Feminist Action at Middlebury has been lately engaging in conversations about the culture of perfectionism here at Middlebury and the pressure to be (or appear to be) effortlessly flawless. These pressures, insecurities, and stresses can revolve around a wide range of topics, including:

-physical appearance
-academics
-social lives
-fitness/health
-identity (race, class, sexuality, gender, ability, etc.)
-romance or sex
-gender expectations

In order to challenge this perfectionist culture, we are launching our campaign "I Did Not Wake Up Like This." Our goal here is to debunk the social pressures that we put on ourselves and create a more authentic community where we feel we can be our genuine selves- flaws and all. To start, we are asking for submissions from Middlebury College students sharing what their personal pressures, insecurities, and stresses are. We plan to print and distribute some of these (anonymous!) statements around campus the week after spring break. We hope that this will spark reflections and conversations around campus, and to help facilitate such conversations, we will be having a debrief discussion in April. Details TBA.  

Feel free to write as many or as few submissions as you like. Be brutally honest, we want to hear it all. Conversely, if you think we missed the mark here and don't feel this pressure to be perfect that we're referring to, we'd love to hear about that too!

If you are concerned about peers figuring out your identity, either make your submission vague enough to maintain anonymity or simply leave the box at the end of the form blank and we will not print it.

Questions? Comments? Suggestions? E-mail us at FAM@middlebury.edu

Thanks for reading,
The FAM Team