May the winter clouds blow a summer out and some modesty in. If not, then may our eyes become immune to the parade of flesh that marches to and fro in every corner of this den of skin. May we ignore the lingerie smiles that peak above denim masks. May we forget of easily accessible flesh and class-time voyeuristic opportunities. May we not notice the pierced navels, the bare midriffs, the heaving bosoms that thrust with magnitude at every shake of the hips, every jiggle of the belly and every corpulent wiggle.
May we just have some dignity and cover up.
Thank goodness winter is upon us; the skimpy outfits were too much for one person to handle. This person at least was plenty tanked up on the female form. And what a miraculous form it is with its curves, its subtle treasures, its soft texture, its versatile existence.
But alas, that does not mean women should come to school nude, or even half-nude — thong accenting hips, sorority gym shorts riding crack, stomach exposed, boobs dangling, back bare.
Who's to say we look? I try with all my might not to, only because that would be the minority response and preserving any mystery left with the public female image is vital for continuing the respect of those with XX chromosomes. That is what women boast with their body — mystery, that is — not the superfluous barely there wardrobe or the not-so-secret underoos.
Director George Roy Hill (famous for The Sting and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) always said it was far sexier to see a nude woman shrouded by a mist, darkness or some other opaque, hard-to-see-through drapery than to see a fully nude woman head on. He used that ideology when directing Katharine Ross in Butch Cassidy and he created a truly magical moment with a beautiful woman using no nudity. The basis for men's attraction to women and their bodies is not the skin, but the mystery, the inaccessibility to what they can't see.
Yet, take a stroll on campus and the exhibition of exposed flesh is so abundant, you'd swear ASU was a satellite campus for NU, a very fictional Nude University, where nudists and naturalists dance the day away with nothing but sandals and backpacks slung to their naked frames.
Unlike real nudist colonies, NU wouldn't feature (I'm guessing here) overweight high school principals and Internet dorks spending their days ogling saggy, free-spirited women who don't mind having the mystery and privacy cleaned from their nudity.
Sexiness is great, so are women's bodies and thongs for that matter (even if they may cause hemorrhoids or rectal dysfunction), but that should never be magnified onto every woman who steps onto this soon-to-be winter wonderland.
Hopefully, since it's getting colder, women (and some immodest men too) will cloth up, cover up and warm up with the winter chills. Females are wonderful, and if this clothing snafu were related to just one woman on campus — a stripper-turned-PR-major — then there would be no reason to carry on about modest dress and the mysterious complexities of the feminine form. Heavens, there'd be no reason to complain at all, because we'd all catch a look and call it quits, already bored of just one woman's naked perkiness.
But, almost every woman is half clothed... and distressingly so too. Maybe Old Man Winter will fix that.
Unless, of course, see-through parkas, fur thongs and heated crack-wedged gym shorts become a fashion staple.
Michael Clawson is a Journalism junior. Reach him at michael.clawson@asu.edu.
