Q: My boyfriend has this irritating habit of making fun of my outfits or my spray tan. When I get upset, he says I’m being “sensitive.” I try to look cute for him, and I just don’t think it’s funny for your boyfriend to mock your appearance. Is this his issue or mine? If it’s his, how do I get him to stop?—Unhappy

A: It’s probably tempting to give him a taste of his own medicine: “Baby, I did not use the word ‘small’ in describing your penis. I called it ‘adorable.’”

The reality is, beyond men’s zipper zone, women are generally more sensitive to jabs about their looks. This makes sense if you look at sex differences in the qualities human beings evolved to prioritize in a mate. Of course, we all want a hottie if we can get one, just as we’d take the Malibu mansion with the stable over the basement apartment. But in mating, as in life, we tend to be on a budget. Evolutionary social psychologist Norman Li and his colleagues recognized that, and instead of asking research participants the open-ended, sky’s-the-limit question “So, what do you want in a mate?” they gave them a limited “mating budget.” This, in turn, forced participants to decide which traits and qualities were “necessities” and which were “luxuries.”

The Li team’s results echo a body of cross-cultural findings on mate preferences. Men in their study overwhelmingly deemed “physical attractiveness” a “necessity.” (Consider that the female features men find beautiful correlate with health and fertility in a woman.) Meanwhile, the women they surveyed, under these “budgetary” constraints, overwhelmingly went for “status/resources” over male hottie-hood. This reflects women’s evolved motivation to go for men with an ability to invest in any children who might pop out after sex.

Because women coevolved with men, they are, at the very least, subconsciously attuned to men’s prioritizing physical appearance in female partners. This, in turn, leads a woman’s emotions to sound the alarm in the form of fear and hurt feelings when her male partner seems to find her less than lookalicious.

Explain these differences to your boyfriend so he can understand why you feel bad about his taunts in a way he probably doesn’t from, say, putdown-fests with his dude-bros. Encourage him to tactfully tell you if something in your look isn’t doing it for him (and explain how to go about that). In time, assuming he’s an accidental meanie, he should start showing a little restraint, merely blurting out “You look good enough to eat!” and not (har, har) going on to part two: “. . . because that spray tan makes you a dead ringer for a giant Cheeto.”

Q: I’m a woman who’s very feminine and considered pretty. However, I have a deep voice to the point where I’m sometimes mistaken for a man on the phone. I’ve learned to laugh about it, but it sometimes makes me feel bad, especially when I hear a bunch of other women talking. How do people feel about women with deep voices?—Feeling Low

A: OK, so you sound like you’ve been smoking unfiltered cigarettes since you were three years old. In social situations, nobody’s mistaking you for Darth Vader in a dress. On the phone, however, they’re missing the visual information. Those who think they’re hearing a man are not making some sneering judgment about your femininity; they are simply reacting based on averages—how, on average, women tend to have higher, chirpier voices.

On a positive note, according to research by social-personality psychologist Joey T. Cheng, women with deep voices are, if not more likely to rule the world, more likely to be perceived as the dames to do it. In Cheng’s experiments, both women and men with low-pitched voices were viewed as more dominant and higher in social rank. That’s probably why former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, while running for office in the ’70s, worked with a speech coach to deepen the pitch of her voice.

Try to remember that you’re a package as a person. Your voice is just part of the entire “very feminine” you. Maybe re-label your voice “sultry,” like screen babes Scarlett Johansson and Lauren Bacall, for example. This might help you feel a little better when you have those dismaying “Excuse me, sir, who’s calling, please?” experiences.

Got a problem? Write Amy Alkon at 171 Pier Ave. #280, Santa Monica, CA 90405, or email ad*******@*ol.com. @amyalkon on Twitter. Weekly radio show, blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon.

Theresa Byrne is resplendent in a pale purple ensemble, as the elder of West Marin takes in the annual Old California Festival & Founders Day Parade in Tomales making its way down the short, swooping section of Highway 1 that comprises Main Street.

