by Suzanne Poor

In one of his columns in the Sunday New York Times Magazine, William Safire wrote about voguewords. Morph is out, so is parse, tweaked, on the cusp and resonate. Lockdown is in and will probably be included in the lexicon next time around. Ratchet and ramp up, he says, have leveled off. Limn (which means describe, to the uninitiated) are in. But the vogueword of the year, he says, is makeover, a word that originated in the middle of the 16th century and began to mean refashion by 1698. Actually it means physical transformation, which is why women everywhere are bombarded with advertisements that claim use of certain products will transform them from aging, wrinkled old ladies into svelte, smooth-skinned beauties. But now it seems the word has exploded into every other field. There’s the makeover into digital radio. Certainly photography has undergone an obvious makeover, but what’s really astonishing is the makeover attributed to New Jersey. It’s the makeover state, Safire claims, but goes no further in his declaration other than revealing that a Times reporter is working on a story about the state.

Figures of speech
Makeover can be an adjective, as in makeover state. It can be a noun, as in New Jersey has undergone a makeover. Or it can be a verb, as in let’s makeover New Jersey. How?

We can’t change the shape of it or the physical location of two of the country’s largest and most important cities — New York and Philadelphia. But maybe we can lessen the dominance of those two urban sprawls. Radio is already doing it. 101.5 talk show hosts all use the tag line, “Not New York, not Philadelphia. But New Jersey.”

Our shore, long described as one of the best beach areas in the country, if not the world, has been called the Hamptons of New Jersey. Clearly, if you’ve been there recently you know that people are buying million-dollar homes, tearing them down and erecting larger, modern boxes where charming houses once stood. Is this a makeover or a mess?

Perception vs. reality
Maybe it’s all perception. As one of the few people I know who were actually born here, at the shore, I have a special affinity for the state. When I rode through it on the train to college in Massachusetts from the eastern shore of Maryland, where my father, the marketing salesman, moved us for the eighth time, I cringed at the jokes — about the pigs, the horrible smells, the lack of glamour, pristine spaces and beauty. But you know what? New Jersey doesn’t have to be made over at all.

New Jersey’s got it
We already have it. How many states can claim the exotic diversity we have — from mountains and part of the Appalachian Trail, to farmlands and open spaces and horse farms in Hunterdon and Morris Counties, to the incredible shoreline? There are vineyards (see related article), a pharmaceutical industry second to none, cities, villages and hamlets with historic pasts.

As the most densely populated state, we are also the richest with the highest per capita income in the country. What’s more, for over a decade, the New York New Jersey Baykeeper has been laboring and succeeding to restore our waterfront, fighting to preserve our estuaries, rivers and wetlands, reviving native habitats and bringing back endangered waterfowl. Barnegat Bay is no longer polluted.

If there is a makeover at all, it began 15 years ago when Lawrence Goldman insisted a performing arts center in Newark would revitalize the entire area. Skeptics abounded. After all, Newark, which once claimed the very rich, had morphed into home for some of the poorest people in the state. But as Brent Staples wrote in The Times November 17, Newark’s Performing Arts Center is helping the city’s renaissance. NJPAC he writes, “has become what surveys describe as one of the most well-attended performing arts centers of its kind in the country, outstripping its peers by a significant margin. One in four of its tickets is bought by minority patrons — a proportion that puts performing arts centers in most other cities to shame.”

We may be a corridor state; we may be considered an aging industrial entity. But we’ve always had the Pine Barrens and the Delaware Water Gap; we’ve always had one of the most spectacular views of a city in the world. And to those who live here, New Jersey has always been in vogue.

Back in the 18th century, Alexander Pope wrote, “beauty unadorned adorned the most.” Which could be loosely translated — if there must be makeovers, they should come from within. New Jersey’s known this all along.