"The Big Country"

 

For your listening pleasure while you read. 

Dearest Reader,

I'm writing to you from the suburbs of Birmingham, Alabama. Things are certainly different around here. To quote Shakespeare, "let me count the ways." Maybe this will end up an SEO-friendly listicle.

1) Environmental concerns

1a)  I understand that most of the time I live in the beating heart of Woke, but it is quite the culture shock to come here, where people simply do not care. Recycling has barely caught on -- Hoover doesn't have the infrastructure to recycle glass. They collect plastic recycling, but I doubt anything actually comes of it. The Bay Area also has municipal compost collection, though I understand that's an outlier. It feels foreign to touch a styrofoam cup.

1b) There was an event in the neighborhood that my mom wanted to attend (we missed it because we were getting drinks with her Situationship): a presentation from Virgin Cruise Line. Drinks and snacks provided, presentation about a cruise, big giveaways. The idea that 1) they would come do that in a residential neighborhood, and 2) anyone would go, was shocking. Why would you leave your house to go to what amounts to a timeshare presentation? And secondly, a cruise is perhaps the worst thing you can do for the environment. I understand that my mom lives in a 55+ exclusive community, so the cruise line people probably came to shoot fish in a barrel. 

1c) Everyone is driving around in either big trucks or crossover SUVs. I feel very small and vulnerable on the high-speed stroads in my little Toyota Corolla. The streets are very wide. The distinction between road and freeway is practically a formality, because either way it'll be three lanes in each direction of people driving entirely too quickly. The parking spaces are extremely large; parking aforementioned Toyota Corolla takes absolutely no skill at all. I could pull in at any angle and still be inside the lines practically. Driving through my mom's neighborhood, she complained that the streets needed to be wider to accommodate more parking. Every house in the neighborhood has a driveway to park in, and there are huge turnouts on one side of the street for parking, but with cars this large it hardly feels like enough.

2) The Burbs

 2a) On the subject of driving, people around here sure do a lot of it. My mom lives in a newly-built (still actively being built) subdivision, on the outskirts of town. Reader, her old house that wasn't on the outskirts of town still was not very close to anything. The nearest non-residential structure of any kind was a coffee shop one mile away. (Longtime fans will recognize this as the coffee shop where I worked for three months during the pandemic) Now, after driving a mile you haven't even left the subdivision. 

Yesterday my mom and I wanted to go out to lunch. Taziki's was our compromise pick, which my mom was excited about because "They just opened one that's SO close!" Open Google Maps. Almost four miles away. This is a bit of a culture shock to me. If I went four miles from my apartment I could be anywhere in Berkeley, Emeryville, or North Oakland. Four miles from here and you've made it to the next subdivision over, next to the big football stadium.

2b) It is a very Ring-camera-on, who-goes-there neighborhood culture, in ways that feel charged on race and class lines. People are suspicious and on the lookout "while the neighborhood is under construction," i.e., while the neighborhood is full of construction workers.  

3) The Style

There is an extremely different aesthetic here, even among young people, even in casual wear. You can always tell a southern college girl from a west coast one. There are colors that people wear here that people don't wear at home.

In fact, in looking for a photo example for this post, I just googled "big coral color t shirt" and the next google recommendation was for the brand Simply Southern.

 

You can spot a young southern woman at 50 paces, because she will be wearing a shirt in one of these two colors. It will be oversized, to the point where it almost completely obscures the short shorts she's wearing underneath. The hair is always straight, always blonde, either left down or up in a very high messy bun. I have never seen someone dressed like this in California.

It is a very standardized look. I understand why my mom felt self-conscious for a long time over having curly hair. Even curly blonde hair instead of straight blonde hair makes you stand out. I get the overwhelming impression that I visibly don't fit in here. And this is coming from a skinny young white woman-- in a teal shirt, no less! The situation is somewhat better at this coffee shop; one of the baristas has cool piercings, and there is one couple sitting here who have dyed hair, tattoos, and piercings. Ah, but they're leaving now! My point here isn't to claim that I look extremely alternative. My point is that around here I am almost always the most alternative looking person wherever I go, which is saying something, seeing that if I took out this nose ring I could be in a period drama.

4) Culture Clash? 

The other day, I tried bringing up to my mother the points that I made in my post, "Airing Out my Family's Suspiciously Clean Laundry." She didn't really get it. I don't think she was even willing to admit that the standard my cousins were setting was extremely conservative. After I told her all the differences, all the things that I thought set my brothers and me apart from our cousins, I asked her what she thought. And she said, "All you've told me is that people in different parts of the country do things differently." She's right, I guess. I told her that I hoped my cousins didn't end up conservatives. She said "Well, I left college as a conservative." She's just being obstinate because she knows I can't handle Alabama for long periods of time. She's not a conservative anymore and she is completely fed up with her conservative friends. But to acknowledge that in the conversation would also be to admit that my cousins are growing up in the same conservative environment that she's frustrated with.

 

And I recognize that I'm guilty of the same thing that I'm accusing my mom of doing. A frequent source of tension between my mother and and all her children is that she cannot conceptualize somebody liking something that she personally doesn't like. She doesn't like cats, so it never occurred to her that my brothers were emotionally attached to their cats. She doesn't like vegan food, so it doesn't make sense to her that anyone would like it. She doesn't think PhD research is fun, so for a while she was not very supportive of me pursuing it. (I had the one mother in the world who wished her daughter would go into show business instead of academia)

 

I'm the same way. I keep trying to show the things that are normal to people here but aren't at home. I keep pointing out the big trucks, and the wide roads, and the meals full of dead animals, and the sea of blonde hair, and the needlessly gendered products. It seems like I'm doing the same thing as she is, but I feel justified in my case because I am doing it to be a leftist and a feminist killjoy. In today's world, SOMEONE has to be a feminist killjoy!

 

I point to something that's causing friction for me here, and I'm met with "Well, that's not the way people do things here." I know that's not the way people do things, but it should be!

 

 

I will be happy to return to the "bubble" I have been accused of living in. Though I will miss all the free refills.