It was 40 years ago, in , that the first cohort of brave female students came up to Merton and started populating the quads, Hall, corridors and tutorials. Today, the undergraduate and graduate population is more even, and seeing women in College is of course the norm - quite something considering that Merton was largely a single-sex institution for years. The College is marking this very special milestone in a variety of ways, including a feature each week of a different 'Merton Woman' drawn from across those 40 years and who are representative of the entire Merton community, staff, students, Fellows and alumnae, past and present. This developing set of profiles illustrates, in part, the remarkable and glittering array of talent we have amongst all our Merton Women. As we progress though the year, a new profile will appear below each week.

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Everyone knows the familiar high-school subcultures — the populars, rebels and artsy weirdos who comprise the basic foundation of teen archetypes. Now new subcultural types distinctive enough to be intelligible to adults have emerged, in large part via trend superconductor TikTok. You can read about VSCO girls beachy and eco-conscious and inconspicuously rich and e-girls emo types who are very online in publications such as the New York Times and the Columbia Journalism Review. This article includes content provided by TikTok. We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as they may be using cookies and other technologies. To view this content, click 'Allow and continue'. Though she may be lesser-known than the VSCO or e-girl, the soft girl is nonetheless a codified persona mainstream enough to have her own BuzzFeed quizzes , viral hashtag challenges , and six separate Urban Dictionary definitions in You will find the soft girl online, pigtailed, clad in pastels, perhaps with a spray of faux freckles — or little clouds, or hearts — painted across her blush-pinkened cheeks and highlighted nose. She may wear toned-down versions of this look to school and in daily life, but its fully realized, campy extreme can only be found when she broadcasts on social media, usually from her bedroom.
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I asked Anna if her friends joked about boys demanding nudes because it happened so often. Had the pressure to get likes on Instagram hurt her self-esteem? Sales argues that social media spews two all-consuming messages to teenage girls nearly every moment of every day: Always look pretty, never be prudish or slutty. For American Girls she interviewed over teenage girls, their parents, and experts in the field. Sales lets her subjects speak at length. But the existence of the word itself is also evidence that girls have been analyzing and dismissing this behavior as unacceptable. Having a name for it gives girls power over it: Just another fuckboy.