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This weekend, because Hubby and I are the height of nerd-tastic, we decided on our anniversary to renew our vows. Of course, we couldn’t actually afford to throw any sort of renewal party, we decided to do the much more fun (and infinitely cheaper) thing and renewed them at the local Renaissance Festival’s Wine, Chocolate, and Romance weekend. Why have a nice ceremony with friends and family when you could get dressed up in psuedo- renaissance garb (in this case, it was my wedding dress slightly modified) and get your vows done with near a hundred strangers ?

We had a great time at the Renaissance Festival. It was sweet, it was fun, our friends were there. More to the point, I love how completely free I feel at the Ren Faire- for the second half of the day, I stripped off my wedding dress and was in psuedo-gypsy garb, which showed off my back and I wore braless. There were no stares. If anyone said anything to me, it was “Nice costume” with a smile, or something similar. Even with the booze flowing freely (mmm, mead) I never felt the least bit uncomfortable, and no one was staring. I don’t know if it’s just the culture of the Ren Faire, or the fact that a lot of people are armed (but peace-tied), but that seems to be absolutely taboo to do- in fact, I saw a bunch of guys get glared at when they were making comments about the belly-dancers (to the point where they blushed and shut up).

But, even with how awesome the environment seemed to be, it was still a little…uncomfortable, at parts. During the day I watched something called “Vilification Tennis”, which was 4 people, two on each team, shouting insults back and forth. If you made the opposite side laugh, or they were dumbstruck for more than 30 seconds (or couldn’t be heard over the crowd), you got a point. It was hilarious. I laughed until my cheeks hurt….and yet, I felt very funny about it. Some of the jokes were great, for the audience, (You watched Twilight and LIKED IT! When your wife said she wanted to do some role-playing in bed, you brought a character sheet, a D-20 and 3.5 book!) some of them were down-right pathetic (you’re mom so fat I bet her grocery bill is real high! Well, you’re mom’s so fat she has….um, diabetes!). But, a lot of them were jokes against a person’s mother or lover- or against the female member for having sex, and against the male characters for NOT having sex. And, of course, plenty of fat jokes.

Now, this was a set-up: none of these people actually had anything against each other (which, I think is a good majority of the reason why it was funny). These jokes are about as de-contextualized as you can possibly get. But, it still sat with me kinda funny: I know that these comedians didn’t actually think the other person was a slut, but it was weird to see where the jokes were thrust.

The other mildly uncomfortable part was at the end of the day, at the “R” rated Tortuga Twins show. I love the Tortuga Twins, and the “R” rated show is the best. But this one was a little…wild. Again, I laughed, but at times I think I should have maybe not. Now, this show was at the end of the day, and everyone was feeling a little free (and by free, I mean drunk). The Tortuga Twins didn’t really even get a chance to do their bit- they were too busy doing improv with the audience. People came up in the middle of a show to give them beer and rum. They were out in the audience. And, over the course of the show, they were induced by large amounts of cash to kiss each other on stage. And, they themselves played pretty loose with people in the audience- there is always a “butt boy” for instance (a guy who makes himself known at the beginning, who’s then the butt of the joke for the rest of the show), and in this case he got spanked. There were also two Asian girls (who I believe were friends) who kissed after pressure from the Tortuga Twins. Now, I THINK everything was all in good fun. Butt Boy laughed, and the Asian girls took their bows with very self-satisfied smirks on their face (if, a little red and blushing). And, this is the Tortuga Twin’s show- the audience can’t make them do anything they didn’t want to do, I’m sure, because they’ve been at this business for a long time.

But, I still end up feel a little weird about it. I can’t think of how the audience members could have got out of it, if it made them uncomfortable, without an entire audience (and it was a huge audience) thinking of them as kill-joys. And if there can’t be a “no”, can there be a “yes”? When I brought up my concerns to one of the people I went with, his response was “Sitting in the front is the consent, sitting in the back is the no. People know when you go that this stuff happens. That’s just the culture here.”

I suppose that’s true…but part of me still feels weird about it. I’m fairly free with my body, and kissing another girl wouldn’t exactly be gross for me (quite the opposite, in fact). But, what they did didn’t feel like PDA, it felt like entertainment. It felt like it was a performance for the audience. And the Tortuga Twins may be veteran entertainers, but they’re also probably broke entertainers- the amount of cash people were waving in the air may have likely been an inducement.

Well, the show was fun anyway. I wish I had something more intelligent to say about the nature of consent, and constructs of sexuality, but I can’t, for the life of me, think of them. I leave it to you, oh audience, to say it if you have it.

Oh, and if anyone’s interested, here are some pictures:

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009 at 8:12 pm and is filed under Punkass!, Entertainment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.