Pearl River Community College's award winning literary magazine

Special Edition—Spring-Summer 1998

Essay Section

Laissez Les Bon Temps Roullez

by Anna Claire Morgan

During the annual festivities of Mardi Gras, most women outside of Louisiana shake their heads in protest every time a drunk southern belle flashes her bare chest at anyone atop a parade float. Glittering plastic beads exchanged for a millisecond peepshow is the rule of the day for parade riders.

Louisiana has many traditions people don't understand. Take for example—dancing a "fais-do-do," sucking crawfish heads, and riding down the river in a pirogue. And why, you ask, do girls degrade themselves by showing their bare breasts? In the eyes of a true Louisiana girl, it isn't degrading. It's almost a compliment. What is degrading is going to Mardi Gras parades and coming home with nothing to show for it.

True, the masked riders on these floats can't be seen, but they see the parade goers (especially those of the female gender). They consider some girls good looking enough to pause, glance at them, and then shout the infamous request "Show me your tits!" It isn't like they've never seen a woman's bare chest anyway. What's one more gonna hurt? To these guys, the girls brave enough to bare all are just another lovely addition to the mural of bare breasts painted on a canvas of purple, green, and gold revelers.

New Orleans is one of the most erotic and sensual cities in the world, and at Mardi Gras it turns into a modern day Babylon that includes exchanging kisses, flashes, eyes full, and hands full in return for the coveted beads. Mardi Gras is the one time of year you can let your guard down totally, go crazy, kick back, and "laissez les bon temps roullez" or let the good times roll.

So if you brave the cultural soup of gays and straights among the balconies of Bourbon Street, don't be surprised or offended when you get a glimpse of more than you bargain for...it's just one of the package deals the brochure forgot to tell you about.