They identify as prats
This one is just frivolous, but it’s so peculiar I can’t resist it.
A Washington state couple preoccupied with reliving the Victorian era — from their icebox to their undergarments — were asked to change out of their traditional costumes or leave Butchart Gardens near Victoria.
I remember reading about that couple; I thought maybe I’d blogged about them but if so I can’t find it. They do their “Victorian” thing all the time…except of course that they don’t, because for instance they blog about it, and Victorians didn’t have “blogs.” But apart from the internet and similar minor details, they pretend to be living in the 19th century full-time.
The Port Townsend couple booked tickets to lunch at Butchart Gardens in advance and couldn’t wait to see the world-famous floral displays.
Sarah wore a floor-length striped frock and hat, while Gabriel looked smart in a suit.
But they could not believe it when they arrived and were refused entry — because of their clothes.
“We’ve worn this type of clothing before and we’ve never been turned away before. Never had this sort of official banishment,” Gabriel told CBC News.
Sarah Chrisman enjoys the foliage in her finery at Abkhazi Garden in Victoria. (Sarah Chrisman/Facebook)
There’s another not-quite-Victorian item – Facebook.
But you know…if I had a garden that people paid to look at, I wouldn’t much want her in it either. Why? Because the way she’s dressed is attention-grabbing, and I wouldn’t want people being distracted from the flowers when they’d paid to look at the flowers rather than Sarah Chrisman. She’s both conspicuous and silly-looking (because who the hell voluntarily wears a corset and a skirt down to the ground? in summer?), and I would probably want to tell her to go away just for that reason.
They of course are pretending it’s a Political Issue.
They protested loudly on their blog This Victorian Life, and many readers chimed in with their dismay and support.
The couple said there seemed to be a concern at the gardens that they’d be confused for Butchart staff members.
But then they were offered the loan of staff uniforms so they could still tour the premises, which made no sense to the resplendent pair.
“It would go entirely against our principles to do so. Our clothes are part of our identity,” said Sarah. “Clothes are far too intimate a thing to allow someone to strip off of us.”
Ahhh there it is – the plaintive cry of the Identity Bird.
Clothes are just clothes. In public there are certain conventions about them, some of which can be pushed or ignored but others of which can’t. Mostly people are free to prance around the town in costume, but what they can’t do is expect no one to notice. People do notice costumes, and that’s why Butchart Gardens has a longstanding policy against them.
In a written statement, Butchart Gardens said the policy to ban costumes has been in place “for many years,” as it distracts visitors trying to enjoy the gardens.
“For the enjoyment and safety of all visitors, and to preserve our tranquil atmosphere, the Butchart Gardens joins many international attractions … in not permitting costumes or masks to be worn on-site,” Butchart said.
The gardens noted that Disney theme parks, SeaWorld parks, and the Houston Museum of Fine Arts also have costume and mask restrictions.
But the pretend Victorians of course don’t see it that way.
Our clothes are wrapped up in the most intimate way possible with our own identities. (I’ve written an entire book on the subject, for goodness’ sakes.) This man was telling us that to enter this place we had paid an inordinate amount of money to visit, we would first have to strip off our very identities. No.
So entitled, so self-absorbed, so self-important. She seems to expect the people at Butchart Gardens to know all this about the couple, and to care, and to suspend their own rules because of it. Why would they do that?
That one word “identity” has a lot to answer for.
You did mention these people before, I think. I remember them, too, and I am pretty sure it was via your mention. I think that it was some time ago, though. I wish that I identified as someone with a better memory.
Heh, ditto.
I’ll have to think of a better search word. Their names didn’t work, Port Townsend didn’t work.
I’m almost positive I’ve heard about these people from you as well, but frustratingly I can’t find the post either. Am wondering now about our planned costumed picnic in a local park this weekend…hopefully we won’t get kicked out.
Hmm. A couple of attention-seekers are denied the chance to attract attention, thus generating a news story about them. They must feel so conflicted!
