A Word On Women

This is actually a little girl who was attending a street political rally, but I admired her attempt at being fashionable.

In the 90's I spent a lot of time in Venezuela and the one thing that was always a constant was The Question.  When you climbed into a taxi and the driver realized that you were not Venezuelan, the very next thing out of his mouth was the trivia question: How many Miss Universe have come from Venezuela? I forget the answer, but it was some outrageous number and clearly a point of national pride. 

Yes, the Venezuelan women, a mix of Latin and Caribbean cultures, were put together well.  Having said that, all of this "put together-ness" takes time and effort, an immense amount  I imagine.  The English phrase that gets bandied about for this effort is "high maintenance", and for years I've searched the Spanish lexicon for a similar phrase.  There isn't one.  The fact that there is no easy way to describe a woman (or man) who is fastidious about their appearance and spends inordinate amounts of time keeping it so speaks volumes about this culture. In other words, the attribute of being "high-maintenance" is so inculcated into the lives of so many Venezuelans that it's accepted as normal and does not need to be described, it just "is".