Whenever I travel outside of Alaska, I notice a very curious phenomenon. On starting the trip, I usually think I look pretty good. Of course, in today’s world of air travel, that statement needs to be taken in the context of a situation in which you all but have to strip naked to get through security.
So by good I mean that I have on clean underwear and clothes that are easily removed. with pockets easy to empty. I wear a wrinkle proof outfit that can withstand nights in airports waiting for missed and canceled connections. I wear pants with an elastic waistband that can expand with the overdose of airport food I will ingest. In other words, I’m wearing my Alaska best.
Now here’s where the odd part occurs. The farther I travel from Alaska, the less good I look even though I’m wearing the exact same outfit I started out in. If I’m traveling East, this phenomenon becomes more and more pronounced with each plane change. By the time I reach the Philadelphia Airport, I am suddenly surrounded by smartly dressed women on the go, while I am clearly a sadly dressed woman whose get up and go already got up and went. I am a fashion don’t surrounded by fashion do’s. And yet, scant hours before, I had looked just fine at the Anchorage airport.
What Alaskan women think of as smart looking clothing somehow becomes hopelessly dowdy the closer you get to any coast or Chicago. Of course, I’m referring here to real Alaskan women, the kind who have cut ice for water, hauled wood for a fire and intimately know the innards of everything from a moose to a halibut and how to make those innards a tasty meal. Anchorage women don’t always fit this criteria. In my thirty years here, I’ve noticed that Anchorage continues to drift further and further away from Alaska.
But even Anchorage women have to admit that tight straight suit skirts are not meant to be worn with bunny boots while climbing over snow berms only slightly lower that Denali. Women’s shoes often have spiky heels and pointy toes. My toes do not come to a point. And those spiky heels are not half as useful as they look to be on icy surfaces. They simple don’t grip well and Yak Trax are impossible to fit over them.
In this year of Sarah Palin and the million-dollar wardrobe, the bar for Alaska fashion has been set unreasonably high for us common folk. In fact, I am less concerned about who paid for her outfits than I am with what they mean to those of us who thought living in Alaska meant never having to wear a bra with underwires again. She’s simply ruined the curve for the rest of us. And we won’t even go in to the fact that she managed to make a beehive hairdo somehow new and hip. That’s just criminal.
Being a dorky Alaskan used to have its pluses. My sister never expected me to be dressed correctly for anything. She gave up that dream years ago when I explained my two pair of shoes theory. Simply stated, so long as you have a pair of black and a pair of brown shoes, your shoe needs have been more than adequately met.
Dorkily dressed Alaskans recognize each other no matter where we meet. As I travel back to Alaska, I immediately know when I’m getting close to home because suddenly everyone is dressed like me. I am back among my people, the ones who understand that boots are more than a fashion statement and should always be preceded by the word “bunny”. And that coats that don’t come with a hood, ruff and zip in liner are simply not coats. And that mittens can come with ears and eyes and not be viewed askance.
Sarah may have done her best to drag us into the fore front of the fashion world, but my bet is on the Alaskan woman who will not give up her right to wear her carharts and sweatshirt to lunch any sooner than she will give up her gun.
They’ll only take my sweat pants out of my cold, dead hands.