Category Archives: Customs

Customs, conventions, and traditions of a group

Big/Little Process

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Sorority house? Los Angeles. From Oregon and Washington.
Performance Date: April 30, 2014
Primary Language: English

Informant is a student at USC. Theatre major, girl, brunette, an older sister, a cat mother, a child of divorced parents, and a resident of multiple states – CA, OR, WA, TX.

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For Big/Little what we do is – I think a lot of sororities kind of do it the same, but for us at least – the Littles submit the name of five people they want to be their Bigs, and the Bigs submit five names of people they want to be their Littles.

First explain the concept of Big and Little.

In sororities, there’s a Big, and there’s a Little. And a Big is like their mentor. Throughout their time in college. And beyond. And it’s just kind of a closer relationship. So it’s like a mutual selection of who you want to be your Big and Little.  So that way you end up liking the person who is your Big or Little. And once it’s been decided, the Bigs are told who their Little is. And then they buy ‘em a bunch of gifts. And basically get rid of their entire bank account. On gifts. Lots and lots of gifts. The first day – there’s like three days of gifts, I think – the first day is Monday of that week, and we give them all of their favorite things, ‘cause they submit a little survey, so you know their favorite kind of candy, and their favorite stuffed animal kind of thing, y’know like cute little fun things. The second day is a delivery kit, for sending cute little presents and stuff between sororities and fraternities, like little gift bags, and tape, and tissue paper, and candy, and stuff like that. And you decorate the box all pretty with their name on it. And the third day is a blanket with their name on it, and the sorority letters on it. And it’s all comfy and cute and really expensive.

Do you have one of those?

I do. I do. My little – I didn’t put her name on it, ‘cause it was really expensive, but I put the letters on it. But yeah. And then I guess on Thursday or Friday – maybe I have the days mixed up – but on the fourth day there’s like this big “reveal.” You have gotten clues all throughout the week of who your Big is and everything, and they’re really bad clues – usually they’re lies. I don’t lie, but mine are really vague clues, like my first pet was a fish named Rainbow. No one knows these things. And then at the end of the week you have reveal, where they have to follow this incredibly difficult scavenger hunt kinda trail thing, in order to find the final clue, and their costume, and then they find a gigantic box related to their costume, and inside the box is their Big! They pop out and surprise them and then people cry and scream – in a happy way, because they’re excited. And a little bit scared there’s a person in the box. It’s very fun.

How elaborate are the scavenger hunts? Is there a standard format for them?

It’s not really a scavenger hunt scavenger hunt, it’s kinda like a string maze kinda thing. But we don’t tell them what it’s going to be, but in actuality it’s a string maze. And they have to follow their string to their costume

Costume for…

To find their Big! Their big is in a matching costume. And the box corresponds to it sort-of-not-really. It just says their name on it. Cause you get all dressed up in a matching costume and then you go out and do something fun, like go out to dinner or go roller skating or something. In your little matching outfits. It’s very sorority. And usually they’re pretty standard costumes. But this year we had someone who was a monkey and a banana. That was really fun.

Does the Big pick the costume?

Yes. But it’s usually something to do with the Little’s likes. For my Big and Little, I love pandas. And my Big dressed us up as pandas. And then for my Little – she really loves travels, so I dressed us up as French people. So – corresponding to what they would like.

When you went through the process of finding out who your Big was, how did you feel about it?

It was really exciting. But a little bit confusing ‘cause everyone was like “Oh I totally know who my Big is!” And I just had no clue. ‘Cause the clues were really horrible. And they just threw me off. But it was very fun and exciting.

Did you like all the gifts?

I did! She spared no expense, and I got t-shirts and nail polish and headbands and stuff like that. Magazines, candy. She baked me brownies. Peanut butter brownies. So I baked my Little either cookies or brownies, I don’t remember.

Like your Big did for you!

Do you do things outside of this particular week – do you have Big/Little time?

Basically yes. Last night we were eating dinner together, just at the house, and then she was like “Well, I don’t have anything to do right now, do you want to go to Goodwill? And so we went shopping at Goodwill and bought a ton of stuff we didn’t need. It was fun. And we do bi-weekly fro-yo runs, and just as often as we can we get ice cream and fro-yo. And we’re gonna live together next year. It’s very exciting. She’s a wonderful person. Littles are awesome.

Do you ever do stuff with all of you together – grand-Big, grand-Little?

We’ve got this gigantic family tree, and we have this little Facebook group for it too, so it’s not just like my Big, it’s also up to her great-grandbig who is the head of our family, so it’s huge. We try to plan things together, but there’s so many of us that no one shows up. So we’re trying to plan smaller things, just with my grandbig and everything

Your individual line?

Yeah. So we haven’t gotten much done yet, just because she’s graduating this year so she has to finish things up. But then we’re gonna try and all hang out.

