As someone of faith, a college student of the hard sciences with a strong background in the humanities, an international traveler and entrepreneur extraordinaire, I feel that I am generally well-outfitted for the task of comprehending the little oddities of day-to-day experience. However, of all the things I have seen in this world, there are two I just don't understand: Chinese finger cuffs, and the recent trend of having writing on one's rear end.
Let's start with the latter, as I have exceedingly little to say about finger cuffs, aside from the comment that one cannot reach inner happiness until he and his opponents both lay down their Judo chops, cuff together their digits and shimmy hand-in-hand into the Pagoda of Peace. Now: the writing on the rears. What does this say about our society? The trend has plastered the last names, sports teams, and school affiliations of countless young women onto their hitherto blank butts. I am kept up at night feeling the ulcers slowly form as I ponder the unanswerable question: should we embrace this new trend?
A part of me weeps with joy every time I spy a consonant on a caboose. Taking momentum from the movement started by V-day and the Vagina Monologues, I believe the butt-writing craze is the next phase in the women's movement. It is a watershed, marking the beginning of an era of social openness towards rear ends, and I welcome its long time in coming. For the first time, butts are literally entering the social dialog, annunciating in bold, ironed-on letters affixed to cheap sweatshirt material. No more will butts be silent! "Smith!" "VAGUE!" "G U BEARS!" The butts are out, and there's no buts about it.
Surrounded by so many loud and liberated butts, I lament that my own back seat is such a quiet ride. I have no appropriate team or affiliation for which my luscious lyre might sing. My last name is too long, or my butt is too small. An ironed-on "MATH CLUB," while perhaps liberating my backside, would put the remainder of me in a bit of a tight spot with the ladies.
The fact that my G.M., if given the chance, would say things that are not socially advantageous for me brings about the first of my concerns about the butt-writing fad. Now, I know we've all been told not to judge a book by its cover, but I'm pretty sure the people who said that meant the front cover-there's nothing wrong with judging by the back cover. Up till now, the only thing that's kept my tail feather in the social scene is the fact that not everyone can read butts. But, everyone and his foreign friend can speak the English. Pasting some undesirable English to my butt will only make it a universal bad read and ensure that no one will want to chase after it.
A part of me also questions the sincerity of the word of the butts. At what point do words on the shaker stop being meaningful dialog and start to become nothing more than visual spam on par with billboards, posters, and traffic signs? Are butts becoming just one more thing to avoid reading? I'll have you know that I have plenty of assigned reading to avoid; I do not need more words thrown in front of my face and then wiggled back and forth from side to side, to side to side.
And then I get really angry when I ask myself: in these modern times, is there any way to avoid reading? Now that writing has been scrawled upon butts, I've even caught myself reading in class, something which I am heatedly against. What was so wrong with the unprosodied be-dun-ka-dunk? Has the American attention span gotten to be so fleeting that it will not even focus on a fanny unless lured by the challenge of deciphering what noun is written upon it?
The Pagoda of Peace was not built in a day, nor by men in finger cuffs, two truths that I think shed light upon our discussion. Butt-writing may only be the beginning of the liberation of body parts long held mute, locked under restricting cotton and lace, satin, velvet. While this liberation is important, it also necessary to have restraint-to have balance. A butt that speaks but has nothing to say be not heard by the ears of other rears. I find peace in that, and I hope you do too.