If people aren’t more careful, someone’s going to lose an eye around here.

I almost lost one Monday afternoon, innocently walking to class, when I encountered the world’s boniest hips jutting out into space. The offending individual was a young woman who wore her jeans low around her hips and her shirt ended about three inches above that.

Now while I believe it is every woman’s right to wear her jeans that low, these jeans didn’t appear to house a woman, but a skeleton.

There is a skinny epidemic on this campus. I don’t mean a lack of overweight people, but an abundance of women who look like they’ve been fasting since about 1998.

The ratio of pounds on these women to hours they spend in the rec worries me. Certainly, it’s important to exercise, eat well and maintain a healthy weight. However, 110 pounds is not a healthy weight for someone who is 5-foot-9.

How frickin’ skinny are women being told they need to be? Who finds this attractive? Not to brag, but I’ve seen my fair share of women in their birthday suits and I don’t get the appeal of being tiny. Being ridiculously thin just makes a woman look like she hasn’t hit puberty yet, and when you’re 20, you don’t want that. Curves are what make you look like a woman. It’s sexy. Twelve-year-old boys are not.

I’ll admit that, while I’m not overweight, I used to envy these stick people. Maybe it was because I thought the world would find me more attractive 20 pounds lighter. Maybe I admired their discipline.

But when I inadvertently dropped some weight this summer due to a lack of beer and fast food, I didn’t like what I saw in the mirror. I looked sick, like I’d been bedridden all summer. I had the jutting hips problem too, and my ribs were everywhere. All the efforts my hormones made during puberty to actually make me look female had somehow gone down the toilet. I vowed that, with some help from McDonald’s, Anheuser-Busch and my couch, I would pack the pounds back on. It’s taken some (enjoyable) work, and so far, so good.

Still, Eastern is haunted by this army of toothpicks. If these girls don’t start chowing down, we’re all in trouble.

It’s been said, that famous women are often famous because their anatomy is inhuman. There is no need to make yourself look like that. Take a good look at the next guy who starts talking smack about a girl with a few curves. Is he any prize? Is it worth denying yourself cheese fries to impress him? Perhaps I’m a biased opinion, but members of that particular arm of the patriarchy are welcome to shove it if they don’t appreciate my campaign for curves.

Yes, you heard me. I’m not blaming the walking skeletons for their condition. I’m blaming the (male) jerks who tell them, through magazines, movies and television what they should look like.

I, of course, don’t blame every man alive for the starvation of these women. Sir Mix-a-Lot, a confirmed male, said it best with “So Cosmo says you’re fat? Well I ain’t down with that.” But I’m afraid he is in the minority.

Ladies, the men on this campus are not so fly that you need to be as thin as a mop handle to attract their attention. To hell with them, lets go to Arby’s and get sexy.

*Fetty is the News editor and semi-monthly columnist for The Daily

Eastern News. Fetty also is a junior journalism major.

She can be reached

at 581-2812 or

[email protected]