By Ezekiel Buchheit
Arizona Daily Wildcat
April 20, 1998

Dressed to kill - with laughter

The other day, I witnessed one of the most brutal accidents. A woman was walking her drunk self home at 2:30 in the morning, dressed in what appeared to be latex pants, dental floss and platform shoes.

Platform shoes!

What is the world coming to when people dress up by wearing platform shoes? It's a travesty. People dress mainly for three reasons: One, to cover up their body and be allowed to go out legally. Two, to look good. And three, to help them accomplish whatever it is they are after.

What I mean by the third part is, carpenters wear little suits that allow them to hold tools, policemen wear outfits to drive fear into the heart of small children and judges wear muumuus to look like goons.

This girl had failed in about two of the three basic reasons to wear clothes. The atrocity of this situation was brought to my attention by my friend, Michelle, who, while under the influence of many alcoholic beverages, began a discussion with several other just slightly inebriated people about girls and tight, black, wet-leather or spandex pants that have become all the rage with us young folks and how insulting these clothes are to everyone capable of seeing them.

Men have a very simple decision when choosing clothes in the morning. It is either pants or shorts, T-shirt or long-sleeve shirt. That's really about it. You see guys dressed like this all the time and probably don't really think about it. It isn't until somebody breaks this rule that we become aware of the cultural standard. When you're in class and the guy sitting next to you is wearing those little-bitty shorts from the early '80s that just seem to leave his crotch out dangling in the wind, you suddenly become very aware of these rules. Of course some men, and these are the nineties version of the seventies leisure-suit-wearing, barhopping, wannabe pimps, try to jazz up their ensemble by wearing a belt so long so it dangles down in front, or pants large enough to house a small refugee family. I don't mind this style so much because I believe it serves a purpose for society. Society needs to laugh, and these clowns certainly provide the laughter.

Women have clothing rules too. The rules are, as best as I can figure them out, dress as revealingly as possible and then bitch about being seen as an object. Of course, this doesn't apply to all women. The other women's rule is, dress as revealingly as possible, sleep around and then bitch about not being able to find a deep, emotional, long-lasting relationship.

Chick clothes seem to fall into three categories:

1.) Economical. A good look, not too revealing, but not the middle-eastern, every-inch-of-your-body-must-be-covered look.

2.) Sexy. This is when women managed to find clothes that accentuate their features without necessarily placing them on display. It's sexy, but not pornographic.

3.) C.F.M. clothes. C.F.M. stands for "Come Fuck Me." I see this all the time and am appalled, and am forced to stop whatever I'm doing to dedicate my entire self to staring.

My editor once told me a story of some girls she saw at a bar. They were standing at the bar drinking, wearing category three clothes with platform shoes when one of them, totally unprovoked by any sort of movement, just kind of lost her balance with the shoes and collapsed to the floor where she was helped back up by her friends. That's a great idea. The next time I go drinking I think I'll where stilts. Stilts and some of those eighties shorts.

Ezekiel Buchheit is a freshman majoring in psychology. His column, "I Like Buscuits," appears every Monday. Ezekiel's major fashion statement is his silly Primus ski cap.