Maybe I’ve lived on the island too long, but when someone tells me there’s a special week set aside for getting drunk, eating too much, losing your inhibitions and exposing your nude body to the world, my first question is, “Just one week?”

Mardi Gras is upon us, and I’m afraid I may be too late. Thousands of women around the world are already in the thick of it, popping their puppies out of their shirts for a handful of cheap plastic beads, and thank God for those women. But far too many of them are inexperienced beginners at the fine art of public flashing. Hard working New Orleans police spend their mornings searching Bourbon Street and collecting the injured from the field, transporting them to the Breast Trauma Center at River Oaks. These poor girls are strained, tit-whipped, and destined for long months of intense physical therapy and cocoa butter massages.

Even though there are only a few nights left, I’d like to offer some tips on proper public personal expression.

Practice.

Sure, it looks easy. Flip it up, flip it down, catch the beads. But like any physical activity it requires practice and preliminary stretches. Stand in front of your mirror, lift your head and look up, and grab the bottom of your shirt. Then lift your shirt up over your breasts and hold it beneath your chin so your torso and face are both visible. Hold it for a count of three, then lower your shirt in one smooth motion and giggle uncontrollably. Repeat. Keep this up until your arms are burning and your neck is sore. Ha! Not so easy now, is it? Check the time – did you make five minutes? Ten? Then how are you going to last a whole weekend? Practice, girlfriend, practice!

Get some of those wrist weights to help build up your arm muscles. If you have beads from last year wear them, or buy pounds of them from a dollar store to wear while you train. As they accumulate on the big nights you’ll find yourself with more and more to manuever around, best to get ready for it now where you can get your wrist movements smooth and confident. You’ll also need to practice catching beads flung at you from a great height; throwing them as high as you can in your back yard is a good way to get ready for this.

A helpful friend is good, as they can spend the next few weeks yelling “Beads!” at you at random intervals to help increase your response time. Repetition, repetition, repetition. Be sure to flash in different directions. You don’t want to master flashing balconies, only to trip while awkwardly flashing an alleyway.

Begin a healthy diet of wheats, grains, fruit, and vodka to bring your alcohol tolerance to competitive levels, and learn to pace yourself so you don’t burn out by Saturday night.

Observe some common sense safety rules. Ladies who are especially blessed have been known to have lower back strain, so please: flash with your knees, not with your back. Carpal tunnel from repetitive flexion at the wrists is not uncommon, so be sure to wear braces on your wrists, and take a five minute rest for each hour of flashing.

When your friend yells at you while you’re carrying groceries in the house and you can still let go, spin, flash your jugs, smile, and catch the bags before they hit the ground, all without breaking stride, you’re ready for the big time.

Prepare.

Select your outfit carefully; you’ll want something stretchy that clings to your curves but lifts easily over your sweet, sweet knockers. C cups and up, you may want to consider a top with a built-in shelf or support web (it’ll be a long night). Don’t think that small breasts are a disadvantage! True, they’re harder to see from a distance, but they’re every bit as exquisite, plus they’re easier to flash. You only have to pull your shirt up, not up and over. The saved time can really add up.

Take care of your breasts. Even up your tan (if desired) and check for stray hairs or blemishes. I recommend a few weeks of nightly massages with a good vitamin E cream. Not only does that help keep your skin healthy and supple, it also helps you get familiar with your breasts so the three of you are forged into a powerful team. Also I really like thinking of all of you rubbing your slippery tits, over and over, around and around…

Pay special attention to your nipples. Left alone, they’re very likely to get raw and sensitive from all the activity, so spend some time now pinching, tugging on them and twisting them lightly to build up their tolerance. Oh, yes.

Don’t neglect the rest of your body! You’re going to be walking a long way, you want legs that can handle it. Your walking regimen should eventually be five miles a day, with flashing stops every ten feet or so. If you’re going to be spending any appreciable amount of time on the shoulders of a friend, preliminary training is vital for both of you. Also dieting.

Your outfit.

As mentioned, soft and clingy works best. Bikinis get tangled, dresses get stretched out, tights are impractical, and anything bulky is going to wear you out faster. Don’t pick something that has to be pulled down, it’ll only get stretched out and large-breasted women risk getting stuck trying to pull it back up.

