From Fresno Magazine’s Proud Apron-Wearers

Is Fresno the victim of stereotyping perpetuated by big city, non-apron-wearing elitists? Any Fresno resident reading the current issue of Marie Claire (see excerpt below) can’t help but wonder what we did to writer Kimberly Cutter during her brief stint here to fill her with such a sense of abhorrence toward our community. While covering Taylor Swift’s concert at the Save Mart Center, she described Fresno as a city of dirty drunks with no fashion sense, in a nutshell.

In an effort to uncover what would cause someone to develop the idea that we are all monster truck-driving, apron-wearing hillbillies with no aspirations beyond selling handmade doilies, we looked Ms. Cutter up online. She’s from New York City. Is that, in itself, an adequate excuse?

We’d love to tell her that when Valley girls don ruffly aprons, the only thing we like to wear with them are Christian Louboutin stilettos.

What do y’all (that’s how we hicks talk) think of this outsider’s take on Fresno? Is it a fair representation of who we are, or a mean-spirited jab by a big city girl whose vision was blurred by all the dust? We may like to flash our cleavage while sipping strawberry martinis, but still…

From Marie Claire, Taylor Swift’s Rise to America’s Sweetheart

“Fresno is an interesting place to see Swift perform. Basically, the whole town has gone bananas over her — including the mayor, who has officially proclaimed today ‘Taylor Swift Day.’ (In part, this may be an attempt to distract residents from the fact that Fresno was recently rated the number one Drunkest City in America by Men's Health magazine, but still ...) A dusty farm town in the middle of California, Fresno is the land of monster trucks and short-haired, churchgoing ladies in ruffled homemade aprons and Easy Spirit shoes who sell their crafts at the Big Hat Days festival in neighboring Clovis. Swift, who does not drink or swear or flash cleavage, is huge here.”