Girl, Stop Passing Out in Your Makeup by Zara Barrie

Author:Zara Barrie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: N/A
Publisher: Post Hill Press
Published: 2020-03-11T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

Drugs, Music Festivals,

and Creepy Men

Song: “Coachella” by Lana Del Rey

OR

“Wet Blanket” by Metric.

Personally, I recommend reading the chapter twice to both songs. You’ll get something different out of it!

It’s festival season. That seemingly ~carefree~ time of year when spring’s natural treasures gorgeously bloom and the promise of a blissful summer effortlessly lingers in the air. Ever-so-suddenly, our Instagram feeds are positively teeming with expertly filtered images of girls. Festival girls.

Golden-skinned, twenty-something beauties—long skinny legs haphazardly tossed inside ankle-grazing booties—pose against vast open desert backdrops, their sun-kissed “beach” waves tickling the exposed flesh of their delicately tattooed backs. They wear tribal print crop-tops with matching shorts and flash peace signs as they smirk into a camera lens, the sun beaming on their exquisite faces. They top off their universally loved, viral photographs with whimsical captions like “Festival Magic.”

Who doesn’t want a little taste of that festival magic?

“I wish I was going to a festival this summer. It seems so life-changing!” I overhead an adolescent girl whine to her friend on a downtown-bound train.

“I know. All the girls look so pretty and thin in the pictures. I bet their lives are perfect. I bet festivals are the most fun things ever,” the friend moaned back in solidarity, her disenchanted voice deflating like a pin-pricked balloon.

I felt like crying. Why was I so triggered by a couple of punk kids daydreaming about music festivals on the subway? And that’s when it hit me: I was triggered by the not-so-carefree memories of my festival past.

See, a festival can be a magical experience. A festival has all the ingredients for the perfect bohemian-dream recipe: The best musicians of a generation! Sunshine! Moonshine! Young energy! Dancing!

But festivals also have an underlying darkness to them, a darkness that no one seems to want to unearth. A darkness you can’t quite see through the static screen of a social media post. A darkness that I, and countless girls I know, were shocked to witness when we blindly twirled into our first festival.

We thought we were in for three days of nothing but dancing and sharing joints with so many cool, like-minded people. No one warned us about the dangers lurking beneath the seemingly carefree surface.

And we left those festivals shattered and confused, each harboring a scary memory that we tucked away deep inside of ourselves because we were embarrassed and ashamed. We didn’t want to be the freaks, the “no fun” bitches, the sensitive killjoys, the only ones who didn’t have the time of our lives. So we took a vow of silence, like the generations of girls before us.

I’m sick of sending out dishonest messages to girls in order to keep up some tired myth that raves and festivals are bohemian safe spaces, places that foster free love and connection to all that’s right in the Universe, nothing more.

Which is why I’m going to candidly discuss the dark side of the festival. Maybe you’re one of the lucky ones, and you’ve been to a dozen festivals and have never come in contact with their dark side.

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