Toys and the "Proper" Body

--Nicole Gage



After recently reading an article on www.cracked.com entitled “15 Unintentionally Perverted Toys for Children,” I was horrified at the idea that some of the toys on the list were ever put on the market. The article explains and shows pictures of toys that are overly sexualized and very inappropriate for young children. Some of the toys also promote ideas about gender, as the sexualized aspect of them makes children of certain sexes feel they must identify with a certain gender.

One of the toys presented on the list is called “Growing Up Skipper,” a doll produced by Mattel that “was supposed to be Barbie’s little sister”. The doll grows taller and her breasts increase in size when her arm is turned around. This is supposed to be representative of puberty, but poses problems since it is only marketed towards young girls. This can be determined by the pink packaging and feminine clothing accessories that come along with the doll. This reinforces the norm that girls should play with dolls, while boys should be focusing their attention on something else. If a young boy were to pick up the doll, it would be going against social norms because the doll portrays a developed female body. Many parents would be frowned upon for giving a young boy this doll, and the boy might be seen as strange if he enjoys playing with it or shows any interest in appearing similar to it. Girls who want to look like their dolls, however, are not seen as strange. Some dolls even come in packages that provide makeup for the doll and the same makeup for the person who owns it. This marketing towards genders not only promotes stereotypes, but shows the fear that our culture has of different sexes identifying with other body types.

The “Batman Water Gun,” which is also described on the list, is marketed primarily to boys since it comes in dark colors and portrays very masculine themes. This water gun also promotes ideas of the body, as batman appears to be very muscular and strong. Thus, boys who pick up this toy are meant to identify with batman’s body type and strive to achieve it. This poses problems once again, as boys who might not feel inclined to look that way feel excluded. It would also be interesting to see the reactions that would occur if a young girl were to pick up the toy and associate with it or its body type more than she does with her dolls. I do not think that young girls are given as much pressure to follow gender roles as boys, because “tomboys” do not seem to face any discrimination while effeminate boys do. However such toys still help to create gender roles early on, which is just as significant a problem as the sexualization of such toys.
Finally, after reading this article, I began to wonder whether or not all the toys were truly “unintentionally perverted”. It seems plausible that sexualization of toys could be just another outlet for companies to promote ideas about gendered bodies. While such toys might appear to merely promote ideas about the body, they also potentially make those who do not identify with their “proper” body feel very excluded or confused.

Sniff to Steer: Disability to Ability

--Simi Alalade




Scientist in Israel have invented a device that paraplegics and quadriplegics can use to maneuver a wheelchair and communicate simply by sniffing. Using a tube, one side is connected to the nose and the other is connected to a pressure sensor.
It works like this:
• 2 sniffs in tell the wheelchair to move forward
• 2 sniffs out tell the wheelchair to reverse
• 1 sniff out turns the wheelchair to the left
• 1 sniff in turns the wheelchair to the right
The tests show remarkable results. It took approximately 15 min for users to learn to efficiently use the device.

In a society where mobility is very important in order to fully function and be a part of social connections to others, people with disabilities can feel helpless and isolated. To be social, it becomes imperative to leave one’s home and interact with outside spaces that other people interact with as well. Mobility is necessary in public space. Its space encompasses consistent movement and change. Immobility can hinder that specific blending into open spaces. These social spaces consist of simple places like parks, grocery stores, movie theaters, libraries, and museums. It is very easy for people with disabilities to be excluded.

Barriers in architectural society are main reasons. Writer, Nancy Mairs, in her book, Waist High in the World, elaborates on her disability and the different obstacles she faces in everyday life, including entering in to public spaces. Architectural critic, David Gissen, writes about his mobility impairment and how it affects his life, job, and perceptions. His impairment affects him in a significant way, and complete mobility impairment can seem as a blockage of social and public connections. New inventions, however, can open up these obstacles.

In order to fully utilize open access for those with disabilities, inventions such as this one are needed. With a simple action as sniffing, people can use their own bodies to help assist other impaired body parts, giving them self-control.

The special part of the device is that it is so simplistic. It does not draw extreme attention, and can give assurance to the impaired that their differences do not require excess assistance. The device thus provides a sense of independence for people with disabilities.

In many instances, medical practices towards impairment only look at those with disabilities as people with deformed or unnatural bodies. Instead of thinking of people with disabilities as different bodies, medicine compares them to a standard of “normalcy." In addition, many people with impairments believe that supplemental machines, devices, and technology are trying to change and get rid of impairments and human diversity. Advocates of disability rights believe that architecture and society should include those with all types of bodies, allowing them to fully integrate into society with much less worry and trouble.

