtain some beneﬁt from these activities. Likewise, alcohol use may make college women
more sociable and apt to participate in sex acts.
However, as Samantha (FD) and Alicia (NBF)
illustrate, this inﬂuence also leads to health
and safety risks, which can also make college
women unavailable for sexual activities with
men. As such, the objectifying gaze presents
substance use and female same-sex romance

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The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 41, No. 2 & Volume 42, No. 1

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