The New Cleavage
   by Rich Young

The people are real. The names are changed to protect the innocent...and the not so innocent.

The moon is out, and its alluring presence is stealing Jack's concentration which should be focused on his fin exam essay. As I pace the aisles of my classroom, I notice several more moons and wonder if I should engage in some impromtu research. 

Count the number of moons exposed during exams and then juxtapose that number with the failing grades on the exams of my male students. Would there be a clear correlation connecting them?

The moon that has captured Jack's gaze belongs to Jane. Jane is, in the language of my students, a "hottie". Not only is she a "hottie", but her belly-button-revealing top and her low riding, hip-hugging jeans, combine to reveal an inch or two of very cute butt crack when she sits down.

Similar moons are out all over the room and the tattoos that accompany them announce that at least some of this exposure is intentional. This is not the same genré of nudity as the butt crack revealed when a tool belt pulls at the pants of the plumber.

This is not an oops-hide-me-quick nakedness. This is a here-I-am-come-gawk-at-me revelation of skin. But I wonder if Jane knows the effect her butt crack has on Jack?

College students have an amazing proclivity for sitting in the same seat at every class meeting all semester long. So, Jane has sat in front of Jack all semester. And all semester Jack has watched the show. 

I've watched him watch. I've watched the show too, engaging in minor skirmishes with lustful and lecherous thoughts of my own.

Most of us who make a life time of work in the academy understand that when a woman shows off her body, it is not intended as an invitation. Jane's exposed butt crack doesn't mean she is an "easy girl. It doesn't mean she wants guys to "use" her.

It doesn't even mean she wants Jack to ask her out, although technically he's free to do so. No, Jane's two inches of crevice are, at most an encouragement to "look, but sometimes even looking is rebuked. I've heard men reproached for "staring."

How dare he ogle her! But I've never heard a woman scolded for "showing". How dare she stick her butt crack in his face while he's trying to take a final!

I wonder how much exposure I should allow in my classroom before I have to include a "dress code" standard in my syllabus. I wouldn't accept any one engaged in out right "mooning" in my class room. How low will fashion have to go before I say "no?"

I also wonder if Jack and his male classmates understand the boundaries? Parts of our popular media are a constant stream of friends having sex with friends.

Not wrong by some moral standards, but very wrong by others. MTV and BET provide a regular diet of alluring women, showing off their bodies, and making themselves sexually available to men.

Does Jack understand that pop culture isn't the real world? Does Jack understand that Jane is the real world? Does Jack understand the difference?

I'm sure he does intellectually. I'm not so sure he does when his "intellect" has been pushed aside by the liberal application of a "beer bong." And when Jane sups from the alcohol stream too, the chances of an unplanned, unwanted sexual encounter increase.

I don't know the current statistics on date rape, but statistics don't matter when Jane or one of her classmates shows up at my office needing to "talk". The need to talk is usually motivated by fears.

Talking about the fears lead to tears, and then we find our way over to the college counselor's office. Testing for STDs and pregnancy follow. Drunken sex is never safe sex.

So what does all this have to do with Jane's butt crack? Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. I'm not sure. I don't like it that current fashion encourages young women to expose more and more of their bodies.

But I'm not for joining the fundamentalist Muslims and covering women from head to toe in a sack either. (Actually some of those on the extreme edges of fundamentalist Christianity want to cover their women completely too.)

I imagine fashion will eventually swing the other way and girls will cover up again. Then maybe Jack can come to class and focus on the content, not the cleavage.