Tennessee native Tori Jenkins was kicked out of her apartment complex’s pool this week for wearing a swimsuit so scandalous, locals were frightened it “might excite teen boys.” So let’s take a look and see what all the fuss was about:
https://www.facebook.com/tyler.newman.79/posts/1321444714571292
Oh.
Yes, that is indeed a perfectly ordinary one-piece swimsuit, and yes, the people responsible for this are clearly a bunch of insane misogynists, and still would be even had it been the world’s most revealing micro-bikini. But they’re also completely misunderstanding the very raison dêtre of teenage boys, which is that literally everything “might excite them” at any given moment of the day. [Source: I have been a teenage boy, and so have many of my friends.]
The teen years’ nightmarish combination of fizzing hormones and underdeveloped willpower means that virtually everything a teenage boy looks at turns him on, so in no particular order, here are 51 other things that the jerks at this apartment complex could just as well have banned from their pool:
- Air
- Legos
- A ham sandwich
- The State of California Transportation Compendium of Law
- Sunscreen
- Wool
- Double-sided tape
- The greatest hits of Electric Light Orchestra
- Stairs
- Wheatgrass
- The sound of plates being stacked in the dishwasher
- Public transport
- Alka-Seltzer
- Their own armpit hair
- Lion-O
- Banana Bread Larabars
- Three Grumman F4F Wildcats flying in Vic formation
- Scissors
- Yucca plants
- The 12 major signs of the Zodiac
- Hand sanitizer
- Turkey (the country and/or bird)
- A box of 24 three-inch lug nuts
- Doorknobs
- Sippy cups
- Tim Allen’s cancelled sitcom, Last Man Standing
- Manatees
- Tupperware
- Lederhosen
- Picasso’s “Guernica”
- Chlorine
- Sunlight
- The plight of the endangered White Rhino
- The color red
- Chapstick
- Steering wheels
- The 131-ton propeller of the Emma Maersk, at one time the world’s largest container ship
- Jam
- Pop socks
- Eggs
- The chemical symbol for Lutetium
- Buttholes
- Peanut brittle
- The bicycle ridden by Louison Bobet when winning the 1955 Tour de France
- Cobwebs
- The Gherkin
- The collected works of rationalist philosopher Nicolas Malebranche [1638–1715]
- Shin splints
- Ear buds
- The clicking sound of an elderly relative’s jaw when they eat waffles
- Gravel
Nick Leftley
Nick Leftley is MEL's senior editor, or something like that, it's not entirely clear. He writes and edits stuff, and has been doing so since print magazines were actually a thing. He smells pretty good.
