Rolled Up Jean Shorts and Birkenstocks with Socks

This post is dedicated to all of the funny little idiosyncrasies that seem to typify Utah County residents. These are not meant to be criticisms, just observations—most of which I have an affinity for myself so I hope nobody gets offended. I do have to admit that I stole this idea from a book that I saw a while back entitled “What White People Like”; I just tailored it for my 11 dedicated followers. Once again this has a high risk of running long so the list will not be exhaustive so feel free to tell me what I missed.

Photography. I’m not talking about the hobby, I am talking about the epidemic known as commercial photography. In the good old days, you paid someone to take your picture for three things: your wedding, your always dreaded yearly family Christmas picture, and your school pictures (tip to parents on that last one: always get the cheapest package. Any photographer that uses a rubber chicken does not deserve the satisfaction of selling you 13 wallet-size images. Those guys could get a way with murder!) In modern Mormondom, we somehow think it is necessary to pay for photography at every milestone in our lives from baby’s first steps, turning 16, graduation, mission farewell, mission homecoming, pre-engagement, engagement, bridals, post wedding and so on. I swear I even know somebody who got professional head shots taken for their facebook profile. Aspiring individuals have seized that opportunity and entered the market. I would venture to say that 3 out of every 5 Utah County mothers consider themselves to be professional photographers. Interestingly enough, very few of these women have actually been trained in the art of photography; seemingly their single qualification is that they have a camera that is bigger than everybody else’s. (I just googled “Utah County Photographers” for fun…18,500,000 hits. That sounds about accurate)

Arrested Development and Acoustic/Local Music. What do these two things have in common you ask? I am as guilty as anybody on this one. To begin, the tv show Arrested Development is truly one of the most underrated shows ever and Tobias Funke might actually be the greatest character ever to hit television. Aside from its comedic genius, it seems that we tend to love this show and talk about it so often because not very many people know about it. I guess, truly, we just like to think we know something that nobody else does and being the first to tell them about it gives us some kind of sick satisfaction. We do the same thing when we think we were the first ones to discover some new musician; we want to tell everybody about it, but when it gets wildly popular we get all defensive and start telling people that we heard them first—hence our attraction to local music and single name acoustic guitarists that don’t have albums with huge record labels. Do you see the connection or is that a stretch?

P90X. I will give you one million dollars if you can walk into a gathering of greater than 50 locals and not find a single soul talking about this workout video. For those of you who aren’t listening and don’t know anything about it, this is not your typical Jane Fonda stretch pants and leg warmer work-out vid, this thing will blow your mind!
*(side note: my wife and I are on an indefinite exercise hiatus so I do not speak from experience)

Pregnancy and Entrepreneurship. Pregnancy in general is part of every Utah girl’s skill set, but here in Utah County we don’t stop there…Your pregnancy is also your small business license. The downside to this is that our poor kids have now become our dress up dolls. Remember when onesies were all you ever needed to keep your kid protected from the elements? Now there are roughly 61,448 “baby boutiques” along the Wasatch Front selling all of, but not limited to, the following items: tutus, leggings, hats, shoes, nylons that are worn on the head, grossly oversized hairbows that often require their own nylon head band and zip code (a trend reemergence that I have not welcomed with open arms), insanely priced diaper bags, binky clips, nursery decorations, jewelry, decorated baby wipes containers, and wigs….okay not really wigs but what if?

I have had so much fun with this post and have so much more I want to say that I am going to continue it on next week with your recommendations, so don’t be stingy with your comments.