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koganbotHow widely used is the term "co-ed" as a noun meaning "a female student"?
I'd have thought that in the U.S., at least, the term was archaic. Almost all schools in America now have male and female students.* I've never heard the term in conversation. However, in Korea, there is a mediocre K-pop group called "Co-Ed School," one of the few idol groups to have both males and females.
I first considered asking this question a week ago, when I'd hunted down an Erik Erikson quotation I'd remembered inexactly from having read it in 1970. It had stayed in my memory for a fundamentally different reason, the phrase "compared to what?," which relates to the psychosocial explorations of mine that I entitle "Relativism: So What?," and I'll give it its own entry one of these days. But I also remembered that it contained the term "co-ed," the word surprising me when I read it, and that's the word I used in the Web search that successfully tracked down the quote. I'd originally seen the passage in the Erikson collection Identity: Youth And Crisis, and in my memory I assumed the essay was from the late 1940s, the term "co-ed" dating it in my mind. Surprisingly, I see that the essay was based on a lecture that he gave in 1960. Although some prestige schools like Yale remained male-only until the late 1960s, I've assumed the term "co-ed" had been long moot by 1960, coeducation being so overwhelmingly common. Again, I don't recall ever hearing the word in conversation, and I grew up about a half mile from a college campus.
So last Wednesday, when Rush Limbaugh called Sandra Fluke a "slut" for advocating that her college include birth control in its health package, he started off, "What does it say about the college co-ed ... who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex?"
When searching YouTube for "Co-Ed" and "coed" in order to find vids for the K-pop Co-Ed School, I saw that most top hits were for that group; but I also ran across "Detroit: A Co-Ed's Secret Life," which is an A&E true crime video from 2006. And discovered an ATL R&B group called "Coed" from around 2000, as well as "coed" as a cheerleading category, "cute co-ed in panties," "banging a sexy coed on her period," a "co-ed" drunk driver, Maxim "college coed" Alisha, Playboy pics of a "coed," and so on. So, other than where the term might actually be relevant, at least by association (sports and cheerleading), it's mainly used to sexualize the idea of women college students. While Limbaugh is obviously being reactionary, I'm not as quick to say the same of the other uses: I don't think college party culture fits neatly onto a progressive-to-reactionary continuum. Not that I'm hella familiar with college party culture, or ever really was. Maybe if I had been, I'd not have been so surprised by the term "co-ed" still cropping up. By the way, there's an online "COED Magazine" that seems to be big on boobs.
(The bigger issue in America isn't the culture war over birth control and how much you should have sex or over what colleges teach and whether everyone should attend — Santorum is trying to make an issue of that, but he's dumb not to see that he's on the losing side — but the class war over whether the rich and the middle class are willing to pay taxes to support universal education and universal health care (in health care the discussion of taxes is being diverted to a discussion of the individual mandate, but the issue is essentially the same). In the first half of the last century the U.S. committed itself to universal education; starting with the tax revolts of the '70s and '80s and the "Reagan revolution," it's been reversing that commitment, but framing the issue as, "Why should we pay for them?" not "Do women and minorities and poor people belong in school?")
*Yes, I know there are advocates for single-sex education in specific circumstances, and that this argument won't quickly go away, but it's a tiny part of the discussion, not large enough to make the term "co-ed" relevant.
EDIT: Yikes, I'd embedded that George Murphy video without watching it all through; I chose it because it's from a 1938 comedy Hold That Co-Ed that I saw in college, starring a declining John Barrymore as a drunken governor who agrees to have his run for Senate decided by who wins the football game between State U. and its arch-rival Clayton; has a subplot involving State's female dropkicker/placekicker. Anyhow, looking at the entire routine, I see that that dance is problematic in a whole nother way. Also, on the subject of problematic videos, the Korean Co-Ed School made one we ran 13 months ago as part of my Problematic Korean Video Friday series, the video being problematic in a manner that's not all that dissimilar to the Limpy Dimp being problematic.
I'd have thought that in the U.S., at least, the term was archaic. Almost all schools in America now have male and female students.* I've never heard the term in conversation. However, in Korea, there is a mediocre K-pop group called "Co-Ed School," one of the few idol groups to have both males and females.
