Celebrations of spring can be traced back to the ancient Greeks and Romans, whose debaucherous lifestyles valued the season of fertility and awakening in tandem with honoring the god of wine.

The American equivalent began in 1936, when a swimming coach from Colgate University brought his team down to Fort Lauderdale to train at the Casino Pool, the first Olympic-size swimming pool in Florida. In 1938, the city hosted 300 swimmers for the first College Coaches’ Swim Forum at the Casino Pool. A tradition of college students traipsing around Florida for Spring break was born.

By the 1970s, Fort Lauderdale was renamed Fort Liquordale, and fun merged with recklessness as “balcony-diving” and promiscuous activity became prominent. In 1986, MTV launched its first spring break special from Daytona Beach, Florida, which only reinforced spring break’s reputation for alcoholic and sexual excess, and pre-break anorexic stints. Girls Gone Wild videos documented girls exposing themselves. Many universities began to distribute “safe break bags” to their students — including sunscreen and condoms. SHOCKING!!

With the recent release of “Spring Breakers” featuring Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, and a corn-row sporting James Franco, spring break becomes romanticized into an almost hellish fantasy, whereas in reality the majority of the American population have had to cut back on expenses and are staying home (and watching the movie).

Not all spring break plans have to be dangerous, however! This spring break, whatever your plans are, make sure you have fun, cut loose, and be safe!

And make sure you’ve got at stash of SweetSpot On-the-Go Wipettes handy. Perfect for jet-setting and party-hopping.

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Illustration by Cecilia Salama

Darwin’s Theory of Sexual Selection, which he wrote about in On the Origin of Species and The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, shows that females prefer males with certain exaggerated physical characteristics. This is because females link these characteristics to strength and a strong ability to survive.

The best example of sexual selection is the beautiful iridescent blue-green plumage of the peacock. The peacock with the most oversized train and loudest call both serves as a warning to predators and other peacocks, as well as attracts female peafowls. The more brilliant the tail and crest feathers are, the more visible the peacock is to predators, and the longer the plume, the harder it is for them to escape. This shows that only the most fit birds would be able to survive this beautiful handicap.

At any rate what it comes down to is that peacocks with the best feathers got the best gals. Funnily enough this theory translated to that species homo sapiens and is how we coined the term “peacocking” which usually happens at the beginning of a courtship when a guy performs grand gestures aka becomes a totally obnoxious exhibitionist in order to impress a girl. (Sound familiar?)

WELL, it seems like peacocking goes back even further than the peacocks. You may not know that paleontologists recently concluded that all dinosaurs had feathers to aid them with insulation in cold weather. It was also discovered that a certain oviraptor called a Similicaudiptery found in China, Mongolia, and Alberta during the Cretaceous period.

Through fossil evidence, Scott Persons, a paleontology researcher at the University of Alberta, discovered that the final vertebrae in the tails of Similcaudiptery were fused together, forming a ridged, blade-like structure called a pygostyle, similar to a paper fan, also found in modern day birds. Oviraptor tail adapted to be both very muscular and flexible, in order to fan their tail feathers. Combined with its crest feathers, the oviraptor became a bit of a Cretaceous exhibitionist.

SO, next time you see  a man dancing on a bar top wearing some super snazzy clothes, you can roll your eyes and say, “UGH that’s SO prehistoric!”

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