Anything to Act Crazy: Cajun Women and Mardi Gras Disguise

Abstract

As women play an increasingly prominent part in many Cajun Mardi Gras runs, they bring their own styles of roleplaying and masking to the celebration. A handful of creative women have taken the lead in commodifying the rural tradition, making and marketing Mardi Gras suits and masks on a large scale. This article looks at Cajun women’s disguises as a way of understanding their larger influence on the festival.

Festival space: gender, liminality and the carnivalesque

“…Alternatively women dressing in provocative costume further consolidated their position as a tourist scene to be gazed upon. Festivals can be a site to test and resist traditional gender hierarchies (Ware, 2001) but this is done in a socially controlled and ideologically embedded way.…”

“…The second 241 Festival space photograph (see Plate 2) used in this paper captures two men dressed head to toe in elderly women's clothes, including wigs, dresses and cardigans. As with Ware's (2001) research on the Mardi Gras celebrations, festival time creates an important space for cross-dressing men who will wear wigs, dresses and lipstick and take on the comic role of la vieille femme (the old women). These observations are also in-line with the parody of the good mother depicted by men during Spanish carnival time as loving, caring but also domineering (Gilmore, 1998).…”

“…Alternatively women dressing in provocative costume further consolidated their position as a tourist scene to be gazed upon. Festivals can be a site to test and resist traditional gender hierarchies (Ware, 2001) and "the trying out of non-dominant values and systems within public" (Caudwell and Rinehart, 2014, p. 1) but this is done in a socially controlled and ideologically embedded way more in line with the liminal than the liminoid.…”

Crioulização cotidiana e ecos diaspóricos: Resistência e cooptação em Cabo verde e Luisiana

“…Elas se destacam especialmente pela criatividade de suas máscaras, e por se envolverem em brincadeiras indecentes e inversões de gênero. Elas por vezes se vestem como bruxas ou com fantasias ambissexuais, debochando abertamente as idéias convencionais de compostura e de beleza (Ware, 2001).…”