I believe this invention is a balance between both medical views and disability rights views of impairment. I think it does change the way we look at normal. It does not force people to conform but is more of a support. The medical device does not control the disabled; the disabled control the device. They use it and it does not use them. Using technology can help integrate people with impairments into society, but in many ways, the environments must advance and transform to sustain differently-abled bodies.

With inventions like this, it is important to continue to build and construct architectural environments that encompass all types of bodies and additional structures that assist bodies. Curb cuts, inclined pathways, and other adjustments in such a “concrete environment” are just a few of the many and many more needed changes in society in order to integrate those with different bodies. Overall, this invention is low-tech and simple. As for now, it is not on the market but will be affordable because its simplicity. I think it is a great step towards turning disability into ability.

Sexual freedom or object of sexual attention: How young is too young?

--Carly Cindrich



Yesterday, my friend sent me this link to the music video of Willow Smith, daughter of actors Will and Jada Pinkett Smith, singing her debut single “Whip My Hair.” I must have watched this video upwards of ten times already, staring completely dumbfounded at the screen each time. When I learned that yet another one of the young Smith brood has made their way into the limelight, I was unfazed. However the lyrics and video I have been listening to and watching over and over is the farthest thing I expected from a nine-year-old girl, no matter her legacy.

When you take this song for face value it is simply about having fun and letting go of inhibitions. Also, the frequent mentions of shaking off “haters” introduce the theme of not letting other people bring you down. However, while you can try all you’d like to acknowledge the cutesy message and nothing else, some of her lyrics make this almost impossible. One of the verses in the song is

I'ma get more shine than a little bit
Soon as I hit the stage applause I’m hearing it
Whether its black stars black cars I’m feeling it
But can't none of them whip it like I do
I, I gets it in mmm yea I go hard
When they see me pull up
I whip it real hard
I whip it real hard
Real hard
I whip it real hard

If Willow Smith (or her songwriter) is going to plainly include adult themes in the song such as cars, her audience cannot be expected to ignore the very adult messages expressed, for example, by the repetition of the words “real heard” four consecutive times. Her insistence on this phrase combined with her knowing looks to the camera instantly change the meaning from “I fiercely whip my hair around at a high velocity when I’m dancing” to something very different. It is also interesting to look at the gender evoked by this particular verse. A very masculine ego shines through in lines like “none of them whip it like I do.” More notably, male sexuality is highly present in phrases such as “I gets it in” and the recurrence of the words “I whip it real hard.” Of course, the latter is supposed to refer to her hair, but once this line is paired with other possibly phallic allusions like getting it in, it makes it all the more difficult to block out the prevalence of sexual references in a song sung by a fourth grader. These are my main grounds for believing that Smith did not write this song herself, and furthermore, that her songwriter is probably male. There is no information yet on the internet to confirm or deny this.

With this song, Smith is clearly not trying to appeal to her own contemporaries. Granted, most hip-hop music nowadays is hardly PG, but while Nikki Minaj raps about sex and cars, she also is not aiming her music towards nine-year-olds. Although anyone old enough to maneuver a remote control could turn on VH1 or MTV and see women dancing in skimpy outfits, the music video by Willow Smith is particularly egregious because although her body is sufficiently covered, her makeup, hair, and nails combined with her questionable lyrics instantly changes the image of childhood. Children often take cues from their parents, older siblings, and even cultural icons on how to act, but mostly they learn by examples from their peers. Willow Smith is a minor, a young little girl. She can’t drive, drink, get into nightclubs or understand most innuendos, so it really doesn’t make sense for her to be singing about them.

The bigger picture here is that if it is okay to sexualize a nine-year-old, then what does that say about society’s treatment and expectations of females in general? Are all girls supposed to be objects of sexual attention as soon as they’re old enough to wear the same kinds of clothes as older girls or perhaps just old enough to make a music video? Furthermore, the urban themes in “Whip My Hair” add a racial aspect to the argument. If a nine-year-old African American girl can sing about almost the same things as Nikki Minaj, Rihanna, and Beyoncé, and wear the same makeup and hairstyles as them, then why should Willow Smith’s birth year alone change the way people interpret her lyrics and dance moves?

