Mich,
What are people's reactions when you tell them you grew up in Kansas? Indifferent, astonished, put off, judgemental, apathetic? Any good stories about people's reactions?
Honestly, most people that I speak to enough to talk about where I'm from are mostly indifferent. There are tons of folks from the midwest out here, so it's not like someone from Kansas is a novelty. I'm sure some people that would turn their nose up at it, but I generally don't associate with those type of people, and it's really no different from someone who grew up in Prairie Village giving crap to someone who grew up in Topeka.
There's definitely pretty broad generalizations of all people in the midwest that are probably, like midwesterners only eat fatty food and are all racist and have bad style. A good example was someone talking about her mother-in-law from Minnesota who would always clean and rearrange when she visited. "It's so weird, I guess it's a midwestern thing." I was like, "No, that's not a midwestern thing at all." and I just kind of get ignored and they conclude, "yeah, it must be."