You’re Miss California, Right?

Even before I took my first step into Harvard, people knew who I was: the pageant girl.

They say the cure for sexism is education: That the more educated people are, the more aware and the less judgmental they act. Yet, my experience at Harvard, the pinnacle of academic and intellectual curiosity, has largely been the opposite. In fact, I have never been in an environment more permeated with sexism than Harvard.

I’ve competed in scholarship pageants for the past five years, and can say with complete certainty that I am who I am today because I made the bold move to step out of my comfort zone and compete in my first pageant. As an insecure 13 year-old girl so shy that I was not even able to ask the librarian for a book, I competed in my first pageant watching “Toddlers and Tiaras,” where girls are depicted as catty and superficial, as preparation and ready to answer every question with two words: “world peace.” However, when I came to pageant weekend, I quickly realized how wrong I was. My fellow competitors were some of the most genuine and accomplished people I’ve ever met, creating a sisterhood of girls throughout the nation. In that weekend, I had an epiphany when a middle aged man came up to me, a newcomer that no one knew, and exclaimed how impressed he was with my performance of Flight of the Bumblebee on the piano; because a stranger had faith in me, I began to have faith in myself.

I love competing in pageants; it is a platform that fosters women’s empowerment for countless girls across the nation as it did for me, teaching the power of embracing femininity and building self-confidence. But ever since joining the Harvard community, something I absolutely loved has become something I’m ambivalent about. The misconception of pageant girls being catty and superficial is held even more adamantly by intellectuals. Thus, an activity I love doing is also a double-edged sword, becoming something that has caused my peers, both male and female, to discount their respect of me and their belief in my academic capabilities.

Freshman fall can be summed up with the sentence, “Hey, what’s your name?” However, whenever someone asks me that question, it is a conversation I dread because the immediate response is always “Oh, you’re Miss California right?” Yes, you are indeed correct; I am Miss California, but I am also Annie Lu, the social activist. I am also Annie Lu, the girl who loves debating and learning about foreign policy. I am also Annie Lu, the social entrepreneur who runs her own nonprofit. In fact, I found myself during Opening Days explaining to one guy why not all pageant girls are “dumb and materialistic” and why “I deserve to be here.”

This problem transcends pageants. It is about the toxic culture of judgment prevalent at this school. Although I embrace my femininity through pageants, beauty, and fashion, I can’t help but notice the fact that every day I have to take an extra step to show that I didn’t get here simply because of my face; I have to prove that I’m “actually smart.” At Harvard, many of us are given one label that defines us: a visor that obstructs the vision of others to see our multifaceted characters, boxing our personalities into only one idea. For me, this is “the pageant girl.” Coming from a place where my academic abilities and achievements were never questioned or doubted, I’ve realized that at the intellectual environment of Harvard, people are extremely quick to judge others. Yet, when we decide to see our peers only through a singular lens, it creates a one-dimensional community. Specifically, there is a fine line between being feminine and being respected, a misogynistic dichotomy rooted in the culture of intellect and perpetuated by both men and women that equates femininity with being less capable, driven, and accomplished. At this school, this toxic judgment stemming from our obsession with exclusivity and filtering the “inferior” out is manifested in every aspect of college life, whether that be the sexism in final clubs, the competitive comp process for clubs, or even the Smyth Classics Library that only lets you swipe in if you’re in the Classics Department.

Why is it that for women, beauty and intelligence have to be mutually exclusive? Why is it that my love for beauty and fashion has to come at the expense of respect? Why is it that at Harvard, we can’t see and relate to each other simply as people, unique and deserving each in our own way?

Perhaps it’s just the nature of being in an elite institution. But at the same time, it is also a mindset we can actively work to change in order to make Harvard a more inclusive and open-minded community.

Annie J. Lu ’22, a Crimson Editorial comper, lives in Weld Hall.