Did You Hear About The Girl Who . . . ?: Contemporary Legends, Folklore, and Human Sexuality

Chapter 1: Yes, We Are Folk and We Do Have Folklore

1 YES, WE ARE FOLK AND WE DO HAVE FOLKLORE ❏ I believe the woman was from Murphy (North Carolina). A few years ago, she started going to the tanning bed because she wanted to be tan by the time she got married. I think she was getting married around April. Anyway, she didn’t have time to get a real tan. A few days before the wedding, she started going to the tanning bed three or four times a day—hoping to get real dark before her wedding day. You know, you’re only supposed to go once a day and that’s not even good for you. Nancy [a friend of the narrator’s family] said that someone told her that they found the girl in one of the beds the day before her wedding and she was dead. She had fried her insides. Just think—the day before her wedding. This story, told by a woman to her college-student daughter, is folklore, whether or not the mother or the daughter knew it at the time. Specifically , it is a form of folklore called a contemporary legend and is not merely entertainment but also conveys a set of messages. In this book, we present a range of folklore relating to issues of sexuality currently circulating in the United States, particularly among adolescents and 1 young adults. We place that folklore in the context of what it reflects about the society that produces it. As authors who come from different backgrounds—one a biologist whose areas of research are health and sexuality education and women’s health, and the other a folklorist—we hope to encourage readers to see the connections between folklore and sexuality education, and especially to encourage health and sexuality educators to use the folklore of their students/clients to enhance their teaching approaches. Because of the rapid changes and regional variations in folklore, it would be impossible to present exhaustively all the folklore circulating about specific topics, such as HIV/AIDS or sexual violence. We have instead selected examples that illustrate what folklore is and how it can be used to enhance sexuality education. Contemporary Legends Returning to the legend above helps define one form of folklore. Contemporary legends or “urban legends” are narratives about bizarre, unnatural , or ironic events purported to have happened in the recent past, often in the local community, to an unspecified person (the woman from Murphy or there was this girl who . . . ), to people at a couple of removes from the narrator (a friend of a friend), or to famous people. Located as they are in contemporary society, they reflect with particular clarity the current fears and anxieties of a group and serve as warnings about potentially dangerous situations, behaviors, and assumptions. The tanning bed legend serves as an overblown (overdone might be more apt) warning about an unhealthful practice. It is also a commentary on the dangers of artificial beauty standards and the risks women take in attempting to achieve them, though not apparently a criticism of the “beauty” industry that promotes such unhealthy behaviors. Contemporary legends are generally presented as true, though the narrator and audience may or may not believe them. Debates about whether or not to believe a particular legend are important activities, YES, WE ARE FOLK AND WE DO HAVE FOLKLORE 2 helping the individual and the group determine the range of acceptable possibilities. Moreover, an individual’s degree of belief in a particular legend may vary depending on the context, on who is telling the legend , on the supporting evidence (something that happened to the narrator ’s friend’s aunt can be very convincing), and on the reactions of the rest of the group. Legends may be based on true events, but we will not attempt to prove the “truth” or “falseness” of these legends in the sense of whether or not they actually happened. There are authors, such as Jan Brunvand, who particularly focus on tracking down these legends and checking whether they happened. There are also websites that play this role. For example, on one (http://www.snopes.com/), a red dot indicates that a legend has been shown to be false, while a green dot indicates a real occurrence. Although we will not try to prove whether or not these legends are based on real events, we will explore whether they could happen . Legends are presented in a conversational...