According to New York magazine, a whole generation of women is jaded, apathetic and "washed-up" -- and they're only 21 years old. They're the SWUGs: Senior Washed-Up Girls.
Over the last school year some of the women from Yale's class of 2013 have been penning essays about what being a SWUG means and the culture that is attached to it. So journalist Justin Rocket Silverman went to New Haven to see these young women (and self-proclaimed SWUGs) up close and personal.
In the Yale of his article, Freshman Girls are mythical sexual unicorns whom frat bros lust after, and Senior Girls are the ones who have "given up."
According to Silverman, women in their last year of Yale are "over it" -- the studying, the dating scene and the Greek life. Essentially, they're ready to be done with college, just like every other almost-graduated college student, but they've given their Senioritis a new name and gotten profiled by a magazine. Unfortunately, the article suggests that the thesis of Gawker's 2011 post "Why You Should Never Be Profiled by The New York Times Style Section" should apply to NYMag as well.
Here are eight things NYMag taught us about SWUGs:
SWUGs don't "dress up." (The horror!)
She and her fellow SWUGs are women who don’t bother dressing up for class, or even for fancy parties.
They take very scientific surveys.
Bruner conducted an informal survey this year of 135 students and found 43 percent considered themselves SWUGs at least some of the time.
It doesn't go over well to refer to women and meat grinders in the same sentence, even if they are SWUGs. (Did this guy mean to say "ringer"?)
Sophomore Greg Kelley told me that “it’s a girl who has been through the meat grinder. A seasoned veteran who knows the ropes.”
It's not clear that the "SWUG" is actually a thing (in a piece about it being a thing).
“It means different things to different people,” he said. “I’m not sure there’s one coherent overriding concept to SWUG.”
SWUGs need not fret, because after college every older, graduated lady will be jealous of their youth.
Three months from now, they will be the bright-eyed newcomers in New York or Los Angeles, the 22-year-olds dancing on banquettes in nightclubs, who still drink too much and still flirt with boys. They’ll go from envying freshmen girls to being the envy of older women.
Still, they better rebel now because being young does kind of end after college.
SWUG life is one last chance at youthful rebellion before the soft cushion of college is yanked out from under them.
For instance, after Yale, SWUGs will face the harsh reality that buying six mason jars from Ace Hardware is cheaper than buying six mason jars of pickles.
Yale SWUG Michelle Taylor wants to move to Brooklyn after she graduates next month. She is planning to eat nothing but jam and pickles for awhile so that she can collect the empty mason jars to use as wine cups.
But they don't give a f**k, and if you want to be "complex," you won't either.
“Saying ‘I don’t give a fuck’ at the right moment, it makes you a more complex person.”
We wish the SWUGs a very merry graduation and entry into the working world. Nothing like a 9-to-5 to make you nostalgic for the collegiate world you so eagerly escaped.
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