Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
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August 24–31, 2000

book quicks

Breaking Out: VMI and the Coming of Women

By Laura Fairchild Brodie
Pantheon, 350 p., $26

When, in July of 1996, the United States Supreme Court nullified single-sex admissions at the Virginia Military Institute (VMI), diehard fans of tradition — Virginia natives, VMI alumni and faculty — worried how far coeducation changes would go. Would VMI still be VMI?

VMI committed itself to changing as little as possible — Didn’t these women want the VMI experience in the first place? — and, as of the first few coed classes, has succeeded. Laura Fairchild Brodie, author of Breaking Out, is the wife of VMI’s band director, served on one of VMI’s assimilation committees and even taught English there part time. But if she is an insider, with a native’s understanding of Southern culture, she is at times a reassuringly bemused one. She is also a self-proclaimed feminist and provides a very readable, even-handed account of the transition, from soup to nuts.

Brodie sets the stage with brief but thorough histories of the school and events surrounding the Supreme Court ruling, then takes us into committee meetings where everything from hair length to dating to the number of pull-ups required for both fairness and physical fitness is discussed. We follow the first coed class through the introductory rituals of Hell Night and the "ratline," among many other close-up peeks at the institution. Haircuts as well as menstruation and related privacy issues were discussed ad nauseam at VMI, and so they are in the book as well.

Brodie’s folksy narrative style and the wealth of information she conveys occasionally lead to confusion: Lack of toilet stall doors, for example, is included in a description of no-privacy military training. We find out much later, however, that male cadets have always pulled the doors off themselves, for no apparent reason; military philosophy leaves off where self-governing cadets come in. Freaky, abusive homoerotic rituals like this aren’t discussed as such. But that would take a whole book, now, wouldn’t it? In the end, Breaking Out is a solid look at a fascinating place that is as oddball as it is traditional.

Jenn Carbin

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