Week 5 Post: Bare chests at Bonnaroo

This past weekend I attended Bonnaroo, the 4 day outdoor music festival in Tennessee. Needless to say it was incredibly hot and thousands of us were baking in the sun all day long. Men and boys of all ages were topless, which reminded me of our Brandi Chastain blackboard discussion. What I found most interesting was the few instances I noticed where women went topless. In this very liberal environment it was not as shocking as one might think, but I still wouldn’t say it was accepted either. Of course it would’ve been impossible to enforce any kind of policy on dress. Also, the booze were flowing quite freely and I would imagine other illegal substances would not have been hard to obtain. Hence a lax attitude toward a few topless women was a drop in the bucket of some rowdy and tawdry behavior throughout the weekend’s events. I caught an eye full of a topless male/female couple dancing and seemingly in their own world. During my boyfriend’s band’s performance a topless and chest tattooed woman was elevated in the crowd on someone’s shoulders visible to the thousands of spectators. The lead singer proclaimed she was the first topless woman fan in their crowd in all of their 6 years as a touring band. The other band girlfriends and wives thought it was more shocking to see an obese man topless in the crowd than the woman. They made jokes about the man’s flabby chest as though he should have stayed covered because his body was not the ideal image of masculinity or what society deems attractive. There were a few “man boobs” jokes exchanged. They didn’t seem to pass as much judgment on the topless woman. I personally did not care or take offense to any of the chests I saw, male or female. It was ungodly hot and humid, and I’m pretty open minded when it comes to nudity in this type of circumstance. However, I thought it was interesting to hear other people’s opinions and how critical the girls were of the male bodies they saw. Although they did not verbalize any criticism of the topless women, I’m sure if I went topless I would’ve met a barrage of criticism from them as well. While they tend to look the other way at strangers, if one their own friends like me went bare-chested I know there would have been some very negative reactions. Not that I would have done it. Just food for thought.