Send in the clowns?
First, make sure Shonda Purvis of Dallas isn't within screaming distance. "Evil! Evil! Oh, I hate clowns," says Purvis, 36. "Despise (them). Get the shaking heebs just thinking about them."
Purvis and others suffer from coulrophobia, the fear of clowns.
They join an estimated 6.3 million Americans from ages 18 to 54 who have specific phobias, according to the Anxiety Disorders Association of America.
You scoff? For heaven's sake, you ask, who in the world would be afraid of Bozo? How could Ronald McDonald make anyone want to heave up her hamburger?
Ask Forrest York of Mesquite, Texas, who recalls being traumatized by the Town Clown on the old "Captain Kangaroo" TV show. "I was sitting in the living room and all of a sudden the clown comes on," he says. "I'm scared, and I know I don't like this."
York, 38, has three boys and a girl. None is afraid of clowns. But when he takes his youngest boy to McDonald's, he has to turn over his son's box of chicken nuggets if it bears a picture of Ronald on the top.
"I'm not comfortable in any way looking at them," says York, who owns a T-shirt that reads "Can't Sleep Clowns Will Eat Me."
Popular culture has long acknowledged a dark side of clowning. Its ancient roots embrace some aspects of shamanism and the supernatural.
Clowns may have evolved as jesters and tricksters, but the dark side never vanished. Even Disney acknowledged it: Remember those sadistic drunks who tortured Dumbo in Disney's animated classic?
Clowns in horror movies such as "Poltergeist" or "Spawn" are meant to scare the baggy pants off you. Pennywise, the clown in Stephen King's "It," lives in the sewer, has razor-sharp claws and kills children.
All this fear of clowns distresses Ruth Chaddick of Cuero, Texas. Chaddick, 48, is special events manager with Feld Entertainment, which operates the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus. A Ringling clown for five years, she also worked with Ringling's now-defunct Clown College for 13 years. She taught clowning and makeup, among other things.
"(Ringling clowns) were trained to be sensitive," she says. "If someone was fearful, you would not push yourself on that person."
She can understand how children can be intimidated by their first real-life encounter with a clown. "Children are used to seeing clowns 3 inches tall on TV," she says. "But at the circus, they're seeing this large person, all made up in strange clothes. Momma has pushed them into the clown's arms and said, `Here, let's take a picture.' The parents have told them all their life not to talk to strangers, and all of a sudden here's a stranger."
Ringling clowns were taught how to deal with this, Chaddick says. "You make yourself small. You get down to their level -- squat or whatever -- (and) use a soft voice. We don't go around with big honking horns. Use a small voice and take anything away that might be fearful to (kids)."
Colin Ross, a Dallas psychiatrist, sees coulrophobia as a garden-variety phobia. It can be treated like most other phobias, with gradually increasing exposure to the source of the fear. He sketches out the procedure after the patient finds a therapist:
"You talk about it until you're comfortable with the subject. Then the therapist shows pictures. Then maybe you look at a clown doll across the room, then progress to holding it. Then a video of a clown, looking at it in longer increments. Then going to a museum or store with clown costumes. Then going to the circus, just walking in and out. Then staying for two minutes but not for clown act," he says. Finally, you can face the music. And, hopefully, the clown.
"If that doesn't work, then you might try some anti-anxiety medications while you're doing this work. Then you might try a variety of medications," Ross says. If the fear still persists, "it might become a psychological puzzle -- you might want to see if something else underlies this fear."
Thanks, but no thanks, says York. He's never consulted a therapist and doesn't plan to. "I just find it a whole lot cheaper and easier to avoid the silly people." (He's talking about clowns.)
And York isn't sure there'd be any point in therapy, anyway.
"I don't know that I want to like them," he says. "I have this deep-down feeling that some of them are serial killers and are wearing makeup to hide."
BOX
Coulrophobia has spread to the Web, where sufferers can vent on sites such as
www.ihateclowns.com and
www.clownz.com.
ROTFLMAO
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