Last weekend I was walking around Michigan Ave. and I noticed a number of adult women wearing antlers. Red fabric antlers, it looked like. And some other women, also fully grown, had snowflakes painted on their faces. I must say I was stunned. What did this mean? Why antlers? Are they dressing as reindeer? Is this normal? In NYC, where eccentrics are tolerated and even celebrated, these antlers just wouldn't fly. So today I asked my friend Aaron, who's from suburban Indiana, whether he'd ever heard of such a thing. Apparently he has. While not everyone outside of NYC wears antlers to denote the arrival of the Christmas season, it's evidently not unheard-of.
I realized that the intolerant scoffing I did upon seeing these antler-sporting women was precisely the reaction Blue America expects from Red Americans who come across those who challenge societal gender norms in a very obvious, outlandish way. In other words, antler-wearers are Red America's drag queens. I feel that I've come to a greater understanding of what pundits term "red" and "blue," "urban" and "exurban"--somehow "antler America" and "drag queen America" provides a much more vivid picture of what's being discussed, and shows more clearly just how difficult it is for Americans to understand those from different parts of the country.
Wednesday, December 08, 2004
Antler America vs. Drag Queen America
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5 comments:
Red America huh,
on Michigan Avenue
in Chicago, Illiniois.
Am I mistaken, or did Illinois vote overwhelmingly for Kerry? So what you ask, so, there's more of "Red" America in "Blue" than vice versa. A damn sight more.
The media talk about the red/blue divide so much because it suggests some rough equality in numbers or power, which is comforting to them. But that's crap. Kerry's the one who was traipsing around in hunting fatigues, crowing about being an altar boy, claiming to dislike abortion and gay marriage, threatening to gut, maim, destroy, filet, etc. the terrorists. It's really only most of Manhattan and Hollywood, and parts of D.C., where people buy into what the media refers to when they talk about Blue America. It's not even all of NYC or CA.
What does that mean? It means the people who buy into the "values" of Blue America are in even worse shape than they are willing even now to admit
Were they also wearing sweatshirts with hand-painted holiday designs? Or with bells sewn on? Such shirts were popular holiday garb in my Texas suburban town.
Are long string necklaces with a giant (1 in. diameter) jingle bell at the end also a Red America thing? Because I had about a half a dozen of those.
Well, antlers, Christmas sweaters/sweatshirts (with bells! and glow-up lights!) and those jingle-bell necklaces were everywhere in East TN... a Southern woman is probably most dangerous when she's holding a glue gun and half a dozen little sparkly pompoms.
Yes Illinois did vote for Kerry, but I bet the antler sporting women voted for Bush. Perhaps they are visiting from ELKhart Indiana. :-)
Anonymous is onto something. People doing their Christmas shopping on Michigan Ave. in the middle of a day on a weekday are likely visiting from elsewhere, possibly, yes, "ELKhart."
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