Flossing Your Butt and Other Takes on Modesty
Not counting time away from school for any mental readjustments, i.e., trips to the sanitarium to receive shock therapy, a kick from an iron boot and bloodletting, I’ve been in school for a shade under a decade. Fall semester 2001 marks the beginning of my seventh year of school. Fortunately, the whole bachelor’s degree/60 credit revisit of high school marathon is over and done with.
I’m racing to a master’s now.
However, please don’t get the impression I’m complaining. I love school, and that’s the problem.
I’m a career student.
As a full-time, eternal student at Utah State University there are a few sights, sounds and smells that zip me through 7-plus years of Aggie nostalgia. Some of the sights include items that say, “Welcome back. We’ve been waiting for your return.” “Sit back and have a Valium.” “Yes, that 14-page textbook is $80.”
For instance, you know returning to college was only a whisper away when you feel at home trying to wrestle a parking spot from the army of cars in the lot next to the terrace.
Adding to the Aggie memories is the not-quite-ripe smell blowing out of the large vent at the end of The Hub. It’s a mixture of cleaning solution, grease, lasagna, doughnuts, something that smells like onion soup and coffee.
And no current or former student can forget that bloated, cramping, nauseous Rocky Mountain quick-step feeling that comes when you know you’re 20 minutes late for a class (if you’ve never had that feeling, chances are you’ve been here longer than me and will never graduate).
However, nothing compares to the warm embrace of campus fashion. Based on the current standards of my shock-o-meter, I thought nothing bordering or crossing the line of insanity could make me gasp. My gauge is fueled by years of on-campus wardrobe advancement – if you want to use that word, generously – and spending a week on a Royal Caribbean cruise ship with stops in Jamaica and Mexico. There, the preferred swimming garment was the thong. Yes, that little strip of Lycra, spandex and cotton that fits snugly between a person’s rump cheeks, regardless of gender, hair quantity or weight.
I realize Cindy Crawford, Tyra Banks and Estelle Warren may wear thongs, and hey, perhaps Ricky Martin, The Backstreet Boys and Tom Cruise sport the thong, too. But celebrity swim wear choices still do not excuse a person from wearing something so hideous that it brings to life images of someone flossing their butt. Not pretty.
Fortunately, I have never seen a USU student sporting a thong on campus. That is one positive. One.
Instead, I see guys with pants around their hips, wearing tight white tank tops that creep up around their mid-section, showing their nether regions to all who happen to be languishing in their wake. Most look like they stepped out of a Tommy Hilfiger advertisement, or were part of a disgusting government experiment to clone the members of N’Sync.
Most females on campus look like they all went shopping at Old Navy – together. Brittany Spears, Christina Aguilera and a host of other Carson Daly products and projects, may be the hippest and coolest thing to mirror. That doesn’t mean flaunting crack (not the drug), showing the small of your back (which can be sexy, behind closed doors) and wearing shirts so tight I can tell the make, model and year of your bra (which seems to be the plumfire Victoria’s Secret Dream Angels bra, with gel-filled cups), is right and tasteful.
I don’t know why I even bring this up.
To use a tired cliché, girls will be girls and boys will boys. Nothing I say will ever change the tight pants, low-riding pants, tight shirts and short-shorts worn by the people of the world. They aren’t bad folks, they’re just fashion challenged and probably a bit naive. And, I guess, when you look at the big picture, those people who hug the guardrail of fashion and other similar realms are the individuals who add spice and vivacity to life.
Refreshing, isn’t it?
Welcome back. If you need me, I’ll be at The Hub eating onion soup.