On books, covers, and personal appearance

It is never wise to judge a book by its cover, but even less so in the Sili Valley and in Fairbanks. As different as those places are, they share some fundamental cultural similarities of which one may not be aware until comparing them against East Coasters. BT says it's because both California and Alaska are "cowboy states". BT is a lawyer, and she was referring to some legal history of how the states had developed in terms of property rights, but I think it also has cultural and sociological meaning. We are the new, the fresh. We are states that were populated and developed via gold and silver rushes, by entrepreneurs who fled the civilized world in search of better lives; people that were thus self-selected for boldness, tenacity, determination, and willingness to execute dreams that others would only think or talk about; people who had fewer ties to the rigid class structures of the older worlds they had left behind.

We cowboy staters thus value people for themselves, and not for their family history. We do not define people as "a banker's son" or "a doctor's daughter" or "a welder's son". We define them as "an engineer" or "a teacher", by what they themselves have achieved, or not. And we have much less rigid standards of dress, as I've alluded to before.

Despite these similarities, Californians still dress better than Alaskans, as a whole. There's still the whole urban vs. rural thing, and urbanites just dress better in general. I am aware that while it might be acceptable to sit for a job interview in Fairbanks in jeans, it's still not the best idea in San Francisco. And, as a Berkeley alumnus, I am keenly aware of the existence of reverse snobbery--people who can afford good clothes and dress in a uniform of sweatpants and rags appear just as pretentious and affected as poor people who spend half their income on designer clothes.

Thus, when I make my pilgrimages to California to see family and friends, I put away the Carhartts and try to blend in as best I can. Which brings me to the entire incident that brought all of these thoughts into my head... makeup shopping. You see, I intend to attend the upcoming nuptials of The Enforcer to share in her happiness and bring my best wishes, without requiring any sort of Explanation (Please excuse her; she's Alaskan/been living in a log cabin without running water/a grad student.) This all comes from my own insecurities; The Enforcer herself has informed me that she thinks I'm just lovely, just the way I am. :) Nevertheless, I've enlisted BT for help with my civilization. She's approved my dress and expressed pride in my makeup shopping trip. (In a fit of combined impatience, overwhelmedness, and embarrassment (what if a neighbor saw me in the cosmetics section? How mortifying!), I texted her from Freddie's--'Black Truffle' vs. 'Black Velvet' Srsly? WTF?.) I'm pleased to say the makeup shopping wasn't half so horrifying as I had feared. I used to be a commercial dancer and do all my own makeup, so me being girly is not as long a stretch as it might otherwise be. I sort of pinched my nose, ran in, grabbed a few colorful little plastic packages here and there, texted BT for moral support, then ran out!