Paula's Place

Paula's Place

Monday 4 August 2014

Mirror, Mirror

Now that the initial euphoria of being part of Brighton Pride has subsided a little it is time to start to reflect on the event.   One of the downsides of taking part in the parade is that I didn't get a chance to see the rest of it, so this morning I have wasted spent a lot bit of time looking at video clips on Youtube and doing photo searches on Google.   Although there are of course an awful lot of pictures and quite a few videos I will admit that from the sheer number of cameras I saw I might have expected more.   And one thing that all of the these images share is an almost total lack of any evidence that we were there.

This could easily turn into a fairly standard rant about the T being absent from LGBT, but I wonder if in this case it may slightly be our own fault. Looking at the clips and pictures, those who seem to get the most attention are the most flamboyant, the biggest loudest floats, the walkers with the very big, or very little costumes, rather than those who were walking holding a flag or a placard.   I know on the parade itself we got a very good reception, but that does not seem to have been translated into what is happening subsequently.

I think we need to make more of a splash!   Personally I debated with myself just how flamboyantly I should dress for Saturday, and ended showing a little more leg than I would usually, but nothing that would frighten the horses, I felt that although we wanted to be noticed we wanted to be noticed as women, not as men in drag.   So it was nice to be colour co-ordinated, it was nice to be a bit festive, but we do need to set limits!   However maybe we need to make a bigger splash, whether that  means a bigger vehicle, more noise, more bubbles, or more people I don't know. Certainly I think we need to be more organised, and I know that that is already in hand, personally I'm already looking forward to next year, making a big splash and soaking up all that love.

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