Fashionista

A few months after we moved here I started to realize that I do not dress like a Puerto Rican. It first became obvious in the mornings when I was dropping Lucy off at school. I was usually wearing shorts, flip-flops and a t-shirt..or as Tom Dunkle once pointed out, "the first thing I stepped on in the morning," but all the other moms were dressed something like this:


I soon became aware of it everywhere. Puerto Rican women do not wear collared shirts, closed toed shoes or flats when they could be wearing heels. They prefer gold lame' and large, fake, glued-on jewels. If there is room for a rhinestone on an accessory, by all means, use it! You would not catch a Puerto Rican woman dead in a T-shirt, unless she was racing for the cure or something, and even then it would have to have Micheal Jackson in gold glitter paint on it.

Ha! I thought. Silly Puerto Ricans! Can't they see how much more efficient I am with my time and how much more comfortable I am? Don't they see that all the reflection off the gold piping on those ruffles is only making them hot? So I happily continued to wear my board shorts (that I had to buy in the men's department) and Tevas and used my un-bedazzled backpack in public and everything. It got kind of annoying, trying to shop for clothes here, looking for nice, functional, solid color t-shirts amongst the racks of gaudacious clothing, but I never felt the slightest temptation to turn to the glitter side. Until. UNTIL...

One day, out of the blue last week I looked down at my comfortable and perfectly stylish (in California, of course) feet


and thought, "Good grief that is ugly! I look like I have hooves!" Suddenly I could see that I've spent the last year and a half dressing like a man. A man with hooves.

And the next day I went out and bought some new shoes.



Which I managed to wear for all of 90 minutes on Sunday. But that's not the point. The point is that after living here for 20 months, I have finally been influenced by the local culture. Now, is it crazy that I finally caved, or is it ridiculous that it took this long? I don't know, but I think I need to move soon because I'm really starting to want a glue gun...