[Sca-cooks] authenticity police

[Jennifer Thompson]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14222-2001Sep11.html

is the Miss Manners article

I've not run into the problem personally. The closest I came was
participating in a multi-field competition (each person enters more than one
competition and there is an overall winner as well as the individual fields)
very soon after I joined. In a few months, I'd started fighting, studied
enough heraldry to stumble through the test, used an old lullaby my mom used
to sing for the bardic entry, and for A&S, I'd cobbled together a psuedo
Elizabethan from a prom dress pattern, substituting laces for the zipper but
pretty much leaving the construction mundane. The A&S judge simply gave me
the minimum score with a remark that she wasn't allowed to score lower,
which surprised me, as there were some downright ugly things next to it.

On the other hand, a kind soul, seeing my obvious distress, sat me down and
explained the situation in such a way that I was soothed, yes, but also
inspired to live up to what he made me believe I could do. I doubt that he
remembers the incident, but I assure you I do.

So yes, the problem exists, but I think it's possible to work around it.
Some folks spend a lot of time researching and grow frustrated with others
who kick back and party, and that frustration is forgivable. Unleashing that
frustration is the problem, since newbies make such easy targets. The good
thing is that most of the folks on this list, being the "older and wiser
heads" are in a position to spot it *and* to avert it.