The science behind flashing for beads
Happy Fat Tuesday!
Cities all across America celebrate Mardi Gras but no one does it quite like New Orleans. Huge floats in huge parades attract revelers for one of the biggest parties on the planet. One of the most popular features of these parades is a tradition that dates back to the 1830s: the tossing of beads from float goers to their clamoring audiences begging: “Throw me something, mister.”
This simple plea used to be enough to have a chance at scoring some of the highly-prized beads, but as Tom Jacobs reports in this piece for Miller-McCune, University of Louisiana, Lafayette criminal justice department head Craig Forsyth took his toddler son to Mardi Gras and couldn’t figure out why no one would give the kid some beads until a nearby woman explained that there’s no catching beads when the female flashers are around.
Forsyth interviewed 51 women and 54 male float riders about stripping for beads. His conclusion? “Some forms of deviance apparently do ‘work,’” he concluded, “and parade stripping is one of them.”
Check the story’s links for more details on the social science tied to Mardi Gras.
