Indy provides an escape from our daily life as mature adults. It allows for the chance to revisit our ancestor’s way of living. We begin to communicate through grunts and enthusiastically partake in the eternal search to spread our seed.
Once you enter the gates of Indy you are in another world. New laws exist and morals are thrown out the window. Without warning it becomes acceptable for a man to walk up to a woman and announce, “show us your tits,” and for her to actually do it. As the locals say at Indy, it’s very GC to get your boobs out. Indy provides grown ups with the chance to lose all inhibitions and let their true exhibitionist shine. Men and women become overtly licentious, yet the moment they leave the mature, modest adult returns and all that is left is the peeling sunburn.
Bad behaviour is riot at Indy due to the festival expanding the bounds of common decency. Spectacles that were seen include, topless women, men providing cash for women to take their tops off and prostitutes advertising their services off balconies. The race is barely of interest to those within the grounds, many attending solely for the booze and the babes.
Professor of psychology Paul Wilson of Bond University believes Indy is really an opportunity to lose all morals, “ Indy gives adults a perfectly legal and culturally acceptable excuse to turn into larrikins, some would even say pigs, without attracting too much social negative condemnation.”
Innocent fun does have its limits however. On the first night of Indy more then 50 people were arrested. Over the course of the four days a total of 262 fans were arrested. However, with 314,000 fans attending over the four days and 0.08% being arrested it appears that it was a well-behaved event. The majority of arrests were due to drunk and disorderly behaviour. Only four of those arrests were due to prostitution. However, the disgust amongst many still prevails as even though the behaviour may not be illegal does not mean it should be accepted.This behaviour is being fuelled by the angle Indy is promoted on.
Indy is constantly being endorsed as a long weekend party as outlined on the official website. The Gold Coast promotes the event through displaying a bevy of scantily, clad grid babes and the chance to have fun in the sun. Therefore, it is hypercritical to condemn the behaviour seen as its marketing encourages it.“[Indy] will change with more media condemnation but the Gold Coast media seems to have promoted the benefits of Indy so heavily, including the party, party, party line that it will take a swift turn around to do so,” said Professor Wilson.
To clean up Indy we need to stop advertising it in this manner, which only encourages such negative behaviour.There is pressure to clean up Indy and its bad behaviour. “I don’t want to see a great Gold Coast event ruined by bloody idiots,” Premier Anna Bligh stated after her experience of the event. “Some of the behaviour on balconies was disgusting,” she said.
There are the obvious reasons such as the image of the Gold Coast and the $60 million it pulls in for tourism each year. Yet, wouldn’t seeing naked bouncing breast only entice you to a city? We must stop pretending that Indy is a sophisticated event. An event based on rubber on the road and on the chest isn’t going to attract pillars of society.
The Gold Coast prides its self by offering things no other city would dare. These include the meter maids, Big Brother celebrities, brothels and the chance to gain a loan to fully fund your breast enlargement. The Gold Coast will never be as classy as Melbourne; we must accept that the Gold Coast is sin city.Yet, the state of morality is in question.
These images are beamed to over 200 million people around the world and many of these are young, impressionable minds. The messages we are sending to our youth is damaging. Boys are being taught to see women as purely ‘sluts’ and believe that it is acceptable to demand a woman to undress yet torment her if she refuses. What message is this sending to our young women?
You only have to look around the coast to see young girls desperately trying to fit the ideals of men. Tiny waists sashing on heels, perma-tan, bleached hair and exposed flesh on display. It seems the only way to get boys to notice you is to push your boobs up, stick your butt out and hope to god you don’t come off as too smart. These are the types of women that are paraded around the track at Indy and we are supposed to idolise them.
Indy is an escape for ‘toolies’ yet they can’t escape the responsibility they hold. Children attend this event and look to their elders for the bounds of normal community standards. Indy is about getting loose but not so that all clothes are off in public well before noon. There is a time and place for everything yet until Indy is made an 18+ event we must be weary of the messages we are sending to our youths.
Personally, I avoid Indy like the plague. The bruises on my bum due to the constent grabbing ruined my one and only experience. The first was cute, the second funny yet the third grab I was screaming for common decency. Women are not walking products to be tried and tested before buying.
It will take small steps for the ‘toolies’ to turn into the adults they are. Until then, to the toolies of 2008, follow these simple rules, limit groping to one hour per day, keep shirt on till at least 2pm, carry one beer at a time and encourage women to just push the boobs up not out.
This may not be perfect but it’s a step in the right direction. The behaviour at Indy will only change when the attitude towards Indy does. No longer can it be seen as an opportunity to act like a complete idiot without any castigation. For now we say goodbye Indy and go back to normal GC life where common decency and self-respect still exists. Now where are those meter maids when you need them?
No comments:
Post a Comment