But you try. And you keep a family tree.

We do. It’s very big, it’s very elaborate, it’s very cool.

Do people have multiple Littles?

Mhmm. That’s why our tree’s so big. There’s two people with three Littles in it. And my Big has two Littles, including me. So the tree just keeps expanding. But then there’s one little line over here when it only has one Little per person, but then everyone else is like khrrr. How many Littles do you want today?

 

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I am also part of a greek organization on campus, and we have a similar practice. Bigs and Littles get matched up by preference, there is a week where the Littles get clues, and there is a reveal at the end. The acts on each day and the process of the reveal are different. That is to be expected from a different community/group of people, to have their own spin on the process. Multiplicity and variation, y’all.

The big/little practice aids in community-building within a house, since often these organizations have more members than the small pack humans like to align themselves with. This prevents anyone from getting lost in the fray so no one gets left alone in the dirt.

Cherries and Cherry Queens

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 26, 2014
Primary Language: English

My informant is a college junior studying cognitive science and creative writing. He is a casual pot smoker.

He heard this piece of folklore while working on a ranch near his Texas hometown, from an older man who taught him and his fellow ranch hands all about weed culture. He likes it and it means a lot to him because it reminds him of the time in his life when he was a ranch hand and of the people he worked and lived with at the time. He says he hopes to bring the same vibe of that group of people to his friends and smoking pals now.

This interview was performed in the informant’s bedroom.

“What’s a cherry?”

“A cherry is, um, when you light the bowl and then you smoke it and then after you’re done smoking it it’s still like, lit, like there’s still like a red glow in the bowl, so it’s called a cherry and you can pass it and then you say ‘oh it’s cherried!’ and then they quickly but without lighting it continue to just smoke it, and then if they can continue to pass it around the circle and it gets all the way back to you and it’s still lit, then it’s like super cool and like a very rare feat, and then you’re officially the cherry queen. Oh and cherry queen is like an automatic pass, like if you’re cherry queen, and you get cherried, no matter when it stops, it comes back to you and you get to light it again. So like if it goes all the way around the circle and then like two people down it’ll come back to you and reset at you.”

These kinds of very specific stoner traditions and stoner language prove to me that this subculture is very developed and widespread, which counters the notion of stoners as lazy and generally not serious. Within stoner communities or microcommunities, these traditions and lingo are very important and tend to distinguish experienced smokers from newbies.

420 Holiday/Metafolklore

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 26, 2014
Primary Language: English

My informant is a college student, artist and avid pot smoker. He knows a lot of “stoner tricks” as he calls them, most of which he learned from friends in high school. These and other aspects of weed culture mean a lot to him because he sees pot as a way of bonding with peers and enhancing creativity. Uniquely, as far as I have heard, he also uses it as a form of self-medication; he has ADHD and takes Ritalin, but says that it makes him feel mentally cloudy and slow, and that weed, for him, clears things up and makes him able to focus more easily. Thus, pot is an integral part of his daily life, both socially and personally.

He first heard about 420 in late middle school or early high school from friends, and first celebrated it three years ago. He has partaken in the festivities every year on April 20th since.

This interview was conducted during a break in class, outside the classroom on a balcony.

“What is 420?”

“Hold on I gotta look something up real quick, gotta fact-check for a second…”
“Naw man you’re not allowed to!”

“Aw really? Alright I’m not on my A game man, but I’ll tell you what I can remember… So the gist of it is that there was like a group of students once upon a time probably in the 60s that met afterschool everyday at 4:20 at a certain statue or a certain landmark on campus like right outside their school to go smoke, so that’s the reason, because it was at 4:20 in the afternoon. And there’s been rumors as to other reasons why, so like some people thought that it’s Hitler’s birthday and that’s why, but I don’t know why people would celebrate that so that’s kind of a dumb one but then another one is that there’s a law, some proposition in the police code that has to do with arresting people for marijuana that is 420 or something…”

“I heard it was police code, like ohh 420 alert, somebody’s smoking weed”

“Yeah that’s something I’ve heard before as well but that’s also not true. See some of these might have some truth to them so like for example I think Hitler’s birthday is actually on April 20th, but it’s just a coincidence like that’s not the actual reason. But back to the students, I mean I guess school let out at 4pm so they figured like hey, 20 minutes to get to the spot and they had like a smoke spot that I believe was behind a statue but I could be wrong about that, and, um, that just permeates into stoner culture, like everyone has their smoke spot, you know, cause it’s illegal in most places so you have to have a place you’re relatively sure is safe, so everyone has their spot that they’ve come up with… And we used to have a spot, you know back home…”

“Oh yeah? What was your spot?”
“Well there was this shortcut through the woods near my friend’s house that went to a public pool, and like we would just take that shortcut and like, go off into the woods, kind of off to the side, and smoke there, but they put some lights there so we like can’t do it this year cause unfortunately it’s well lit now, but RIP smoke spot… Anyway well the other thing is that now it’s like a holiday, right, so at 4:20am and 4:20pm and all day 4/20 [April 20th] people just smoke a lot of weed basically, and it’s turned into a cultural icon I guess.”

