A Dedicted Follower of Fashion

For perhaps the first time in my life, I'm going to spend a few moments thinking and talking about fashion. I feel it is finally necessary because every day now, I am awed by the apparent lack of self-consciousness of Ecuadorian women.

It's like this, if you are an Ecuadorian woman, it does not matter if you weigh two-hundred pounds or seventy pounds, you must wear skin-tight pants. It doesn't matter if said pants are jeans, sweats, dress pants, or slacks, if you don't have llama toes showing, your pants are not tight enough. It doesn't matter if you are seventeen or eighty, if you are thin or have a belly that would put John Goodman to shame, skin tight is right. It's like every woman is trying to generate as little wind resistance as possible.

Of course, there are the few exceptions to this rule who wear, what looks to me, like a comfortable fitting pair of pants. And, there are a few women who don't have their tits hanging out of their shirts. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big tit fan, but even I get a little embarrassed when Grandma is buying her groceries in a skin tight, sky-blue sweat suit with the jacket zipped down to her navel. Guess, she thinks that since the modeling dummies don't even wear shirts, she was being modest.



Occasionally in the States some woman is not embarrassed to dress in a way that she thinks is sexy but others think is not. But it occurs with alarming frequency here.

The other peculiarity I have noticed is that it is fairly routine for someone wearing a heavy sweater, boots, and gloves, to be standing next to someone wearing a T-shirt and jeans. The weather during the day varies that dramatically. I wore my new favorite hat all through Cuenca even though the days were sunny and warm. When the sun does go behind a cloud (which happens pretty regularly) it gets cold in a hurry.

As far as mens fashion goes, nothing really strikes me as that different from the States. Dress clothes for the working guys and casual to grungy for the non-working folks. There is a proliferance of death metal T-shirts being worn by the young crowd. And, the instantly recognizable marijuana leaf as a decoration on clothing, be it shirts, hats, or necklaces, is common. PoPo brought a tagua nut necklace the other day. She didn't know the picture on it was of a marijuana leaf until she got home and Opa told her.

Finally, since many people are poor, many people wear clothes that they get second-hand. On the Ecovia the other day, Rebecca saw an old indigenous women, like this one



wearing a hat that said "Bad-Ass".