All right, this has to be said now, as a proactive measure, before things get out of control and we're all running amok with torches and the earth opens up and swallows us whole (apparently the planet has never heard of Fletcherizing) and we all swirl around in its burning gut until it decides to belch some of us up, bulimicize others, and then just digest the rest for later ... evacuation.

I'm not into trends. I am not what you would call a trendsetter. Despite two rather trendy displays in high school — I was the second girl ito skulk her way through its halls wearing those flat black cotton Chinese maryjane-type shoes and the first to flaunt her anorexia in impossibly slim-cut Calvin Klein jeans — I prefer to buck the trend and avoid anything that would have people pointing their fingers at me and saying, "Now there goes a girl who has no mind of her own!" If people are going to point their fingers at me, it's going to be for something more memorable, like making the best scrambled tofu in all the land. Because I don't know if you know this, but you can tell that about a girl just by looking at her.

So, anyway, speaking of slim-cut Calvin Klein jeans (one of the hallmarks of good writing is a really smooth segue), the thing I was a-gonna mention here, the reason for my taking up your valuable time today, is related to jeans. And it's this: Please do not wear the "skinny jeans" that are being foisted upon us by the fickle fashion faction. I don't care if you're skinnier 'n spaghetti (or, really, vermicelli) and have legs like pipe cleaners. I don't care if Kelly Ripa wears them and you want to be just like her (because, really, who among us doesn't want to be Kelly Ripa). I don't care if Stacy London herself comes to your house with a pair of these atrocities swathed in shiny wrapping paper made out of Johnny Depp and tells you that if you wear them she'll be your BFF forever and ever. Refuse!

I will only relent to say that if you do decide to completely ignore my pleas (and thus give me no choice but to not so secretly hate you), at least restrict your wearing of these jeans to those occasions when you'll wear them tucked into boots — with the caveat that you do not, under any circumstances, include leg warmers as part of the ensemble. (Even Barbara Cooper couldn't pull that off 30 years ago.) The silhouette that is created otherwise — that of a top-heavy triangle teetering en pointe — just doesn't work.

Take a stand, ladies. And you, too, O gentlemen. (Yes, it is unfortunate that even the men are being encouraged to succumb to the fashion world's latest vagary.) Just say "no fucking way" to skinny jeans. Unless we stand united in our cause, skinny jeans will make the bank accounts of their manufacturers very fat while making us look it as well and encouraging the resurrection of another terrifying fashion trend, the oversized shoulder pad.