Last week, I watched a bikini contest. I was on Spring Break with four of my friends in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. and we went to a bar that boasted its status as a Spring Break “hot spot” with weekly bikini contests.

But the contestants weren’t really wearing bikinis – a swimsuit that would be acceptable on any beach or by any pool. Instead, they were parading themselves in strategically placed patches of nylon/Lyrca connected with clear strips of plastic. Picture a woman naked, save for swatches of fabric covering the places that the FCC bans from being shown on network television.

These girls were hot. And not one person, especially the 50-something emcee who was commenting on the girls in a way that made me nauseous, failed to notice this. My friend turned to me and pointed at a group of men standing about a hundred feet to our right.

“Watch how their heads turn in unison,” she said.

They did! In fact, we all turned in unison as the bikini girls pranced to the “runway” – a footbridge that spanned the width of the pool – and walked down it, posing in the middle. When the contestant posed – this usually involved the butt-jiggle made popular by hip-hop videos – we would all explode with the requisite “woooooooooo!” and clap, until we were transfixed by the next contestant.

And then I started having a bad time.

It was around 4 p.m. on a Sunday and most of the patrons at this “hot spot” were drunk. The sun was baking thousands and millions and trillions of alcohol molecules into their bloodstreams, creating a buzz of sun-drenched drunkenness that permitted as many “wooooooos” as they cared to screech and as many glances down our shirts as their eyeballs tolerated.

But as the bikini contest began, my good attitude waned, and an inevitable scowl – as unintentional as it may be – appeared in full force. So did my judgment. I rolled my eyes as the band played one bad mainstream rock cover after another. I huffed aloud when they played the same Creed song for the second time.

One guy sitting next to me asked me a question, and I must’ve responded with an exaggerated answer because he asked me if I was serious. When I replied, “Well no, but you know … metaphorically speaking,” he told me that he didn’t know what that meant.

I felt worse because I couldn’t figure out why I was having such a horrible time while my friends, who are smart girls who know the meaning of “metaphorically,” were laughing and dancing.

The bikini contest itself wasn’t the thing that was bothering me. I’m not a man-hating, armpit hair-sporting, neo-feminist. I say more power to the girl who is devoted to the gym and to regular waxing of, literally, every square inch of her body. I say cheers to the chick who can prance down a runway sporting patchy swimwear and divorce herself from the ogles from drooling men and the whispers from women who say she’s lying about her age. Hoorah for the girls who do these bikini contests on a weekly basis because, if they win, it’s an easy thousand bucks.

When I was in high school, I used to watch MTV’s coverage of Spring Break. Camera crews would follow groups of drunk, horny co-eds in places such as South Padre Island and Daytona Beach. I watched this coverage because I was attracted to it by a morbid fascination, similar to my attraction to karaoke. I love watching the guy with the giant beer gut slurring along to “Every Rose Has Its Thorn.” I love it because I know that that will never be me.

But unfortunately, it was me last week. I never sang karaoke, but I went to Spring Break “hot spots” and one night, I even curled my hair before I went out. I just don’t get the idea of Spring Break or the party attitudes of “spring-breakers” and I probably never will.

There’s an air of promenade to Spring Break. We were all on display, bikini contestants or mere civilians, for those on the prowl. That’s what mostly made me uncomfortable. I don’t like getting attention because I’m wearing a bathing suit; I’d much rather someone be attracted to what I’m talking about, “big” words and all.

My vacation means sitting on the beach, with a book or a magazine, in my chair by the shore so the ocean can touch my feet. I speak only when necessary. My schedule revolves solely around the application of SPF 30 sunblock.

Going out to bars, drinking ’round the clock and trying to meet people for the sake of things that probably cannot be printed in a university newspaper, is not a vacation to me. Putting myself in a social, alcoholic situation where there’s an abundance of bumping and grinding puts the unintentional scowl on my face, while my friends are able to laugh and chalk it up to a college experience that most people end up having. The thing is that this just requires too much effort, and isn’t a vacation about minimal effort?

Call me a snob; call me a party pooper. I’m just left here, sitting at my computer, at a loss for whatever point I intended to make about Spring Break. All I can do is shake my head, and say, “I just don’t get it.”

But at least I have a good tan.

Allison Keiley, a senior in the College of Communication, is a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press.