“You must be a model or something.” I was wearing a jersey, shorts past my knees, sandals and socks. I looked down at my half-devoured chicken hoagie. Look, I’m not exactly perceptive — up until the night of my parents’ wedding reception, I had been under the distinct impression that my stepdad was black. He’s Polish. But I realized that this stranger’s powers of perception rivaled my own.

I turned around to be face-to-chest with a 5’7” coke fiend with an obvious case of the jitters. I would’ve thought he was joking, but the unguarded lust in his one steady eye told me this man was sincere. Like most of the lady-kind, I know that genuine compliments are as rare as leftovers at WeightWatchers, so I decided to fan the fire.

“Excuse me?” Translation: I’ve been alone in Boston for three weeks. I created an eHarmony profile. My standards are not what they once were.

“Dang girl, you’re looking sexy.”

The first guy to ever refer to me as sexy to my face was quite noticeably a crackhead. And you know what? If I didn’t already have plans to not do illicit drugs on the bank of the Charles that evening, I’m sure we would have had a lovely date.

In fact, the concept of sexiness has always evaded me. I have been intrigued by it my entire life, but have never been able to accomplish it. In 7th grade health class, we could write one anonymous question and put it in a box. Mine was “sex appeal: what the hell is it and how can I get my hands on some of that?” Mrs. Jacobs deemed it unworthy of an answer.

As a youngster I turned to Disney movies for most life lessons, and the skill of sex appeal was no exception. At the very beginning, all the ladies that landed the Disney guys were either poor and dusty, partially dead, narcoleptic, or non-human. And our friend Walt must have conducted less thorough research than I, because empirical evidence has shown that wearing dirty duds à la Cinderella doesn’t win you Prince Charming, trying to choke on your lunchroom apple only lands you in the nurse’s office, and forcing kisses on unsuspecting preschool boys at naptime is frowned upon by overweight kindergarden teachers. Oh yeah, and it’s Lady and the Tramp. Not Lady is a Tramp. I blame that little mistake for my eighth grade wardrobe.

In high school, I learned about the glittery magic of Victoria’s Secret: the wonderful little world where camel toes are queen and wedgies are photographed in black and white. Gorgeous women with Dolly Parton cleavage ordered me to “play with them” and “tickle them” from my television. Okay Tyra, you’ve got me convinced.

I wandered through the golden and pink pillars of Victoria’s Secret, trying to figure out whether the creeping feeling of nausea was caused by the inordinate use of lace and oddly placed bows, or the 57-year-old man who had spent at least 10 minutes resting his hands on a pile of thongs with his eyes closed. It turned out to be the former. I wore white ankle-high Adidas socks as I stared at myself in the golden mirrors of the V.S. changing rooms. As I reflected on whether I had put the right bodily extremities through the right holes of the lacey pink torture device they called a négligée, I couldn’t help but mumble, “Oh, my god. I look like Squat Thrust Barbie.”

To this day, I still feel like Rambo in Victoria’s Secret — camouflaged in this lady-suit, attempting to blend into a foreign territory packed with glitter bombs and perfume missiles. Everything is pink and silky and whimsical, and between my red sweat suit, ginger-vitis affliction, and body by Nike, I am the human manifestation of the Cornell Big Red. I stick out worse than Chyna actually in China, and if my chest wasn’t directly in my line of peripheral vision, I couldn’t keep myself convinced that I belonged there.

I would look to magazines to explain what is sexy, but I don’t trust them. Too much Photoshop. Plus I can’t actually read. I actually just show up at the Sun Headquarters with a ghetto blaster, pop in the latest Bjork CD, and perform my column as an interpretive dance. The rest is just editing.

Shannan Scarselletta is a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences. She can be contacted at sscarselletta@cornellsun.com. Awkward Turtle appears alternate Thursdays.