“How do you celebrate 4/20?”

“Well I mean I’ve only celebrated it three times… but uh, lemme think. Well, it’s the same as everyone, just get as high as many different ways as possible, like collect them all, like try to do every different method in one day, that’s one thing you could do that’s like kind of fun, I tried that once I think my second time.”

My informant is obviously very interested in having accurate information, and sets his stories apart from “wives’ tales” in stoner culture as truth and having been “fact-checked”. I found this interesting because upon asking him, most of what he thought was “wives’ tales” came from friends and most of what he thought was true he had fact-checked on online forums about weed. I also think that the context in which he heard this piece of folklore and the metafolklore surrounding it is interesting because it is in the early teenage years when people become introduced to the concept of drugs, especially pot, and when many people begin to try it. His attachment to the truth reveals his attachment to being a more “legitimate” person within his identity as a stoner.

 

What is a Gay Bear?

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 28, 2014
Primary Language: English

My informant is a 20 year old gay film student who self-identifies as a bear. Gay bears are loosely defined as masculine, bigger, hairier guys who are into other masculine, bigger, hairier guys. Here he tries to define what a gay bear is:

“So the bear community if you don’t already know is a community of gay men who tend to be on the heavier side of life. And uh, weight, like, there’s no specified weight that makes you a bear, there’s a lot of schools of thought on it and the jury’s kinda out on it, but um, people tend to think that it’s just bigger guys. Muscular, heavy, just big. But really the biggest, uh, the biggest component is hair. Hairy men, hairy gay men, are bears. ….That’s not a good quote. But the bear flag is a nice little piece of folklore, it consists of uh, orange, black, brown, and uhm… orange black brown colors, more, and those are supposed to be the colors of, all the different colors of body hair, all the different possible colors of body hair on men.”

The informant knows about the bear identity and the bear flag through friends who are bears, but initially (especially in high school) gained most of his information about bears through the internet, because “nobody really talks about gay culture in high school, let alone bears.” As he said, the jury is out on what really defines a bear, and the definitions of the identity is in itself so diverse and numerous that anyone you ask will have a slightly different concept of it. However, here my informant references a semi-official (though born out of folklore) bear “flag” to identify gay bears more with hairiness.

Bear Week and Dick Dock

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 28, 2014
Primary Language: English

My informant is a 20 year old gay film student who self-identifies as a bear. Gay bears are loosely defined as masculine, bigger, hairier guys who are into other masculine, bigger, hairier guys. In this interview he describes a holiday particular to bears called Bear Week, which takes place in Provincetown. He says it has always been a dream of his since he heard of it in 7th grade to go to Bear Week, and he might make his dream a reality this summer. It means a lot to him because this community is one he is very involved in, and very into personally as well. This interview took place in a university dining hall.

“Uh, ok so, the biggest bear event is at Provincetown, Massachusetts, which is already a pretty gay hotspot year-round, but uh, second week of July the bears come to town and wreak havoc on the pools and, (laughs) and hotels, and main streets of Provincetown. And there’s a place called Dick Dock, which is (chuckles) a certain section of the boardwalk in Provincetown, and you go underneath the boardwalk, just as the old song says, (laughter) you can find men engaging in… all sorts of pleasures.”
“Where’d you hear this?”

“That I know about… I know about this from friends of mine who have gone to Provincetown for Bear Week.”

When I asked him about the more common ways that this kind of knowledge is proliferated, he had this to say:

“Well in gay cultures, the folklore tends to spread more in private, um, because bears is not something that’s discussed widely in high schools across America so I didn’t know about it, my friends weren’t telling me about it so I had to look this kinda stuff up on the internet, and I would just read articles, and like, the Wikipedia article, like a lot, and you know, different theories on like, what bears were about, and there’s this one great guy named Andrew Sullivan, who’s actually a super famous writer, and he wrote this great article about what it means to be a bear…”

Bear Week and Dick Dock were two of the only pieces of information he could give me about bears that he hadn’t just learned from the internet or from bear movies and webseries (of which there are many!) because of this phenomenon he describes of the rarity of discussion of bear culture among youth. However this community means a lot to him, and since now he’s in college he can participate in it less virtually and more in reality, which gives him access to bear folklore of a different sort. That said, this community has evolved and proliferated (like many other queer subcultures) through the internet so much that it’s difficult if not impossible to disentangle the “real” folklore from the internet folklore, especially when you’re young and tech-savvy. I think the internet has opened up so many avenues and subcultures for youth, especially queer youth, to explore, as it’s easier to access in private, even before coming out.