Pride is a Party

This week's column.....

   

Pride is a party.

And every year, someone asks if there shouldn’t be something more behind it—more activism, more seriousness, a little less nudity, a few less feathers.

Maybe that’s the wrong question.

Maybe Pride should be seen less as advancing our movement and more as something that brings us something more intangible: happiness.

In philosopher Jennifer Michael Hecht’s delicious new book “The Happiness Myth,” she says that an essential ingredient of a happy life is group celebration.

“Happiness requires some public processing of grief and fear. More than any other people in history, we are enabled by our culture to feel independent,” she writes. “But we really aren’t independent; we are a pack. …Sometimes a pack needs to bay at the moon together.”

Hecht gives a list of the things that make a happy celebration happier: costumes, ritual gestures (think YMCA!), music, sexuality, expressions of loss and victory, shouting, touching, nudity. And she calls Gay Pride “the best new holiday.”

She adds, “The great happiness tonic is a large group of people who are both dedicated to a hope and willing to do some frenzied celebration and other festive ritual.”

This is interesting, right? Because we never think of happiness as enough, not really. We look a little skeptically at happiness unless it is hard-earned and combined with a little virtue, a little asceticism.
We believe someone who says he is happy because he goes to the gym. We’d laugh and roll our eyes, though, if that same guy professed that his happiness came from a daily intake of ice cream.

So it is with Pride. Some people are able to dance on floats, be with the music, drink in the sunshine, roar happily over beads and boas. Some of us look at those people and shudder.

But why?

A good contrast to a Pride Parade are the Dyke Marches that are also held across the country. A Dyke March is serious and is usually about a serious issue, like universal health care. There is pleasure in it, because it is exciting to walk with a group who shares your beliefs; there is pleasure in chanting and making noise and exposing parts of yourself that are normally safely clothed.

I love Dyke Marches. I love their solemnity, their ferocity. But I’ve got to admit, I like Dyke Marches a little more when the radical cheerleaders show up in their bouncy skirts, or when the Lesbian Avengers eat fire, or when women start dancing unselfconsciously to the primal beat of many hand drums.

We need Dyke Marches.

But we need Pride Parades, too.

And those of us who skip them because it’s too crowded, too hot, too drunk, too same-old, same-old, should rethink.

Hecht makes the point that thinking about doing something isn’t the same as actually doing it. And showing up to these sorts of group celebrations are essential to our long-term well-being.

So, come to Pride. Wear a boa. Drink a little, if it doesn’t harm you. Dance in the sunshine as each new song floats by. Put your hands up and scream for the cute men and women who are waving.

Instead of worrying about how political the parade is or isn’t, about how those outside our community perceive us on our day, let yourself be carried on the drug of group ecstasy and so transported into euphoria and joy.

Activism is important and has its place. Seriousness is important and has its place, too.

But Pride doesn’t have to be about anything in order to be worthwhile. It is not about how others see us. It is not about advancement. It is about rejoicing in community. It is about releasing the stress of the past year; of letting go the weight of worry that comes with being a minority community that is still battling every day for our basic rights.

So join me. Let’s dance wildly together in the streets and throw our heads back with release. Let’s sing YMCA, complete with gestures. Let’s bay at the moon.

As Hecht says, “What becomes clear is that it is not enough to come out of the closet; you also have to leave the house.”

Jennifer Vanasco is an award-winning syndicated columnist based in New York. Email her at jennifer.vanasco@gmail.com and read her occasional blog at jennifervanasco.com.