Fair fare lacked taste

I'm walking through a fall fair.

Taking in the sounds of kids laughing, strains of country music, the whinnies of horses and crows of roosters and the smell of barbecues and sugary-sweet snacks. The horizon shows crowds watching horse pulls, the bright colours of children’s midway rides and games, line-ups at concession stands, grandparents and parents clutching little ones’ hands and vendors selling ribbon headbands, knitted goods, stuffed animals and glass smoking pipes.

Wait, one of these things is not like the others. A vendor’s table holds row upon row of T-shirts. One reads “Tell your boobs to stop looking at my eyes.”

A vast array of other shirts touch on humour relating to drinking and sex.

At the next stall, there’s real knives decorated with skeleton and pirate themes. At another, decorated pipes with a handwritten warning above them – ‘For tobacco use only!’ Right. Other finds include lighters decorated as busty female torsos that one squeezes to light up. A row of hats has a Dora the Explorer-decorated one beside a pink model featuring a Superman slogan .... with the word ‘Superbitch’ underneath.

If these items are one’s personal taste, so be it. There’s obviously a market for these trinkets and fashion choices.

But a fall fair isn’t the place to sell them.

The fall fair’s main draw is its old-fashioned, family-friendly fun.

Offensive language, sexist and/or pro-drunken statements, paraphernalia that can be used for drug use and such don’t promote these values.

The nature of how vendors set up at fairs does not allow those who don’t want their children subjected to these items, or adults themselves offended by them, to avoid them.

Vendors are displaying their goods on tables – rights at children’s eye levels.
And adults aren’t the sole purchasers of fairground fare – rather, children, and especially teenagers, enjoy spending their allowance and baby-sitting money at their community’s special event.

While it can be hoped that lighter, pipe and knife sales are prohibited to under-agers, there’s no law that prevents a child or teen buying a clothing item with a dirty word or drinking innuendo.

These items don’t fall in with the themes of the fall fair. It can be assured that local agricultural societies and other organizers don’t want these messages spread at their events.

But some screening of vendors has to be enforced to prevent these undesirable goods from being accessible at fairs.

Bring on the vendors that offer inflatable toys, stuffed animals, costume jewelry, light sabers, little toys and all of those other simple joys most associated with festivals.

But leave out the vendors that are selling goods that go against the traditional values that almost single-handedly drive the continuing success of our fall fairs.

K.G.