As the American suffrage movement succeeded in gaining rights for white middle- and upper-class women, heterosexual marriage became less of a necessity, and many more women went to college and continued to live in female-centric communities after graduation. The all-women peer culture formed at women's colleges allowed students to create their own social rules and hierarchies, to become each other's leaders and heroes, and to idolize each other. These idolizations often took the forms of romantic friendships, which contemporaries called "smashes", "crushes" and "spoons."