Mardi Gras should now have begun in New Orleans. Here, our own ‘Fat Tuesday’ comprised of flipping a few pancakes for dinner, served up with lemon juice and sugar. In the UK, it’s ‘Pancake Tuesday’ or Shrove Tuesday, not quite the glitz and razzmatazz of Mardi Gras. It precedes Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, and Easter is now 40 days away. During Lent, Christians traditionally abstain from something they usually love for the duration of Lent.

In recent years it has become a little bit of a ‘tradition’ (or drunken behaviour, depending on what you read about it) for ladies to flash their breasts in exchange for souvenir beads.

I’m not sure I can buy into the ‘official’ line that it’s not a tradition. There seems to be too many women, in the hours of daylight, ‘flashing for beads’ to say that it’s some kind of coercion. They seem to be freely entering into the spirit of it all, a bit of silliness, whether drunken or not, and in a country often nipple-phobic, a bit of silliness to be welcomed.

Second Life has its own Mardi Gras sims and parade, with quite a few avatars entering into the spirit of it and even going bare-chested. Jazz bands! Hula Hoops!

Our model managed to find some free beads on the Marketplace!

Ella