Byrne says that as a “known Democrat” in these parts—she lives in nearby Dillon Beach—she’s keeping an eye peeled for “M.A.G.A.” hats or any other sartorial signifier that might infer, denote or otherwise show kinship with the strain of white nationalism that has come along with the advent of a divisive and angry reality-show president.

Byrne stands out in all purple, and her eyes are darting, ice-blue emeralds, but I’m more struck by how the predominant colors in this parade are black and red. Those colors, in and of themselves, are perhaps the most “martial” color combination there is; among other less controversial signifiers, red and black is the preferred color combo for American fascists—and also, I’ve discovered, of lots of American brass-band marching bands comprised of liberal white people.

The colors, in their own way, provide a squaring-off moment at the small-town celebration in West Marin on Sunday.  At first I was kind of taken aback by the cadres of bikers who showed up in the colors and bearing a Latinate name on their MC jackets and vests.

The local E Clampus Vitus branch is decked out in the black and red as they parade down Main Street, a gaggle of white dudes in varying degrees of red, white and black attire. What the heck is ECV, and who are these dudes? I shared with Byrne a kind of latent suspicion that, in the Trump era, flagrant yahoo-ism has been exalted as the highest order of patriotism.

Yet one should never pass judgment based on appearances, especially at a parade where you don’t know anyone and despite the outsized number of red hats among the ECV crew (though no actual “M.A.G.A.” hats were spotted).

Do a little research and it’s quickly obvious that the ECV organization dates back to the 1850s and was formed as a sort of tongue-in-cheek fraternal order to maintain and promote the history of the American West—especially the Gold Rush. The name is actually “dog latin,” in that it doesn’t mean anything. It’s gibberish.

Yet to the untrained eye, the organization’s members looks like they’re a bunch of bikers intent on squaring off against anti-fascists, or at least the presumptively liberal editorial board of the West Marin Review, as they too make their way past the cheering throngs of parade-goers.

Members of the Hubbub Club from Sebastopol and Graton are also in attendance, and are the highlight for me. They play “Iko Iko” and other parade-day standards during and after the parade. The all-white ensemble has been around since 2007 and describe themselves as a cross between a New Orleans brass band and a Fellini picture.

Today’s parade is, however, less Fellinesque than it is Altmanesque, as in Robert Altman—specifically his masterpiece of the early 1970s, Nashville, which tells the story of a town and its people as they grapple with the advent of a populist presidential contender. He’s coming to town, and not everyone’s happy about it.

I have to say that I was pretty amped up for a Trumpian display of rural American defiance. As I drove into town Sunday morning, the first vehicle I encountered in Tomales was a pickup truck with a huge flag hanging out the bed, which depicted a semi-automatic assault weapon and a challenge to anyone who would try to “take it away.” The truck appeared to be driven by a Hispanic dude, so go figure.

But the only visible weapons on display during the parade are the rifles carried by the color guard who precede the parade and are drawn from the local Coast Guard training station.

Everything’s different these days—citizens and journalists on the lookout for the local moment that encapsulates the larger national convulsion at hand. Only in 2018, for example, would anyone care to note the fact that nobody kneeled at the Tomales Founders Day Celebration when the crowd sings along to “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

Cowboy hats are placed over hearts as the murmur of the anthem emerges from crowds gathered on either side of Main Street to enjoy what the locals promote as the World’s Shortest Parade. It’s short, to be sure, but long on symbolism (or assumptions of symbolism).

Mostly, it’s just a fun parade day for locals. The William Tell House is swinging with early-afternoon action, and if there’s an open container law in Marin County, tell it to that guy in dusty jeans, suspenders and a concrete-company T-shirt swigging a jumbo can of Budweiser. Only in 2018 would it be notable to indicate that the smell of cannabis smoke does not, however, permeate the air in Tomales. This is a family-friendly day.