I first considered asking this question a week ago, when I'd hunted down an Erik Erikson quotation I'd remembered inexactly from having read it in 1970. It had stayed in my memory for a fundamentally different reason, the phrase "compared to what?," which relates to the psychosocial explorations of mine that I entitle "Relativism: So What?," and I'll give it its own entry one of these days. But I also remembered that it contained the term "co-ed," the word surprising me when I read it, and that's the word I used in the Web search that successfully tracked down the quote. I'd originally seen the passage in the Erikson collection Identity: Youth And Crisis, and in my memory I assumed the essay was from the late 1940s, the term "co-ed" dating it in my mind. Surprisingly, I see that the essay was based on a lecture that he gave in 1960. Although some prestige schools like Yale remained male-only until the late 1960s, I've assumed the term "co-ed" had been long moot by 1960, coeducation being so overwhelmingly common. Again, I don't recall ever hearing the word in conversation, and I grew up about a half mile from a college campus.
So last Wednesday, when Rush Limbaugh called Sandra Fluke a "slut" for advocating that her college include birth control in its health package, he started off, "What does it say about the college co-ed ... who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex?"
When searching YouTube for "Co-Ed" and "coed" in order to find vids for the K-pop Co-Ed School, I saw that most top hits were for that group; but I also ran across "Detroit: A Co-Ed's Secret Life," which is an A&E true crime video from 2006. And discovered an ATL R&B group called "Coed" from around 2000, as well as "coed" as a cheerleading category, "cute co-ed in panties," "banging a sexy coed on her period," a "co-ed" drunk driver, Maxim "college coed" Alisha, Playboy pics of a "coed," and so on. So, other than where the term might actually be relevant, at least by association (sports and cheerleading), it's mainly used to sexualize the idea of women college students. While Limbaugh is obviously being reactionary, I'm not as quick to say the same of the other uses: I don't think college party culture fits neatly onto a progressive-to-reactionary continuum. Not that I'm hella familiar with college party culture, or ever really was. Maybe if I had been, I'd not have been so surprised by the term "co-ed" still cropping up. By the way, there's an online "COED Magazine" that seems to be big on boobs.
(The bigger issue in America isn't the culture war over birth control and how much you should have sex or over what colleges teach and whether everyone should attend — Santorum is trying to make an issue of that, but he's dumb not to see that he's on the losing side — but the class war over whether the rich and the middle class are willing to pay taxes to support universal education and universal health care (in health care the discussion of taxes is being diverted to a discussion of the individual mandate, but the issue is essentially the same). In the first half of the last century the U.S. committed itself to universal education; starting with the tax revolts of the '70s and '80s and the "Reagan revolution," it's been reversing that commitment, but framing the issue as, "Why should we pay for them?" not "Do women and minorities and poor people belong in school?")
*Yes, I know there are advocates for single-sex education in specific circumstances, and that this argument won't quickly go away, but it's a tiny part of the discussion, not large enough to make the term "co-ed" relevant.
EDIT: Yikes, I'd embedded that George Murphy video without watching it all through; I chose it because it's from a 1938 comedy Hold That Co-Ed that I saw in college, starring a declining John Barrymore as a drunken governor who agrees to have his run for Senate decided by who wins the football game between State U. and its arch-rival Clayton; has a subplot involving State's female dropkicker/placekicker. Anyhow, looking at the entire routine, I see that that dance is problematic in a whole nother way. Also, on the subject of problematic videos, the Korean Co-Ed School made one we ran 13 months ago as part of my Problematic Korean Video Friday series, the video being problematic in a manner that's not all that dissimilar to the Limpy Dimp being problematic.
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no subject
Date: 2012-03-04 07:59 pm (UTC)What this tells you about Rush Limbaugh is an exercise left to the reader.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-04 08:15 pm (UTC)it's very much a 1950s-or-earlier term, to me.
It seems to always suggest, as meserach said,
some element of sex/ porn to it, like using "nubile."
no subject
Date: 2012-03-05 04:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-05 04:25 am (UTC)term and his mind is set in Bull Connor's/
George Wallace's 1950s.