"How do I look?" one asked, combing her dark hair over a pink tank top.
"Awesome," the other replied, applying lip gloss to her smile. "How about me?"
Both girls nodded.
Seconds later, they scampered from the barn, prepared for the dogged scrutiny of their image-conscious peers.
I laughed at first, shrugging off their adolescent attitude as a girly trivial pursuit.
But then I realized where I was -- the annual fishbowl of judgmental behavior in our ever-critical society.
The Porter County Fair.
Here, like with all county fairs, we not only judge our pigs, our pies, our lemon shake-ups, our elephant ears, our new tractors and our 4-H booths.
We also judge our children, our parents, our fashion choices, our sexuality, our macho bravado, our mates and, of course, ourselves.
And, at least in Porter County, this obvious yet subtle practice has been going on strong for 156 years and counting.
Forget the nostalgic assumption that previous generations of region fairgoers didn't take part in such biting judgments at their county fairs.
They surely did.
I'll bet the first animals that were judged came only after the first fairgoers were judged.
"Did you see the petticoat she chose to wear?"
"Can you believe he couldn't even ring the bell with the sledgehammer?"
