A Service of The Arrow           Friday May 12, 2000 2:26 PM

Body parts have been showing up at Flathead High School lately. Knees. Elbows. Shoulders. Ankles. No, this is not another grisly horror flick — this is summer fashion.

If we turned the pages of the Arrow back to 1900, those ankles would be outlawed, and a shoulder would have caused apoplectic shock and scandal. Today, however, we are much more enlightened — skin cancer is not a problem, everybody is comfortable being the exact size they are, and there is no such thing as bikini wax… right?

Summer is a time of relief and joy for school-kids everywhere, from the tiny kindergarten tots to overgrown high schoolers busting at the seams trying to get out the doors first. But for most girls, it’s also the time when you suddenly realize you are no longer willing to wear that great mini-tee and micro-short outfit you bought at the end of last summer, when it was on sale. You simply can’t see it lookin‘ good over pasty white legs and that formerly unobtrusive bulge from over-indulging in Poptarts

The most obvious solution? Liposuction and the tanning booth! The most realistic solution? Diet pills and 10 bottles of tanning lotion! Now remember girls, being bulimic is not a crime. And those dark spots you get after being exposed to the sun for too long? If they’re malignant you can always have them removed. After all, exercise just makes you sweaty and it takes too long anyway. Our sunny season is shorter than that tee shirt Mr. Fusaro said you couldn’t wear as it is.

Perhaps the metaphor of bloody slaughter in the opening paragraph seems too brutal for you. But how much more brutal are severed body parts than having incisions made and tubes put in to suck the fat from your body, or removing splotchy cancerous skin from spending too much time under ultraviolet rays, and smearing hot wax over your inner thighs to rip out stray hairs by the roots? The only difference is that the latter is personal choice.

Time and Business Week feel the need to help people fit the mold, with stories about Androgel (the new instant buff maker for muscle-deprived men) and the power of dieting (high-carb versus no-carb). Even the Wall Street Journal recently ran an article on the WonderBra for the millenium — so much has changed, after all.

In America today, being sexy, or even just remotely good-looking, seems deeply tied into the idea of being perfect and having the perfect body, especially during the summertime. Congratulations to the 2-3 perfect people out there in the world, the guys with rippling pecs and beautiful smiles, and the girls that look like life-sized versions of Malibu Barbie. You have finally managed to destroy the self-confidence of every other person on the planet.

With all these ‘advances’ in society since that 1900 version of the Arrow, maybe by the next millennium they’ll have figured out a way to adjust the brain into realizing that self-inflicted torture doesn’t make you look ‘good’ — just dumb.

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