I just got back from New Orleans. My brother lives uptown and several of the parades went right by the house this year, so I had a blast. (My favorite by far was Muses, the only all-female krewe to roll at night.) I’ve actually been thinking about blogging about the experience, since it was really frustrating to not be the kind of pretty lady parade dudes like to throw things to–I actually had a guy make extended eye contact with me before deciding to throw novelty bras at the two women next to me.
I’ll be out with my video camera following the trail blazed by my personal hero, Joe Francis! …or I’ll be at my friend’s party watching President Obama addressing the Congress, because I’m that much of a political junkie at this point in my life. 19 year old Nicholas would be astonished to know how uncool 29 year old Nicholas is.
mk- Why are you participating in that b.s. and buying into the whole scene wherein men are validating or not validating you based upon whether you “the kind of pretty lady parade dues like to throw things to,” i.e. whether you’re sexually attractive based upon a Britney Spears-norm. It makes me bummed for you that you devalued yourself in the way they have devalued you. Be awesome and damn the torpedoes.
Sarah, I think you may have misunderstood me. I’m not frustrated that I’m not a “pretty lady,” I’m frustrated that for many of these parades one has to be a “pretty lady” (or a small child) to get some of the quality throws. I like plastic shiny crap just as much as anyone else, so it bummed me out when I got passed over in a really obvious way. (Hooray for materialism!)
…And just to tack on–if by “that b.s.” you mean trying to encourage dudes to throw me stuff from parade floats, well, it’s mostly dudes on the floats (with the exception of krewes like Iris and Muses), so if a person wants to get throws, one mostly has to appeal to dudes. But if you mean buying into the act pretty/show your tits/make a gendered appeal in order to get stuff from parade floats–yeah, no. All I did was jump around and go “WOOOO,” regardless of who was doing the throwing.
I’m stuck at home doing homework. Midterms suck, especially when I’m missing out on Mardi Gras! mk – I get where you’re coming from. Parties/parades should be awesome for all, not just those who conform to rigid stereotypical gender expectations. I’d be interested in reading what you blog about it.
From my experience in New Orleans, the whole “show me your t!ts” for beads practice is really tourist-centered (said by tourists to tourists) and tends to take place in the areas like the French Quarter where locals often won’t set foot during Mardi Gras (because of all the stupid tourists). It happens during the parades at times, but again, it’s not standard practice for the krewes that are more community focused (like Zulu, Krewe du Vieux, etc).
@Victoria – Yeah, the whole thing is definitely not as “Girls Gone Wild” as mythology might lead one to believe. And I should mention that the “pretty girls” seemed to have an advantage more at the bigger parades, like Bacchus–which were also where they had more drunken dudes to fend off, if the group in front of us was any indication. And I didn’t mean to say that this is indicative of any of the krewes as a whole. While I suppose there might be some krewes that are worse than others (just as there were some krewes who decided to give up on public parades rather than integrate), what I saw was more on a dude-to-dude basis. It wasn’t even entire floats.