To the editors:

FM's scrutiny this week, "What is Beauty?" (Oct. 5), puts forward a perceived Harvard ideal woman: "blond, sophisticated, wealthy, slim, petite, beautifully dressed and even more beautifully connected." It then discusses this ideal with Jewish, Asian and black students, who express varying opinions on the subtle pressures of plastic surgery and what kinds of girls get picked up first at a bar.

I appreciate FM's effort to sample several ethnicities, but (ignoring race for a moment) they are addressing a narrow cross-section of the social world here at Harvard. The article made a tacit assumption about the personalities of all these beautiful people: The Harvard ideal woman is a well-dressed socialite, and everyone here wants to be one. Reading the FM article, I had the same feeling I get every time I pick up a women's magazine like Cosmopolitan or Glamour: this has no relation to my life.

Almost every article on campus social life focuses on the issues of the final clubs, partying and bar-hopping set of students and their complaints about the lack of parties, the strict drinking rules and the dating scene. This group is only a subset of Harvard students, yet we hear exclusively about their particular social concerns.

My friends do not worry about being noticed by strangers in bars. Most of us do not even wear make-up on a regular basis, never mind consider plastic surgery. We've never stepped in the door of a final club, nor do we want to.

We spend so little time thinking about the "Harvard ideal" that we couldn't even tell you what it is. Most important, we're not the tiny minority the FM article paints us to be.

There seems to be this other Harvard, populated by the stereotypes of what college students should be that completely ignores what most of us really are. Constant exposure to this stereotyped image can invalidate our personal preferences; by treating the standard partying social life as the only option, these articles undermine other forms of social interaction here on campus.