Hippie Sexual

It's been a hot minute since I posted anything here; real life gets put on hold for the festival I attend every year, and although I do get internet in my tent (right?), there hasn't been much time for it.

I work in the kitchen here, feeding the other crews that set up the festival site. It floods every year, so prep takes about a month and a half. I'm not down here for that long, but I've been here since Tuesday, pulled a thirteen hour day yesterday (which is about average, these days), and I am tired.

Part of the weird hippie-sexual stuff might be because I'm tired. I might be über-sensitive to comments that I wouldn't normally notice, or (because I'm not in my regular super-supportive feminist environment) I might be hyper-aware of what's different from me, and over-reacting accordingly. But that's sort of beside the point. First, this hippie-sexual stuff.

I feel more comfortable with nudity and (until this year) sexuality at the Fair than I do most other places. I shower in co-ed sauna showers, I walk around topless. I even did a (mostly) naked photo shoot in the bakery, with me riding the Hobart (our industrial mixer - I'm a baker) in nothing but my underwear and electrical tape.

But this year, things have felt really different. Like I don't have the space to talk about feminism, like I don't want my body to be sexualized, like I don't want to hear comments or whistles or hollers when I dress pretty. It's especially hard to pin down, in part, because the hippie personality (and the Fair vibe in the general, especially in the kitchen) is so hyper-sexualized; my misogyny-dar is all outta whack.

Let's take yesterday, for example. At the hottest part of the day, it hit 92º in the bakery, and standing in front of the 400º convection oven when it's that hot out, you don't want to be wearing any more clothes than you have to be. So, I stripped down to my boots, my underwear, my bra, and an apron. Okay, maybe I went back to my tent really quick while the dough was rising to change into more awesome underwear and a more awesome bra, but still.

I understand that, in taking my clothes off, I'm revealing more of my body, and that comments and flirtations are probably going to come up.* And I'm also aware that, by changing into underwear that has red ruffles and a big black anarchy A on the butt, I'm probably going to get more comments than had I gone with the more drab granny panty option.

*I don't think I deserve it, or that I'm asking for it, but that's the reality, and I haven't had enough coffee yet to tackle the "should it be this way" questions yet.


And, for the most part, I was comfortable. I danced around had a great time. But I wonder what I would have done in that situation were somebody to come up and make a comment that I was uncomfortable with. How do I say, standing in my underwear, in this place where sexuality and nudity are very prevalent, and very openly discussed, that I'm uncomfortable with how they're treating me?

It's a hard catch-22, even though it's not. The answer, I know, is that I *should* have the freedom to simply ask somebody not to say or do whatever it is that they're doing. But it's hard when I want to be flirtatious but *not* inherently sexualized by the people around me.

I think part of it is the lack of support around here. And I don't mean personal support, but support for a feminist perspective. Part of that is lack of education (and I mean that with zero condescension). It's just an idea that a lot of people here haven't been exposed to. Another part is the personal vs. the communal. As in, the communal perspective here is very inclusive, very loving, very sexual. I love the communal perspective, but I don't love when individual people hide behind that perspective, or use it to skirt my requests. Like "Oh, you know I don't mean it, it's Fair, I love you," when I've asked them to stop doing or saying whatever they're doing or saying. Like somehow, when you come to this place, you cease to be an individual person with individually responsible affects on other people.

Anyway. Mostly, it's amazing here; this is just a small piece of the pie. It's my other family, my chosen family. But, like family, they're sometimes slow on the modern uptake.
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