Sigg3.net's Notepad

Are zippers sexy or what?

I just took the elevator now, and I was checking myself out in the mirror - since there was nobody else there - and I took a peek at my front zipper, and I realized that it's quite an elegant piece of genius right there.

Now. In my humble opinion a well-functioning zipper that's working like a dream and blends seamlessly into the fabric in terms of colour, is to be considered quite sexy. If you embrace functionalism, that is. A functionalist would be the sort of person only zipping or unzipping when he needed to. No unnecessary zipping. A decadent artist, however, would probably zip and unzip anytime he wanted to. Quite free-spirited, if you know what I mean. Or sexually frustrated, if (s)he never zips it back up again.

But seriously. A black zipper on a classy dress with an elegant lady inside, is pretty sexy. Especially when it comes to the moment where you get to go behind her and unzip that valuable piece of engineering. It's like magic. You could argue that a true functionalist fanatic will have bust his nut at this point, and consequently ruined the evening for the nice lady, but that's besides the point. She can always call me.
In my experience, really large zippers are not that nice, but they never seem to lock up; whereas the small ones, which are nicer by appearance, have a tendency to lock up. In extreme conditions the small ones may even cause injury to the person wearing it.
This problem divides humanity into two groups: functionalists and aesthetes.

The functionalist maintain that the beauty of this piece of clothing, if you can call it that, lies in its seamless use. The functionalist also stresses that you should never rush a zipper, because that's the main reason they get jammed. The person unzipping is simply inexperienced, or in a state of psychological stress. If the women in the dress is also your boss, that would be understandable.
On the other side, an aesthete would claim that it is not the zipper itself, but its part in the artistic experience of this particular dressed-up lady and the totality of which [sic.] that is subject to our evaluations of beauty. An ill-functioning zipper does not necessarily ruin the evening, especially if it defuses the situation with regards to her being your boss and all.

For those who take utilitarianism seriously, which probably involves half the population of North America, the small amount of agony you place on the lady in the case where the zipper has caught some of her skin, is over-won by the great amount of pleasure you're about to receive. So summing up the totals of pain (d) and pleasure (h), d<h. The other half of North America is closer to Kantianism, which clearly states that you're doing great if and only if you're doing great in aiming to be as good as half an angel. So no doggy-style or naughty roleplaying. Zipper's got nothing to do with it.
Being European means being fatalistic about everything. We really don't care. Just do her and do her good, man, 'cause you're gonna die sometime very soon anyway. And then we'd have some absinthe and smoke cigarettes in bed, reading Strindberg.
Goes without saying that it's post-WW1 Europe I'm aiming at. The great recession. Rousseau and the likes around the French Revolution would just go: " Just take her clothes off and get on with it, will you?" But then they didn't have zippers back then, and were never faced with our predicament and its ramifications.

Some are even sceptical to the value of zippers at all. I mean, in some cases buttons are a lot sexier, since they're usually situated on the front, which makes for some interesting and intimate openings, and often results in some degrees of cleavage.
It's also a historical fact that buttons have been around longer, and are geographically more used than zippers are, and probably will be. Even in the Star Trek movies, which must suffice here as a casual prediction about our future, the uniforms haven't got any zippers. They don't have any buttons either, however. The clothes are so tight, that I suspect they are beamed on.

Of course, a full-blown functionalist, a real blood-serious functionalist fanatic, would probably just prefer all the women to be naked at all times; ridding us once and for all with the challenge of zippers and/or buttons. It'd be easier when you got down there to the club and met a girl, and instead of waking up all terrified the next morning, you'd just be like:
- You're a bit on the chubby side, aren't you? Nah, can't have my number. Can't be bothered. You'd have to lose a few pounds. But good luck with that in the future!

We all know that's either just fantasy or the part of nudist beaches where the bad apples hang out. And nudist beaches are far from the fantasies like the one above. They are scary places. Hardcore reality. No fear. And no erection. I've examined the effect before. It's a matter of titty-overkill. But I digress.

The perspective at least fits the male mentality, and one could conclude that all men are functionalists, because we really want our ladies naked. But that's jumping to a conclusion and missing a few steps. That would be some kind of stoneage functionalism. Brutus like, Brutus take. (Brutus can't open zipper. Stay, while Brutus get axe.) Most of us have, through the course of of the millennia, developed more cultivated tastes when it comes to female fashion.
That's not to say we don't like naked women anymore. On the contruary. The global population growth is only increasing, meaning there are plenty of naked women out there having unprotected sex with men who knows how to work a zipper. But what I'm getting at is that there's only so many women one man can take. And where women are scarce, men will instantly go into combat mode if they see a naked woman. I know this, having grown up in Northern Norway. We spend the better half of the Winter looking under rocks and travelling the fjords looking for women. We even have legends about secret paths and signs of nature leading the way. And winter lasts six months up there. It was hard. Many didn't make it. Having a zipper is a necessity for women in remote and rural areas, because they'll be harassed to death if they are naked. That is if they make it through the winter without freezing to death.

It's a cold world out there. I realize that this short text may not be leading anywhere at this point, because I got all side-tracked by the thought about naked women, but I've managed to do what I wanted to; namely to pave the way for this new field of research. It's by and large a field covering a variety disciplinaries, for instance sociology, psychology, anthropology, geology, archeology and the metaphysical areas of mathematics as well. As always the debate just needed a starting point, and for me that was today. Standing in the elevator, perplexed by the exhillarating brilliance that is the zipper experience.

Chances are you have used one today. Whether it was your own or not is none of my business. But did you stop and think about it? Probably not. Practically worn by everyone everywhere in western society, placed between your index and thumb when used, and let alone to perform its duty when you're going on with your life. It's like a little helper that you have complete confidence in, a guardian angel taking care of what matters the most; be it when you're in need to pass water, or to enhance your chances of bringing forth a new generation of little zipper-users.
And if used incorrectly it will reduce the probability of bringing forth new generations dramatically.
It's safe to say that zippers have an uncontested place of its own in human fashion, but more importantly, in human evolution.