My annual Halloween rant
I did see some interesting Halloween costumes this year. But I couldn’t resist writing another Halloween rant about female costumes… Here it goes:
High heels. Fishnet stockings. Endless cleavages. While only the most daring women would wear those on a night out, they are everywhere on Halloween night, as part of a French maid, a naughty nurse or yet another schoolgirl costume.
We should just as well go buy our Halloween attires at the local sex shop instead of lining up in the cold to enter the costume store. And that’s because Halloween, which is supposed to be the opportunity to explore the unknown, cross the lines and be someone we’re not supposed to be, has just become another way to turn ourselves into sexual objects.
Take uniforms, for example. Firefighters or airplane pilots costumes for men look just like the real ones. But finding a female uniform that hasn’t been altered (meaning shortened) and isn’t made out of leather or vinyl is a challenge that I haven’t been able to solve.
Dressing up on Halloween night is a healthy way to transgress society’s rules and that’s why this tradition is so valuable. But it doesn’t mean that anything is allowed either. The saying “what happens on Halloween night stays there” is simply not true. I judge my peers based on their costumes because it reflects their personalities. I value originality and taste and whether I’m right or not, I always keep the memory of my girlfriends’ risqué Halloween looks in the back of my mind.
Wanting to be sexy is natural, but we definitely have a problem with what we think sexy means. In the book Dilemmas of Desire: Teenage Girls Talk About Sexuality, author Deborah Tolman explains that a study she did on teenage girls in San Francisco revealed they understood being sexy as “being sexy for someone else, not for themselves.” The girls didn’t make a difference between the question “what makes you feel sexy?” and “what makes you look sexy?” Defining what is sexy is a concept that changes with time, as shows the ongoing exhibition at the McCord Museum in Montreal, titled “Reveal or Conceal,” which explores female fashion over time.
Lately, what is defined as sexy has been associated with an infantilized state, in which women try to ressemble girls — hence the success of the schoolgirl costume. But the contrary is also true; girls are being over-sexualized and pushed by marketing campaigns to skip teenage and dress up like women, which is far more serious. Parents now find themselves fighting to prevent their 11-year-old daughters from dressing like belly-bare television character Hannah Montana on Oct. 31.
If this all about attraction, then there are other avenues for us to explore. Be elegant, have style, be funny and original; men will remember you and you’ll get to keep your dignity intact. Pick your costume carefully, pay attention to details like props, and remember that Halloween is there for us to have fun, first and foremost.
Dressing up for Halloween is exciting, but there’s a kind of role playing that should be confined to the bedroom.
p.s.: men who dress up like airplane pilots and sailors don’t need to alter their costumes in any way because airplane pilots and sailors are sexy by definition. Well, air hostesses are too.
A night when judgment is supposed to be suspended for one night is never so easy. It seems for Flavie, Halloween is just another night to judge people (women) when they are out trying to shed the coat of conservatism. She uses the popular excuse of protecting the impressionable young women in the world. If only we could stop the evils of Hannah Montana. I have never seen this show. But I did do a search, using “Hannah Montana Pictures,” and skimmed about 100 pictures or so, and saw to my horror about 5 pictures that bared a mid drift. It is Flavie’s statements that prove Paglia’s point how conservatism is what victimizes young girls and makes them look at their sexuality as a taboo that needs to be “confined to the bedroom.” I am just glad that a woman’s sexuality only begins after she is married, and in some extremely rare cases after she turns 18.
What if Flavie is right that Halloween “is supposed to be the opportunity to explore the unknown?” Should that not suggest that the popularity of sexual costumes on Halloween means sexuality is still unknown and considered a taboo? Especially a sexuality that conjures up and displays an earlier time in one’s life. Therefore the need to push that boundary on the one night that is suppose to forgo judgement is an important mode of safely expressing a neglected sexuality in many women, or atleast the ones surrounding Flavie.
In my circle it was the Sarah Palin costume that was the most popular for both women and men. Some used her as a joke and displayed her large collection of the newspapers she reads. Some (both male and female) highly sexualized her showing a bit more leg or cleavage than Palin showed during the campaign, but a bit less cleavage and leg than she showed during her beauty qeen days and Tina Fey showed during an SNL Bush endorsement skit. Some even played her straight trying to be as accurate as possible giving homage to a hockey mom who perhaps in many ways is worth a bit more respect than many Democrats give her. So how does this fit in with Flavie’s theory of Halloween as an “exploration of the unknown?” What taboo does Sarah Palin represent that makes her so imediately iconic and vehmently controversial? Could it be because she is both attractive and successful? To have these two qualities does that mean she therefore has to be stupid to balance it out? The media constantly harps on her “lack of smarts,” but yet very seldom reported on her role in lowering oil prices, and her ability as a woman to achieve such a high possition in the painfully conservative Alaska. Because you can never state Alaskians as sexist because that would be prejudice.
The truth is by blindly criticising we misunderstand the real conversation taking place. As the unfortunate add for the “Reveal or Conceal” exhibition at the McCord Musem shows, which as far as I know is still being used at the Berri Uquam Metro station. This add fails to represent what the goal of the exhibition is. It is not about two male security guards protecting and than ogling women in the dark in the conforts of a closed building, or a “confined bedroom” in Flavie’s case, but is meant to openly celebration and give a history to how women have chosen to express themselves throughout the ages. It is unfortunate that the museum was unable to get the Madonna Cone Shaped Bra (that was promised to them) because it shows the importance of the representation of sexuality and how women have to overcompesate to force that conversation. Madonna was also aware of her popularity with younger demographics too. So if you thought Hannah Montanna was bad. Plus this was over 20 years ago that Madonna made this statement, and it is unfortunate when even liberal journalists like Flavie still can not see past the bra straps and stockings to see what is really going on, and where the real problems lie. It feels like we are still living in the victorian age where we need to put proctectors around our phallic wooden table legs… all in order to protect the children ofcourse.
Greg
And though it sounds strong I’m just playing the devil’s advocate, and enjoyed your article and was glad I found it when I was cleaning up my favorites section on my browser.