EDITOR’S NOTE: An individual’s name has been withheld to protect his job.
Although university officials have been working to get more students excited about Terps athletics, a Twitter account devoted to cleavage probably wasn’t what they had in mind.
A national trend in college fandom has spread to this campus in the form of @UMDBoobs, a place where female students can show off their school spirit — and decolletage. Matt, a 2009 graduate of this university who asked to remain anonymous to protect his job, created the account about two weeks ago after hearing about similar accounts at other schools.
The trend started at the University of Kansas in March. During a basketball game against rival University of Missouri, a female student tweeted out a photo of her cleavage with #KUboobs to show support for her team. When the Kansas Jayhawks won by one point, superstitious fans credited the win to the picture, inspiring a Twitter account and what many are calling a “boobment.”
By January 2013, that account had more than 30,000 followers and hundreds of submissions. A slew of copycats sprung up, supporting sports teams coast to coast. Women don their best — and lowest cut — university shirts, take pictures of their cleavage and send them in as good luck charms for their college’s sports teams.
“The Kansas account went viral,” Matt said. “I saw that NC State had one and UNC had one, so I figured I would jump on in and see if it would take off.”
@UMDBoobs hasn’t seen quite the same success, with only about 1,200 followers so far and about four submissions. Matt said the account is picking up attention, though, from university athletes — both male and female — as well as @FakeWallaceLoh.
While the trend allows women another outlet to express their fandom, it also sexualizes women by depicting them as objects, said Molly Bauman, a sophomore psychology and women’s studies major. That’s why she created the account @UMDKnees — a parody of @UMDBoobs.
“At first I was kind of pissed off at the idea of it but when I went on and saw it, it wasn’t as important as I thought it would be. There weren’t that many people contributing,” Bauman said. “I took the satire route and I wanted to point out the utter absurdity of using a dismembered part of a woman’s body under the same guise as rooting for a sports team.”
Other people may decide to send in pictures, said Abbie Petulante, a freshman physics major, but there are better ways to show school pride.
“It doesn’t seem like it sends the team any real support,” Petulante said.
However, the account isn’t meant to be creepy, said Matt, a self-described Terrapins “fanatic.” There are few names or faces, keeping it almost entirely anonymous as it celebrates female fans, who he said don’t get enough credit for their zeal and support.
He also uses the account to interact with sports teams he thinks don’t get enough attention.
“In sports, most of the time you hear about the crazy fans, but they’re males. You don’t often hear about really awesome female fans,” Matt said. “Obviously girls are hesitant because they don’t know much about it. I just want to make sure that everyone knows that it’s respectful, it’s classy.”
Matt says he tries to tweet out support for the university’s women’s teams, like basketball, cheerleading and gymnastics, “so they know that their sports are important to us, too,” Matt said.
“I did it because I thought it would be a new way for Maryland fans to show their pride,” Matt said. “It was something that hadn’t been done before.”
He doesn’t want nude pictures, he said — he explicitly states that in the account’s description.
“I wouldn’t post anything even close to that,” he said. “If I got an email like that I would delete it.”
It’s all about the sports teams — for now. As the account’s following grows, he wants to use the attention to promote breast cancer awareness. He said he would like to reach out to Susan G. Komen for the Cure, which raises money for breast cancer research, and get involved, “whether it’s participating in a run or setting up some kind of account where people can donate money directly to them.”
There’s another side to that argument, though — asking women to send pictures of their cleavage could be perceived as degrading, said Jill Santos, Feminists for Sexual Health vice president.
“Feminism to me is all about choice, so if people want to go on this site and post their pictures up there, that’s fine, and I’m not going to shame them or stop them,” said the sophomore criminology and criminal justice and psychology major.
While Santos doesn’t think the account itself is offensive, she is worried about the possible consequences. It plays into a larger social question of how people treat women and what society expects from them, Santos said.
“I don’t think it would be the right thing to stop [women from sending photos in], but I do think it’s the right thing to take a step back and look at what kind of major problems this plays into,” she said. “If people around the country start looking at these sites and expecting more of college women than what is already so expected of them to act like this, that’s where it becomes problematic.”
There’s also the issue of how it portrays this university, said Dan Jones, a junior criminology and criminal justice major. It paints the women who attend this university with a broad brush, and not in a positive way.
“I think it puts Maryland women as a whole in a bad light and I don’t think it sends the right message about Maryland athletics the way they would like it,” Jones said. “I think it’s skeezy and degrading, but it comes down to freedom of speech — it’s consenting adults who want to send in pictures and I have no right to stop them.”
Matt said he was surprised by some of the negative reactions.
“It’s upsetting that people think I’m degrading women because I don’t look at it like that at all. I think it’s celebrating them,” Matt said. “I look at it as a way to show off the female fans on campus who don’t really get enough credit.”