On the one hand, I think hobbies with costumes and pretend identities can be a lot of fun. On the other hand, these two don’t make it a hobby, but a lifestyle and a pretense… they refuse to ever step away from it and say, yes, this is just a thing I do. And I think when people have that attitude, they are demanding others enter their fantasy, which they have no right to do. To them, those are everyday clothes, but to the world, they are in costume. It would be the same if someone wanted to go in in clown gear. <–and I suppose this is why the rule exists in the first place. If someone is in costume, they may be planning to make themselves an 'attraction' doing unauthorized entertainment in the hopes of earning tips and thus annoying other guests. Easiest way to prevent that is just not allowing people in costume.
OK, here’s where I may have encountered them before:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2015/12/can-we-talk-about-those-faux-victorians.html
Aha! Maybe I saw that too, and now misremember it as having written about it.
Well if neither of us can find your post (and I like to think of myself as an expert finder-of-things-on-the-Internet) that seems a likely explanation.
(Except that I usually don’t remember other people’s stuff as something I wrote about unless I did write about it. The two are different types of memory in some way. Still, I usually find old posts easily, so…)
Maybe you said something lengthy about it on Facebook as either a post or comment/discussion.
Yes that could be.
She’s cheating on the clothes. A Victorian woman wore gloves in public. And I don’t think she’s wearing the requisite number of petticoats.
I used to work with someone who often came to the office in costume: a princess, a hoopskirt-wearing lady, Dorothy… I found her insufferable. It was like I (well, everyone) was recruited into being her unwitting audience. It might be stupid of me, but I really resented it. Can’t I just be here? Do I need to be here in relation to you somehow? Just leave me out of… whatever you’re doing.
I regularly go to geek events where costume is common. It is a kind of performance. You are doing it to entertain yourself and others and it’s a good ice-breaker.
One fun thing about doing costume in Britain that no-one bats an eyelid. If you are ever in a public place, most people will just assume you have your reasons and not show any interest. However, if you’re walking around a public place in costume and you’re not attending an event or on your way to a costume party, I think you have to question your motives. I can understand that attractions wouldn’t like it as anyone seeing a person in costume would assume that they were some kind of entertainment, or they might just be guarding against unauthorised street entertainers looking for money.
If people enjoy a certain role-playing for their own amusement, that’s up to them but I think it’s important to acknowledge that unless you are seriously delusional, it is just a game and it’s not fair to expect others to play it.
I’ve paged Doctor Bombay.
Well, they can always go and take tea at The Empress. They would most certainly fit in there. In fact, they might be mistaken for staff and could then sue for discrimination…or something. Both are but a corset shy of straight-jackets.
However, I don’t find Victorian clothing any more distracting than islamic clothing or the clothing worn by male Orthodox Jews. Both are equally ostentatious and both completely cover the body, so should they be banned as well? If we cannot broker Sarah’s ‘temporal’ sensitivities when it comes to attire, then why should we tolerate ‘spiritual’ sensitivities with regards to same?
If Butchart Gardens admits women in headscarves and niqabs without any problem…and I suspect they do… then Sarah and Gabriel have a solid case for claiming victorianophobia. Have we witnessed a Hate Crime here?
And apart from banning public nudity, is it even possible to legislate dress?
I pose the question because there are days when I’m tempted to go flat-out Edwardian.
How do the gardens define ‘costume’? When I visited years ago there were families in traditional clothes of various cultures (mostly from southern Asia and Middle East). Do they make sure people wearing such outfit actually come from families that wore them for several generations?
I think it’s pretty easy to recognize two people in Victorian outfits as “in costume.” This isn’t a difficult balancing act.
@17
Almost all life is performance so everyone is in costume.
I really cannot understand the antagonism shown here towards these harmless people.
They are not claiming to speak on behalf of oppressed Victorians and demanding that the rest of us adhere to their narrative, adopt their jargon, and learn to be good allies. As far as I can tell, they just want to be allowed to wear their funny clothes.