Tomales may be the most poignantly situated town in Marin County, given the arc of the larger political moment we’re in, and how people like Theresa Byrne are anxious to smoke out—or at least quietly identify—small-town American extremism on display. And there’s no time like a parade for residents of a town to let their particular freak flag fly.

Readers may recall that on the Fourth of July in 2016, the all-American city of Petaluma hosted its annual patriotic parade, only to discover that there were a bunch of white nationalists in the region eager to deploy Confederate flags and the new, visualized semiotics of Eurocentric orientation.

I’ve also reported on Christian right-wing signage that’s popped up along roads that traverse the dairy farms, which bleed the American flag into a cross—a common symbol among armies of the new American right.

As such, the small-town parade on Sunday, an annual affair much beloved by the small town (lots of money is raised for ongoing renovations at Town Hall), was also a moment to reflect on this abrasively divisive time in America and ask, how does this all end? What does it mean for small-town cultures strung along Highway 1 in West Marin, which all embrace tradition in their own way, while also embodying the best of what a truly progressive rural region would embody?

There’s nothing but dairy land surrounding Tomales and with that, an embrace of organizations such as the Marin Agricultural Land Trust, whose efforts have been critical in preserving the dairy culture and economy that animates West Marin.

Tomales has its share of tourist draws or reasons for a West Marinite to get in the car and check it out. Town Hall not only puts on regular open-mic poetry nights, it’s got a bar and recently hosted a concert by West Marin country cut-ups the Haggards that drew nearly 300 people.

There’s the William Tell House, which competes with Smiley’s and the Western Saloon (in Bolinas and Pt. Reyes Station, respectively), for bragging rights to the oldest watering hole in Marin County. The William Tell House “float” during the parade was a jeep with a sign affixed to the back with directions to “Follow me to the William Tell House.” It was kind of humorous that the arrow pointed in the exact opposite direction of the old saloon as the parade went past.

All the various treats and treasures were on display Sunday, as the parade ended and the daylong party kicked in. Music was provided by the all-female Foxes in the Henhouse. K&A Take Away was there offering its locally drawn menu, which includes everything from sturdy Italian sausage sandwiches to quinoa-and-zucchini pancakes. Three Twins Ice cream, headquartered in Petaluma, was on hand on parade day too. Hog Island Oysters? Of course. The butter dripped from dawn till dusk.

It was also amusing that a visitor to town can buy a “Straight Outta Tomales” T-shirt—if one is cool with the cultural appropriation of an album recorded by N.W.A. in 1988, and whose full name is best left unsaid.

In reading up on the history of this fascinating and delightful small town, it’s no small symbolic matter that Tomales was built on the San Andreas Fault. The town’s old cemetery is the best example extant to show the damage done her by the 1906 earthquake, which destroyed San Francisco long before Google did. As recently as May of this year, the earth shook in Tomales when a 2.5 scale earthquake hit town.

When it was over, I got in the car for the drive back to Bolinas. The morning had given way to the afternoon, and so of course the lines at Hog Island and Nick & Tony’s were off the chain with day-trippers when I drove through Marshall.

There was another fun street festival in West Marin, on Monday, the annual Bolinas Labor Day blowout hosted by the community center (where I’m occasionally employed to help out with events).

One of my great pleasures in life is watching other people have fun, and there’s no place like Bo for unself-conscious expression. By contrast, and this is a strictly biased observation, Tomales was a little light in the department of public displays of joy. I’m sure those folks know how to let loose, too. Just maybe not early on a Sunday afternoon.

I sat in the middle of the street in Bolinas on Labor Day, directing traffic past the band and street celebrants, and thought about Theresa Byrne and her kind, ice-blue eyes as I reflected on her unapologetic passion for a multicultural Marin County.

I thought about those sorta-biker guys in Tomales and wondered how this all settles out, this whole Trump moment, when it’s over and small towns get on with the business of preserving themselves, not so much from alien interlopers, but from corporate power.