Alphi Phi sorority at the University of Alabama yanked its recruiting video after it was criticized for being too white and hyper-feminized, among other things.
The video showed 72 college-aged women playfully prancing in a field, near a lake and other places in an effort to show the sorority as a fun group to join. Many of the women were shown in shorts and short skirts.
The video first drew the ire of an online newspaper columnist and then others.
AL.com online editor A.L. Bailey wrote that the video makes it difficult for the sorority to be taken seriously.
"It's a parade of white girls and blonde hair dye, coordinated clothing, bikinis and daisy dukes, glitter and kisses, bouncing bodies, euphoric hand-holding and hugging, gratuitous booty shots, and matching aviator sunglasses," Bailey wrote in the column that had more than 500,000 YouTube views by last week,
noted ABC News.
"It's all so racially and aesthetically homogeneous and forced, so hyper-feminine, so reductive and objectifying, so Stepford Wives: College Edition. It's all so ... unempowering," said Bailey.
Then came the online criticism of the video in social media, for example:
Alpha Phi supporters pointed out that its sorority chapters at the University of Arizona and University of Miami made similar videos without a backlash.
Alabama's Alpha Phi chapter has taken down the video down from its Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr pages, but it remains on the chapter's website,
reported Us Weekly.
The video controversy didn't hurt recruiting efforts, though, and the University of Alabama
reported last week it had a 10 percent increase of women receiving bids to join a sorority, totaling 2,261. Of those accepting bids, sororities saw an 13 percent increase in minority woman (214) and 19 percent in African-American woman (25).
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