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Monday, July 9, 2012

People-watching, Maine edition

I visited Maine this weekend.  I love that state! I’d like to share some interesting Maine facts with you:

1. It is the only state whose name has one syllable.
2. According to a highly unscientific-looking site, the most money you can legally win in Maine is $3.
3. The state nickname is the “Vacation State”.

Credit: visitmaine.net 

It’s fitting.  There are many remote towns boasting Maine’s particular brand of grave, Northeastern, secluded beauty, and they have names like Naples and Norway, even Mexico.

My destination: Sweden, ME.  Population: 372.  Not including the temporary, tiny residents that attend the music camp there each year.

Credit: richardoconnor.wordpress.com

My old stomping grounds.

Let me tell you, people there don’t look like they do here in Somerville, MA.  I particularly love the look of the women from these rural areas: sturdy and masculine.  I hung out by a lake today, next to a fat aging woman in a very colorful bathing suit, wearing a star-spangled cap and smoking a cigarillo.

I wondered briefly what people from these areas think about their physique and self-image.  What type of body is idealized?  I never see people close to my age when I’m there, mostly middle-aged people that look accustomed to a life of difficult physical labor.  Or people that don’t spend their energy fighting the natural processes of aging and slowing metabolism.

The skinny hipster physique that seems to thrive in Boston would appear sickly here.  I know there are many different factors at play here, most notably (to me) the generation gap.  Not to mention geographic region, income level, type of work, access to mainstream media?  Can any one think of anything else?  

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