Many female music artists use their “fierceness” as a vehicle for empowerment. For them to show it through their physical appearance and in their lyrics is their prerogative as legal, independent adults. However, Willow Smith is setting a precedent with her song “Whip My Hair” for not only other girls her age to act like diva adult women but also for her fans of all ages to accept adult messages from a mere child and carelessly lost sight of a little girl’s age.

Letting the masks fall

-Phoebe Guo



Hannah Wilke, a feminist artist from the 1970's, is known for her photographic work in connection to the body and performance art, in which she used her own body to address issues of sexuality. When she was young, she always had unique ideas about her surroundings and also was engaged in the feminist movement. She was a sculptor at the beginning, and then she did a series of works of art in photography and film using her own body. She said that she will never separate art from her body and art is a part of her.



"S.O.S ( Starification Object Series)" was the most famous work of her earlier years. She used chewed gum to sculpt different kinds of micro female genitalia and stuck them to her body. She posed in a variety of classic poses of sexy women and had a professional photographer take photos of her. Looking at the photo, her body was full of spots as if she had chickenpox. Actually, it revealed that the way that males looked at females with lust and dirty ideas, and ignored the damages they did to them. This series of photos also showed the environment in which women were disrespected at that time. Wilke believed that gum was the perfect analogy for the American woman, and how she was consumed; Chew her up, spit her out.

Although I loved this work and I was shocked by her new, direct and innovative idea and behavior, it also looked like a show, which used her sexy body, and beautiful face. The really amazing work was her "Intra-Venus Series".



What she showed was no longer a show or just art. It was a real picture of a woman suffering from her health problems. No one wants to show their ugliness or pain. Hannah took hundreds of photos of her sick mother in order to memorialize her. When she realized she had the same disease as her mother, she decided to use her body as art, showing the process of death to the world, making it become a work of art. At that time, she was more than halfway to 100 years old. She gained weight and her face started to wrinkle. Severe chemotherapy and medication made her lose her hair.

Surprisingly, she exhibited her naked body without fear in front of the camera, the TV, and the public. Her purpose was not to shock or horrify but to display a body which belonged to herself. That was a body with a real life, with disease and confusion. In her photos, although she was in a destroyed body, her eyes were still bright, serious and enthusiastic. This lonely body was crashing, irreversibly headed towards death. She, however, still expressed a certain dignity. Man used to look at woman as a sexual tool, but a diseased body will not let anyone produce sexual desire. She used an extreme example to illustrate a crucial truth that woman needed to face their difficulties in life without man. She utilized her private space which was her body as a public stage to disclose the sick fact that male regarded female as one of sexual tool and servant. It is called real life.

In our lives, in all the magazine covers, advertisement covers and TV shows, we see the beautiful, young, shining and hot girls everywhere. Unfortunately, that is not all of females. As Wilke reminds us, we need not focus on showing our sexiness or beauty, but must face aging, disease and death alone. Why should we need to be sexy just in order to please men? Why should we have to make them happy and comfortable? We are not only an accessory, an object; we are real. Our sexual desire, social damages, sex abuse, disease, and fear of death should also be understood and respected.

The age Wilke lived in was a time when male predominated the whole society. But she used the bodies of her mother and herself to show a destroyed beauty. She used her body, a new performative space, to expose the female myth made by our society. The body, which women were used to think of as a private space because they wanted to hide their imperfections to avoid other's judgements. Likewise, she also used it as a private space because the body, no matter healthy or not, belonged to herself for good. The differences were that she didn't care about critiques from the public. So she also made it as a public space to convey the idea that women's damage and disease should be valued as important as their glamour. Her intention was to promote woman not to rely on man too much, especially when woman were disrespected at that time.

Sylvia Plath, an America poet, said:" death is an art". She committed suicide alone. She made the process of death a private experience. By contrast, Hannah Wilke made it public, a performance art known worldwide. Though she was killed by her own body in the end, "the dance to death" she showed was more fabulous than her blooming beauties.

