The Not-So-Secret Handshake

This image has absolutely nothing to do with this blog post
but I did Love's Baby Soft as a pre-teen.

I joined a sorority in college because of networking opportunities. No, seriously. I was that strange 18-year-old who went to college to get a job and being able to say I was a Delta Whata Eva seemed like it would open doors for me. I was partially right. It did open doors in college -- doors to Beta Theta Pi, Delta Chi, and Sigma Alpha Epsilon, to name a few.

But this isn't a story about Frat parties or Girls Gone Wild. One of the things I hated about those parties was running into my male friends at the row and instead of hugging me when they would see me (I'm not much of a hugger anyway), they would greet me with a handshake. My allegedly secret sorority handshake, to be exact, and then they'd laugh.

Fraternities have many secrets from pledging to history, from video tapes to records kept. The urban legends were numerous but one thing my sisters and I never got was confirmation of any of their secret dealings. The women who were seriously dating and pinned to these guys couldn't even confirm the rumors we heard. Sororities, on the other hand, had their secrets blasted all over the row. Why? Because men are gossips? Hardly. Because we don't value the secrets we share with our sisters. We are cultured to believe that sharing every piece of ourselves with the men in our lives is what we should do; that includes things we were sworn to secrecy on.

Ladies, our secrets should be our own. This is not an exchange between two lovers. We are giving something of ourselves that is not being returned. Why?