When I came to Wesleyan nigh onto four years ago, things were a bit different round these parts: existence was still in black and white, movies were referred to as “talkies,” and women — once derided as “barnacles on the good ship Wesleyan” by a trustee — were making their glorious return to Wesleyan University. I arrived at Wesleyan in the fall of ‘aught-four, a strapping young college lad with suitcase in hand and ascot in neck. While I planned to double major in haberdashery and phrenology, I soon found myself beset with bewilderment and bewonderment by the fairest of sexes. And in the four years that followed — through all the heartache and hand jobs, the rejections and erections, the seeming infinite joy and timelessness of laying together in bed with one’s lover till daybreak, simply reveling in the metronomic symbiosis of breathing in her air and exhaling your own…and fisting — I have found one thing, and one thing alone to be true: I love Wesleyan women.

For one, where in the Hell do they get those clothes?!? I mean really, sometimes I feel like every fucking girl at this school has, like, 50 fucking pashminas. I mean, honestly, the fact that I fancy myself as a heterosexual male and I know what a pashmina is just proves how head-over-heels, punch-drunk, roofied-up in love I am with the women of this school. Each time I even type that word — “pashmina” — I feel my testicles shrivel up into my body out of some visceral reaction to those flowing cashmere stoles, but I can’t help it. Every time I see some girl stroll through the main room of Olin with some paisley pashmina they bought from a one-armed, three-nostrilled gypsy on the streets of Prague, I feel my heart swell like a balloon, like some larger destiny has brought us together and I’ve known that pashmina forever, like I was there as that rugged shepherd sheared the fine hairs of his pashmina goat on the foothills of the Himalayas, like everything that has happened in my life has led up to this moment, as the sinewy frills of that silken fabric grace by my face.

And that’s just the neck. Take a look at yourself in the mirror, female reader. The rest of your body is a veritable sartorial timeline dating back to the Bronze Age. Argyle sweater you nabbed off your grandpa at his funeral? Brings out your eyes! Hoop skirt? To the max, and with authentic whalebone casing to boot! Sequined tapestry you stole from a homeless man in Guatemala? ¡Muy bonita! And take a look at your feet. Now, I’ve been here for almost four years, and I can honestly say that I have never seen one female at this school wearing the same pair of shoes. Seriously. Sneakers, boots, goulashes, sandals, high heels, stilts, roller skates, rollerblades; every single pair of pedal attire I have seen at this school on the feet of females has been different from the last. Your shoes are like snowflakes; furry, clunky, shiny snowflakes, ubiquitously unique in their individuality.

Now, as superficial as all these declarations of affection may seem, I see these aesthetic observations as a means to understanding what it is I truly love about the women of this school. Obviously, I guess this goes without saying, but everything I’ve said above is mired in my own interactions with the fairer sex at this school, a specific demographic that happens to be predominantly white, heterosexual, and able to afford the preponderance of clothes I may adore. But I really feel my admiration and adoration for Wesleyan women extends beyond these corporeal differences. There is a fierce independence, an undeniable streak of individuality that runs through the women I have had the pleasure of coming in contact with. Sure, the women at this school may not resemble the full-body-waxed, orange-skinned, headband-as-miniskirts labioplasties that attend some of our other American universities, but the females here are, as far as I can see, unashamedly women. And given the choice between some artificially-enhanced bionic Posh Spice-wannabe flashing her Silicone Valley to all assembled and a free-flowing, self-confident, life-embracing female who gyrates like a jello mold in the hands of a strung-out heroin addict at the sound of the first few beats of “Kids”…I would choose the latter every time.