Fraternity violence: students weigh in

For background on this incident, see the earlier post, Queer Bashing in the Built Environment. The students of the class have anonymously weighed in with their reactions, which I will post here as they come in:

One fact shared by both the victim and Adam Smith’s testimonies was that the
altercation between them was largely instigated by the victim’s suggestion that
Smith was gay himself. It was this comment about Smith’s pink shirt that turned
his verbal instigating of the gay student into a full out physical assault. This fact
is extremely indicative of the heterosexual expectations put on both fraternity
brothers and their party guests. As a freshman girl walking into a frat party, it is
made pretty clear to you shouldn’t be there trying to make friends or find future
study buddies among the frat brothers. You are allowed to accept drinks and/or
dance with your girl friends to have a good time, but if you are talking or dancing
with a brother for more than fifteen minutes then it is pretty much considered
your fault for being a tease if you aren’t going to hook up with them. Younger male
guests are also let in for the purpose of promoting their fraternity. So, if the boys
at frat parties are there to get girls, and the girls are there to fulfill the role of the direct object in that sentence, then where does that leave homosexual males in a space and an event designed to facilitate the objectification of heterosexual females? The article in the Emory Wheel claims that there is a large openly gay population in Emory fraternities. If this is true, then they all must have been out of town for every single frat party I have been to. I am absolutely appalled at the violence, hate, intolerance and bigotry displayed this weekend at the university that I have thus been able to proudly call myself a part of. However, I am hardly surprised that a frat brother was not especially welcoming toward an openly gay male at one of his parties, and I am definitely not surprised that the extremely offensive slur “faggot” was thrown around in the spat. Even if gay intolerance doesn’t often result in physical violence, that doesn’t mean that gay intolerance doesn’t exist behind the scenes, especially in Greek life.

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A recent incident took place at a Sigma Nu fraternity party at Emory University, in which an Emory alumnus dragged out a student by the neck after he revealed that he is gay. This brings into question the atmosphere surrounding Greek life at Emory and in general, and whether or not it is accepting of homosexuality.
Fraternities are often stereotyped as places men can go to “get girls” or “hook up” without having to worry about long-term commitment. Due to this stereotype, which focuses very heavily on the importance of women, it is not far-fetched to think that homosexuals feel excluded from fraternity culture. For instance, the media portrays fraternities as places where gay men feel uncomfortable disclosing their sexuality. In the television show, Greek, a character named Calvin is a homosexual male living in a fraternity, and he only discloses his sexuality to a few friends due to a fear that he might not be accepted. He continues to have homosexual relations with men on campus, but it takes him a long time to feel more comfortable showing his sexuality, and some do not approve.
An article written by the Emory Wheel about the incident at Sigma Nu was posted online, and one male under the name ‘Conrad’ commented, saying: “As a gay person, I DO feel that Greek life is inaccessible to me. It seems hostile, homophobic, and as if y'all don't want me at the parties!” This comment shows the invisible barrier that seems to prevent gay students from feeling comfortable in or around fraternity culture. It is necessary to combat this inequality, and to erase the stigma that heterosexuality in fraternities is the norm.


******************************************************

After reading Asher Smith’s title labeled “Gay Emory Student Dragged from Frat Party,” as well as the comments from other Emory students, I have come to a few conclusions that I believe can be deduced from the incident. Firstly, to discuss the article itself, many Emory students feel that it was poorly written because it was projected from a biased viewpoint and besides that, it shed bad media light on Emory as a community and how it treats its students who are LGBT. There are those who claim that this type of violent behavior should be something to expect from a fraternity/sorority
because these institutions have always made harsh judgments on students due to their “exclusivity,” and that it would be ignorant to assume that an incident like this could not occur at a college campus elsewhere. Because everyone knows that the media can do a rather successful job of blowing things out of proportion, it is pertinent to look at the facts before making assumptions about either student.
However, whether one reads the article posted on the Emory Wheel or the one posted on a different website, there are some aspects of the story that cannot be ignored. The point however, is not whether the article was poorly written or not, because I’m pretty sure that most should be able to decipher the facts from the fiction. The point is not that the gay student was wearing a “wizard hat, red pants, and lime-green jacket,” because I’m sure that there have been plenty of instances when a student has worn a ridiculous outfit—especially to a party on frat row. The point isn’t even that Adam tried to instigate a fight, because fights on frat row are nothing new. The point here IS that the gay student was tossed out of the party after Adam questioned him about his sexuality. Whether or not he was intoxicated, Adam should not have resorted to using violence or derogatory language, referring to the boy’s wizard hat as “F***ing gay.” The fact that he uses these homosexual slurs so nonchalantly, as if it was part of his everyday language, does not work in his favor as the person he is portraying himself as. As a graduate student, he should have known better than to use vulgar language, and that fact that he was drinking does not change his predicament. Is foolish behavior expected to displayed at a frat party? Sure. Is alcohol an excuse to blame your foolish behavior on? No. By dragging out the gay student, he
basically set an example for his friends and other onlookers that it’s completely okay to toss someone out of a party because of his or her sexual orientation. Though Adam has “apologized” for his ridiculous behavior, it does not change that fact that he has shamed Emory, his former fraternity, and most of all, himself.

