Hon‐ouring the past: play‐publics and gender at Baltimore’s HonFest

Abstract

Baltimore, Maryland’s annual HonFest, has been criticized for its caricatured portrayal of the Baltimore Hon, a white working‐class woman from the mid‐twentieth century. Created to promote local businesses, the event seeks to draw tourists to a gentrifying neighbourhood. However, for a core group of Hon re‐enactors a shared definition of working‐class femininity allows them to subvert the individualised consumption spurred by the event by creating ‘play‐publics’ in which groups of strangers interact in a public environment through play and then begin to discuss shared aspects of common histories due to that interaction. Often these personal memories about working‐class families and post‐war neighbourhoods express nostalgia for a time of community cohesiveness, while ignoring the racism that insured the homogeneity of such neighbourhoods. As a white icon, the Hon also erases the heritage of Baltimore’s African‐American majority. Nonetheless, this research demonstrates how an understanding of the relationship between gender and play can illuminate the subversive possibilities — and limitations— within the post‐industrial heritage production.