It’s no surprise what Halloween entails every year for teens and college students. At this time of the year, there is excitement for what one—-specifically, females-- will wear to an outrageous costume-themed party on the last weekend of October. It’s also not astonishing that a female will decide against putting on that cute little jukebox 50’s girl outfit either. As famously quoted by Lindsay Lohan, in her role of Caty in the movie, Mean Girls: “In Girl World, Halloween is the one night a year when girls can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it.”
What creates these "total sluts" and who carves out a market for them to appear once a year on Halloween?
For this once-a-year occasion, Halloween marketers spend much of their time and money into advertising certain ways for specific age groups. The advertisements for these costumes always include women with long shiny hair, perfect makeup, large breasts, and of course, a thin physique. But even less surprising is that a woman will wear these costumes to feel sexy, have a fun time, or even to express herself in a way that makes her feel confident about how good she appears to look in such a revealing outfit.
The “bad girl” costumes, such as the pirates, cops, referees, nurses, and French maids have long been sexualized and are old news, and perhaps there is nothing wrong with promoting the image of sex with these outfits because, after all, everybody knows that sex sells. A woman walking into a Halloween store would probably make her judgment on which costume she is going to buy depending on how intriguing the picture on the front looks. Is the model on the cover pretty? Does she appear happy? Does she fulfill that sexy look that the consumer is going for? These are just a few of the things that may cross her mind.
These ideal images, however, are limited to a certain group of idealized bodies. Say the model on the cover has all of these qualities, but she is physically disabled. A consumer might think twice about buying the costume, not necessarily because the costume itself does not appear sexy enough, but because disability is often disassociated with sensuality. Accordingly, say that the woman on the front cover of an advertisement displaying a revealing costume is overweight. Unless the costume was advertising for plus size, some women might not choose this costume. The costumes for “plus size” women are attempting to advertise towards larger-sized women that they too can feel sexy. However, by putting a “plus size” label on the cover with a plus size model wearing a skimpy outfit on the front, the sex appeal is significantly diminished according to societal standards.
It is reasonable to suggest that Halloween advertisers believe there is a correlation between sex appeal and “normalcy,” which according to the pictures, includes having: 1.) No disability and 2.) Having a physically fit body. This doesn’t even include the extra aspects of the model that contribute to her femininity, such as her visible breasts or overly done make-up.
Let’s not forget the other age group that Halloween advertisers target: children costumes for young girls. Advertisements have even managed to get their message across in costumes for adolescents where there is some sort of implication of sex appeal, subtle as it may be. Popular costumes of the past for young girls have been outfits impersonating famous pop stars. One of the main outfits that stands out in my mind was the Britney Spears outfit.
Not only can little girls play the part of Brit in their shiny spandex outfits showing that showed their midriffs, but they could also look like her too by purchasing the blonde wig and microphone. Costumes for women of all ages are being sexualized by advertisements for the purpose of sex appeal--but is there such a thing as taking it too far?
In the above picture, a woman is wearing a costume that is taking the beloved character of Nemo from the hit Disney Pixar movie, Finding Nemo, and sexualizing it for the purpose of turning it into a Halloween costume for women. Not only is this costume being targeted at women, but it also is being targeted at young adolescent girls by taking the well-known cartoon clownfish and turning it into a sex symbol. The website where this costume is sold also sells costumes that take characters out of popular movies like Avatar, Harry Potter, and Alice in Wonderland and turns them into “Adult Hermione” and “Sexy Alice.”
These condescending costumes subject women to the institutionalized roles created by a sexist society. It doesn’t help that men can dress in anything they please—from Dracula to Captain Jack Sparrow to even a giant sumo wrestler. A man even has the option of covering his entire face with a creepy monster mask, thus enforcing the idea that he doesn’t have to elaborate on his face like the ways that a woman would with her make-up. Men are not expected to be oversexualized, yet women are almost expected to put on that sexy Nemo costume.
The idea of a dressing as a sex-kitten for Halloween further illustrates the fantasy world that is painted by sexism. When women wear these costumes in the public, they submit to a certain idealized image of femininity. As feminist, Jane Rendell, puts it,
The dominance of the male subject in visual regimes has ramifications for the gendering of urban space, producing representations of urban space where only men do the looking, and women are looked at as objects of visual consumption.
Though one may argue that it is liberating for a woman to wear these costumes with confidence as a way to show sensuality, it is not important to think about where the costumes Because these costumes are not generally worn in the public on days outside of Halloween weekend, it is plausible to assume that a woman will be wearing this costume at a party where there will be alcohol. The image of an intoxicated woman in her sexy nurse outfit dancing with a man is not a rare one. Liberating as that may seem to some, it actually just seems like a submission of women the gaze of others who will “oogle” and do perhaps more. Halloween parties are places where women, by wearing revealing costumes, are turning their private spaces (their bodies) into public ones, whether they choose to or not.
No comments:
Post a Comment