Queer bashing in the built environment: the role of inside and outside space in defining community and exclusion

Hate crimes happen in material spaces attached to particular forms of meaning: the street, the bedroom, the workplace, the yard, the fence, the back of a truck, and the fraternity home.

Recently, an Emory University student was dragged out of a frat house by his neck because an alum at a party thought he was gay. The incident has created a public outcry, having been taken up by Gawker, Perez Hilton, and several news agencies. And it isn't isolated--the homophobic actions of some have had real and high profile consequences for queer teens in the last few months. While these incidents do not surprise us, having lived through the death of Matthew Shepard and other hate crimes in recent decades against queer folk, we can still wonder about the relationship between access to space and the sanctity of life in this country, decades after desegregation.

The civil rights movements of the 1970's are often remembered for the court decisions and legislation they precipitated: the Civil Rights Act of 1964, sexual harassment law, and civil rights protections for persons with disabilities. What is not often remembered, outside of the racial desegregation context, is that the demand for access to space was a paramount concern for all of these movements. That is, ending the preclusion of marginalized communities from privileged or excluded spaces was both a symbolic and material gesture that dominant groups could no longer commit institutional or structural violence against them. Access to space, in this context, served and continues to serve both a real and figurative function as a measure of social justice. More contemporaneously, access for persons with disabilities has become a legal mandate, but many of the same demands were made by feminists in the 1970's who wanted improved living and childcare facilities, curb cuts, health care, and protections in the workplace as part of a comprehensive civil rights package.

Access to space for marginalized groups is far from perfect or complete. Indeed, exclusion serves as an important and powerful marker of just how undesirable certain types of human variation are to those who control the boundaries of space. And while it is illegal to exclude formally someone from a fraternity, an atmosphere of hatred in any context is enough to make someone feel unwelcome to the point of not partaking in activities that they otherwise may choose to. Sometimes, marginalized people establish parallel structures and spaces of inclusion, as with black fraternities and sororities. But when the space of the frat house serves as a meeting place for both members and non-members alike, it is not the ability to establish these outside spaces that is important, but how members of a community are treated within the bounds of a public space.

Without getting into personal blame, name calling, or the debates that have been occurring around the event at Emory this weekend, it is significant to note that many of the defenses of the alum who physically dragged another student out of the frat house claim that this was a "private" party, and that expelling the gay student was of no consequence. This is an interesting understanding of the word "private," particularly because fraternity houses occupy a particular historical and contemporary set of meanings about space. At Emory, the frat houses are owned by the university and run by the same division of Campus Life that runs the dorms for other students.

Unlike other dorms, however, where common rooms are not used for keggers and where entrance is limited to residents and their guests, frat houses are public spaces by virtue of how frequently they are entered by non-residents. Their architecture and layout not only lends them towards this kind of use of space, but supplants their function as party spaces with wide open areas in which hundreds of undergraduate bodies can smoosh together on weekends. Given that anyone can come in and out of these spaces, is there a reasonable expectation upon entering that a gay student in a Wizard hat will be allowed inside? There does not seem to be a reasonable justification for expecting any kind of danger or violence, unless one looks to the social context of fraternities, which are arguably spaces in which certain types of masculine behavior get privileged over behavior deemed feminine or abnormal.

It is in these spaces that the codes of masculinity and femininity get pronounced in certain ways on a college campus. Emory fraternities, in fact, have a history of being sites of violence. Even when queer students are anecdotally mentioned in relation to Greek life, one wonders why they do not exist in greater numbers if the culture is, in fact, so open to diversity. This isn't a call to include people in hostile spaces. But it is important to think about what spaces tell us about who is socially valued or de-valued. Dragging a student out of a house by his neck is not just a physically violent gesture--it is a metaphor for the violence of exclusion that happens in social contexts every day toward many people. Forcing someone to evacuate a space by crossing a threshold is not unlike a water fountain with a sign reading "WHITES ONLY." In fact, it is more like a segregated water fountain with a fence around it secured by a padlock.

The sexualization of Halloween costumes: liberation and choice or instruments of normalcy and submission to the male gaze?

--Shivani Williams

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.