You’ll also want to choose the rest of your outfit just as carefully. Thongs are standard now, so watch that razor stubble. Make sure that whatever underwear you’re wearing is clean since it’s almost certain your picture will become a permanent part of the Internet and you don’t want your grandchildren seeing you in dirty underwear. Do you want your third-grade English teacher to die of embarrassment? Do you?
Try to make sure your tattoos and piercings (if any) are coordinated. Body paint should be either decorative (turning your pups into puppies, or flowers, or eyes, or anything roundish) or declarative (”No war!” “If you were my boyfriend, you’d be home now!” “Suck on these, frat boy!”) and should be easy to touch up. Keep sparkles and heavy makeup away from your chest – too much danger of abrasion or fire hazard.

If you work for a really prestigious business, like Citibank, the Christian Science Monitor, or Congress, consider wearing a company t-shirt. Hey, advertising is advertising.

Bring a couple strings of beads with you to start off with, to seed the pot, as it were. And a colorful fanny pack makes a good place to carry extra lotion, bail money, and your lawyer’s business card.

Wear some comfortable shoes (if you’ve got a balcony spot you can go barefoot, but arch support is still important). And remember that whatever you wear, you’re stuck with for hours. With that in mind, go wild. It’s Mardi Gras!

Choreography.

It’s not just flipping and walking. There’s an art to it, a style, a manner that draws the crowds and the webcams.

First, wear the outfit you’ve chosen. No good to practice a move only to find that your feathers cover your goodies.

Now, go back to your mirror. Skip along a little bit, “notice” someone watching you, and smile at them to get their attention. Now grab the bottom of your shirt.

Don’t pull it up immediately! Keep your hands there for a moment – that’s the universal sign for “tits coming!” and it signals everyone around you to check their camera settings. Giggle to yourself, like you don’t believe you’re doing this, then whip your shirt up to your chin and stand proudly for a measured count of three. Do not cross your arms, you don’t want to obscure your vision. Also, by lifting straight up you throw your elbows out straight, which will whack passersby that might be getting too close. You may wish to shake a bit. Laugh while you hold it. Bring your shirt back down fast and bend over slightly, like you’re embarassed by all the cheering, then get ready to catch the beads and move on.

For variety, some advanced techniques involve rubbing your breasts, cupping them and holding them up for presentation, and licking your own nipples.

It is advisable to bring a friend with you, not only for companionship and for splitting bar tabs, but to help protect you from the crowds and to provide additional choreography. If your friend is male, standing behind you and cupping your breasts is a great way to show them off and offer extra support at the same time. If your friend is female, double flashing gets more attention, especially if you touch each other while doing so. For some reason men love the idea that all women really want to kiss each other, and you can use that to your advantage, especially if your friend is cute and you always wanted to kiss her anyway. You did, admit it. You touched her that one time in the shower at the gym, right? Did she like it? Huh?

Style

This part is all yours. You’ll need to develop your own unique style to avoid fading into the crowd. You want to stand out, to get noticed, to get picked for the Girls Gone Wilder box cover. There’s the old standards: shy girl flashing because she discovers she likes it, bold girl flashing because she knows what’s she got and wants everyone else to see it, arrogant girl who knows what she’s got and wants everyone to see what they can’t have, drunk girl who’s flashing because she thinks she’s at Burning Man , horny girl who’s flashing as a live-action billboard, and any number of variations and combinations. What can you do to shake it up a little?

Go online and do a search for “mardi gras flash” to check out some sites devoted to the subject. I think there’s one or two. Which pictures do you notice? Buy the videos and watch them over and over to look for techniques and moves you can adapt for yourself. Practice on friends and relatives before you go out in public. You can even try video-taping yourself to watch later for mistakes, and send the video to professionals or adult webmasters for expert pointers.

Finally, remember that you’re doing this to have fun. Don’t get too tied up in perfectionalism, especially when you consider that any straight guy will want to see your tits no matter how you do it, and 95% of all the people you’ll see will be so wasted they won’t be sure what you look like anyway. Have fun, and remember to moisterize!

Make me proud.