Mardi Gras

Mardi Gras is fast approaching, and all of New Orleans knows it. The whole city is green, purple, and gold and the St. Charles neutral ground is so covered in post-parade trash that you can barely see the grass.

Of course, we all know the reputation Mardi Gras has and why it’s a terribly dangerous place for a feminist. Maybe dangerous is the wrong word. I just find myself struggling to have the same incredible time as everyone else when surrounded by objectification in its purest form.

Yesterday evening I went to see a parade. This wasn’t the heart of Bourbon Street. I certainly wasn’t among the worst of it. There were families and children everywhere and the atmosphere was fun and celebratory. In short, I wasn’t concerned. But there was a woman about my age standing near me who chose to wear only her bra and a pair of shorts during the parades. Of course I pass no judgment; everyone has their own comfort levels. But the mere fact of her shirtlessness managed to raise so many questions for me.

For these parades, the “krewes” were all-male, meaning that only men were riding on the floats and throwing beads to the crowd. When a float rolls up in front of you, it obscures everything else. You can see nothing but papier-mâché and the eerie partially masked faces of the men staring down at you, searching for a worthy recipient of whatever they have to throw. It’s a very disorienting experience, losing all reference points, surrounded by screaming people. There are moments that I can’t tell if its me or the float that’s moving.

As floats came and went, I began to realize that standing near this woman made me (and most everyone else) practically invisible. She was a bead magnet. I began watching the men on the floats, marking how they responded to her. Sometimes they would indicate with nothing but an anonymous stare and a subtle gesture that they wanted her to bare it all. I’m not sure if she ever did or not. I just know that the krewe responded favorably.

I felt positively puritanical standing next to her in my dress and tights and boots. I noticed an unexplainable (and definitely not indulged) urge to compete. And that’s what made me stop and ask myself some questions.

1. Why is objectification such an excepted part of this celebration? What makes Mardi Gras different from any other time?

2. Was there something admirable about how comfortable she was with her body? When I first saw her, I thought to myself, “Wow, she’s brave. I wish I were that confident.”

3. If I did manage to be as comfortable with my body as she was with hers, why would I have to immediately become a sexual object?

I found no answers to these questions and the many more that arose throughout the night. I will add them to my never-ending list of similar questions. Undeniably, Mardi Gras is determined to show me the kind of stuff that makes me so incredibly angry at the world that I stew and stew until I can articulate it enough to put it in my blog. There is no getting around that. It exists. Objectification is out of my control. People will see and say and think what they please. I do, however, control whether or not I indulge it.

I was here for Mardi Gras 2006—the first after Hurricane Katrina. I remember distinctly walking through the airport and noticing that it was completely empty. There was no carnival tourism boom that year. There were only brave New Orleanians who had returned to rebuild, coming out from under their blue-tarped roofs to celebrate life as the city always has. I remember the exhausted but tireless spirit of the crowd, the elaborate satirical floats that rolled through the streets. That Mardi Gras was for everybody that made it home and for those that couldn’t come home yet. It was broken and genuine and beautiful.

So let the terribly sad and sexist things occur. I will have no part of them. I’m celebrating the rich, exhuberant, resilliant, hilarious holiday with my new and beautiful city.

Happy Mardi Gras, everyone!