Parade Talk

 I’m an academic who dutifully researches the literature and conducts fieldwork by reading, talking, listening, taking notes, photographing, and audio-video recording; yet when I write this “Parade Talk” blog, I channel a creative flow, widely uninhibited.

 In October, I searched the Internet for parade and parade-like events related to Halloween, Zombie Walks/Crawls, and Day of the Dead. The number of events worldwide was astounding, from rural to suburban and urban settings, the visual and text documentation of these events and the people who attended them was extensive.

After attending the Topless Day Parade in Venice Beach, California August 26, 2017, I considered multiple ways I could approach this topic of nudity in parades and marches. Here are eight possible approaches to talking about nudity in this event and other parades and marches with nudity: 

 When I think of a parade as a puzzle, it gives me an imaginative way to think about it and its many pieces. The parade, in its entirety represents a communal effort of people gathering and creating something for themselves and public consumption. It’s a banana split extravaganza that our eyes eat up.