I am going to be honest: I have never in my life
dressed up in a costume to celebrate Halloween. It’s not that I don’t think
dressing up in costumes is fun. I actually do! However, I never really liked
the options at the stores where I could afford to buy a costume and never had a
strong incentive to be creative and make my own.
My sudden interest to write about Halloween
costumes is not simply an outcome of the fact that today is Halloween. The idea
about this post formed a week or so ago when I came across a campaign against a
costume retailer, Spirit Halloween, that evidently was relying on using stereotypical
and highly sexualized verbiage to market its costumes to young teen girls.
Similar to every other aspect of our lives lately,
holidays seem to spark a controversy in some way related to women’s issues. The
battle for more appropriate Halloween costumes for girls is the latest addition
to the fight against gender stereotypes and the regular objectification and
sexualization of girls, teens, and women. I guess if the word “sexy” is not in
some way added to the costume, Halloween can’t be fun?
For the record, four of my friends at University
of Denver dressed up like the four ladies from Golden Girls and I was both thrilled to see them and jealous I was
not one of them. Don’t have to be a sexy kitten or sexy nurse or sexy BigBird or sexy anything really to enjoy the holiday. Some of the alternative
suggestions for costumes posted by women on the MissRepresentation page
include Rosie the Riveter, women who changed the world, and Daria.
Happy Halloween! Let the candy-eating begin, or
continue as the case might be:).
-
Krasi
No comments:
Post a Comment