“In our hearts, we’ve been burned.”

A spry woman stands before a large, carpeted hotel conference room, her sturdy, Midwestern voice clipping along without need of a microphone as the room murmurs in agreement. She speaks emphatically, her gaze swaying back and forth over the dozens of participants like a fan forever saying no. “Sometimes we get our clown stuff on and think everybody loves us and everything is great!” She pantomimes a peppy little dance with a big, toothy smile. Abruptly, she drops the act, her grin slumping into a scowl, shoulders following suit. “Wake up, clown.”

The group is small, around two dozen people or so, most of whom are members of the AARP generation, but engaged, keenly focused on her, sitting quietly in their stackable chairs, raising their hands as necessary and nodding along with her message. A few are taking notes. The woman behind me smells strongly of cotton candy and it makes my mouth water in that hot, fast way that happens when you're about to be carsick. It’s 9:00 on a cold March morning, day five of the 31st annual World Clown Association Convention in a suburban Chicago hotel, and Tricia Manuel, better known as Priscilla Mooseburger, is commanding the room.

The branch of clowning represented here is the one with the big shoes and balloon tricks, corporate-event clowning and gospel clowning. There are the caring clowns, who aim to bring joy to the sick, and clowns who take church mission trips to foreign countries. Of this wholesome, whiteface empire, one of the few titans at the top is Priscilla Mooseburger. A former Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey circus clown and costume designer, the current occupation listed on her LinkedIn profile is “Queen of Clowns” at Priscilla Mooseburger Originals. She’s been running her eponymous clown arts camp since 1994, the website for which invites you to "COME TO MOOSEBURGER YOU’LL FEEL FUNNY."

Our complicated relationship with clowns spans everything from the circus to the sex dungeon, from Saturday morning Bozo to Tim Curry peering up from the storm drain, from Patch Adams to Insane Clown Posse, not to mention the ubiquity of that flame-haired, greasepaint visage, the placidly smiling face of what is surely the 20th-century Ozymandias: Ronald McDonald. Every person I told about my plan to attend the clown convention voiced concern for my well-being.

One woman in particular keeps tripping my peripheries with her floppy bucket hat and the way it shudders limply atop her head. Later, when she removes it, I realize that her orange highlighter locks are not, in fact, a wig, but a hue she coaxed nature into.

This seminar, called “Posing for Pictures and Working with the Media,” is for the most part a simmering rally for strategy and solidarity in the face of the current clown PR crisis. Of course, there’s the usual scary-clown trope to deal with, like the recent separate attempts by filmmakers to drum up some publicity by donning clown garb and standing ominously along roadsides and construction sites, last year in Northampton, U.K., and more recently in Staten Island.

But there’s an additional tension this year: Just weeks prior, the New York Daily News reported that America might be facing a clown shortage. Citing decreased membership rates in the country’s largest trade organizations — Clowns of America International (CAI) and the World Clown Association (WCA) — the article painted clowning as the loser in a war of attrition, but nonetheless steadily committed to the fight. CAI President Glen Kohlberger claimed membership numbers are dropping because “[t]he older clowns are passing away.” Compounding this, the reasoning goes, is that interest in clowning is waning: Kids just aren’t joining up like they used to. But despite making clowns sound like a critically endangered species no one is rushing to save, the article also mentioned the intense competition for clowning jobs with Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus and higher audience expectations necessitating a higher quality of clown. Higher standards are not the usual by-product of a surfeit of talent.

Mooseburger opens the floor for a listing of scary clowns — a naming of the enemy, so to speak. Voices call out around the room, and I consider joining in when no one says John Wayne Gacy, but think better of it. A man yells sharply, “The Joker from Batman!” and the room buzzes in agreement like a human vuvuzela. But in spite of how grim things look out there, Mooseburger preaches the promotion of positive clowning with corn-fed sensibility.

She mocks the shock jocks who call her for interviews and appearances: “Really?” she spits out with a distasteful laugh, her head bobbing up and down like a lovesick cockatiel. “You’re interested in the art of clowning?” Later, she notes, somewhat menacingly, to never take work as a blood-soaked haunted house clown, implying that no real clown would ever participate in the denigration of such a good and wholesome art form.

Mooseburger calls for volunteers to try couples poses, positioning the tall man behind her, his shoulders back and hands on hips, before — at a suitably chaste distance — she bends over directly in front of him and props herself up with hands on squatting knees. Leaning forward with a big, toothy smile, Mooseburger says, “What used to be OK is not.”

What follows is a series of poses, punctuated by rapid-fire comments about Miley Cyrus and our “corrupt society.” “Don’t think that just because you’re a woman that you get a free pass, not in this society,” she warns, referring to how easy it is to be photographed looking accidentally inappropriate. Periodically, she stops the exercise and bellows, “Both hands showing at aaaaall times!” Then the fire alarm rings.

The space is suddenly too small for all the people rushing out of it. The bottleneck into the stairwell has a faint whiff of Black Friday desperation, and clowns collide with me and my bag as I stagger like a drunkard to keep myself conducive to upright and controlled motion. The stairway is filled with the elderly wearing complicated hobby costumes. I make it out unscathed and the fire alarm turns out to be something minor. In the aftermath, clowns mill about the hall. I watch other hotel guests try not to stare, I try not to stare, employees try not to stare, but everyone is staring.

In one regard, the convention feels like any other: like-minded people who share an interest in something, people who love it in a manner much deeper than your average bystander, who know it in incredible detail. But amid the camaraderie, in the spaces between the cliques, the atmosphere is softly bristled. After the seminar, the conversations taking place among the stragglers return to the shortage. “If the clown shortage is real, I’d be having an easier time gettin’ work!”

In spite of the current backlash, clowns are still more than an easy punch line or sight gag. Floyd Mayweather Jr. — the highest-paid athlete in the world — hired a clown procession to lead him into the ring for his win over Marco Maidana. Juggalos have made clowns a symbol of empowerment. A video of Puddles, a tall, sad clown, singing Lorde has more than 8 million views on YouTube. Julia Louis-Dreyfus had clown sex in a GQ spread. (OK, maybe that was a sight gag.) The interesting thing hidden in the guarded humor of this convention is not some piecemeal insight into why people dislike a comedic figure — it’s why, all of this sentiment to the contrary, the clown persists as a cultural icon, revered or feared. There seems to be a perverse and abiding fascination, if even a morbid one. But why? I mean, you clicked on this, right?