It sounds more like the plaintive cry of the Eccentric Loon than the Identity Bird.
Would you be so supportive of an establishment that asked people to remove their nose rings or cover up their blue hair?
They “just want to be allowed to wear their funny clothes” in a particular place that has rules against conspicuously funny clothes. I think places like museums and gardens are allowed to have dress codes, yes. I might think particular dress codes are fatuous, but that’s not the same as a violation of human rights. BG explained the reason for their rule against costumes, and it makes sense to me.
These types of garden have a long history of rules for visitors. When public gardens and botanic gardens first started opening up to the general public (with their newly earned leisure time), they started to charge nominal entry fees so that they could lay down their own by-laws. Otherwise, there would be nothing to differentiate them from parks and other public places that, more importantly, had little control over their visitors’ behavior. In the UK, most famously, Kew Gardens charged a single penny for entry from 1916 to around 1980, which cost them more money to collect than to profit from, to set their own rules. No dogs, bikes, picnics, radios, swimwear, booze, walking on the grass, unaccompanied kids etc., etc. Just like museums and galleries, these were places to be enjoyed, as long as you respected the rules. I guess that’s way too modern for them to care about.
I’ve worked at some sites that employ ‘historical reenactors’ in period costume to interact with visitors. There’s a serious amount of research, thought and skill that goes on behind the scenes from entire education and events teams to make it happen right. On top of that, there’s quality control from a visitor operations point of view and protection of the ‘brand’ of the site as a business. Unless you’re running a ‘come dress up’ public event, you don’t want random people wandering around a site that look to other visitors as if they are representing it as an organisation or misinterpreting the history of the site.
I actually remember paying a penny for entry to Kew. I remember how odd it seemed.
I’ve just read her rambling blog post and the whole thing looks to me like a publicity stunt. She mentions several times how much planning and research they put into it, including that their ‘high wheel’ bicycle would not be permitted in the garden:
The only text I could find on BG’s website regarding this is in the ‘garden etiquette’ document on the site. Four bullet points below the bicycle rule “wheeled-shoes, rollerblades, bicycles, […] or other recreational wheeled devices.” is the no “costumes of any sort.” rule.
http://www.butchartgardens.com/files/3514/4916/8482/Garden_Etiquette_colour_V2.pdf
They link to the cached page on the internet archive to show how BG added a clarification on their visitor page about period costume after their visit. The cached version shows that the garden etiquette sentence prohibiting costume was in place when they ‘did their research’. There’s no way they hadn’t seen it. As she’s written so much about the ‘costume’ issue before I’d really doubt their motives here. Or are they really so self-absorbed they didn’t think it would apply to them?
I guess that little bit of publicity has educated us all about our present-day privilege and their crusade against Victorianophobia. Is BG still a safe space for Victorians, or should it be labeled a VERG? I may as well ask the question now before comparisons are inevitably made: Could Rosa Parks have even moved to the back of the omnibus if she was wearing a crinoline?
Bahahahahaha
WHAT????? There’s nowhere to park my penny farthing? That is an outrage.
My response, if I owned that garden, would be to allow all historical characters other than – specifically – victorians. In fact, since it’s me, I’d probably make non-victorian historical dress compulsory, with the sole intention of pissing those two people off.
I like how you think, latsot.
“Georgian? Welcome to Butchart Gardens!”
“Jacobean, I see! Come on in, welcome!”
“Ah, a family of Normans. Oh, that’s your uncle the Edwardian? How nice, welcome!”
“Ahhh, I am sorry, but those outfits are clearly 1860s, smack in the middle of Victorian. Did you not read the rules ahead of time? We have a few Interregnum pieces, I think, or perhaps Plantagenet, that you are may change into in the outside visitors center. There is a small cleaning fee. Please see the staff in the center for assistance. Next! Restoration, wonderful, come right in.”
lol
clamboy, that is exactly how I imagined it. I might even encourage steampunk costumes to *really* piss off the victorians.