July 7, 2008
Beverly Farms Parade Float Isn't Funny
Some people in Beverly Farms who think they are funny decided to make fun of the abundance of pregnant teenagers in Gloucester during their "Horribles" parade.
Horrible, indeed. The parade includes women with pillows stuffed onto their tummies mocking the teenagers in Gloucester who got pregnant. Now, that could be considered satire, and mild satire at that. If they stopped there, no one would have written a word.
But whoever designed and planned the float broke all boundaries. If you watch the video, you'll find it isn't just, "Dang! That's a lot of pregnant teenage girls! Must be something in the water!" They throw in a giant squirting penis and Salt-N-Pepa's "Push It." Maybe that was slightly amusing, but the joke got old real quick.
The banner attached to the float said it all: "Knock 'em up high where expectations are low!" And minus points for the "She smelled like tuna, should a pulled out soona" sign, which is a middle finger to all women.
The excuses for the stupid float range from "we're so not PC!" to "it was only a joke." It wouldn't be so freaking funny if they or their kid got knocked up. Rich kids get knocked up, too. It's not like there's a magical shield that protects them from wayward sperm. And there's a big difference between being edgy and laughing at someone else's problems. That's the equivalent of saying, "You're poor! You're disadvantaged! I find that so amusing!"
The opinions in this post belong solely to this Bostonist.
| 
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
email this
add to facebook
add to del.icio.us
[ report this ]
> Rich kids get knocked up, too.
their parents are just better at paying for abortions. (ugh.)
this whole thing just keeps getting more sickening, but the sickest thing of all is that gloucester high (or any other school) STILL probably won't do ANYthing productive (like improve sex ed or distribute contraception) in response to any of it. bah.
and the comments on the herald article... wow.
[ report this ]
What makes me sick about this stupid float is the fact that 4th of July parades should be for kids. They are designed for families, and they should be family friendly. I haven't been to a Fourth of July parade since I turned 10, and probably won't go to another one until I have children. You can see tons of kids in the crowd, and also in the parade itself. And that squirting penis, it isn't small, it's huge. That's just irresponsible, not to mention the fact that it's inappropriate, offensive, not funny, and disgusting.
[ report this ]
Wow, how pathetic. It's the "rich kids" fault that these idiots got knocked up. More of the "it's not their fault" liberal mentality. I am VERY proud of her these girls for "speaking" her mind in this way. It sends a message to all kids about the trouble they can get into.
What, "poor kids" won't get the message?? The person who wrote this article is a screaming liberal who wants to blame all of society because people can't keep it in their own pants. Shame on you for blaming everyone else.
[ report this ]
Oh, by the way Kerry, "distributing contraception in response", only works if the girls (or boys) actualy use it. But it's not "their fault" right? It's the "rich kids" fault.
[ report this ]
I want to say that while Beverly isn't often seen as working-class or poor, especially not Beverly Farms, it is probably no more "rich" than Gloucester is. I've driven through areas of Gloucester that would make even the nicer areas of Beverly look like section eight housing. This is not a "class" issue. Those people on the (yes, very offensive) floats were making fun of the ridiculous nature of the Gloucester High "pact" situation. To the public's knowlege, none of those little girls "accidentally" got pregnant. It was apparently planned, and that, in itself was/is worth making a statement about.
Furthermore, in response to ustreetgirl's comment... While I'll say that the floats crossed several lines, and were offensive to probably most people watching, the "Horribles" Parade in Beverly Farms, was just that. This wasn't an ordinary Independence Day parade for family fun. If you look up "Parade of Horribles" on Google, it will give you a shortened account of the nearly two hundred years of "horribles" history in which people have been dressing up grotesquely and often offensively to satire political or social events during any given era (on the 4th of July). Beverly Farms has been doing a "Horribles" parade for years, and I'd be willing to bet that the reason this year's has been such a fiasco, media-wise, is that the Gloucester High School pregnancy situation was prostituted (so to speak) all over the media anyway, without any help from anybody.