The Over-Sexualization of Halloween Costumes
To quote Cady Heron of Mean Girls, “Halloween is the one time of year a girl can dress like a total slut and no other girl can say anything about it.” A quick stroll into a costume store will make you realize how overly sexualized female costumes are. If you can’t walk into a costume store, doing a simple Google search of girl school uniforms versus boy school uniforms will reveal how different the results are to a similar effect. It is even more disturbing when you realize that minors, or models presented to consumers as minors, are often the ones that are wearing these uniforms. I have gotten catcalled multiple times while wearing my school uniform because of the fetishization that surrounds it, largely a result of fetish and costume wear. Why are clothes worn by minors so heavily sexualized when it is purely only used to create some form of uniformity in school? The picture below is the first image that shows up on Google when you type in “Girl school uniforms.” Based on the picture below, the fetishized version of a female uniform would be a tight white blouse, a low and open neckline, a short skirt that barely ends below their mid-thighs, and exposed garters. All of these were designed in a way to emphasize or sexualize a woman’s breasts, waist, and legs. Worse when adults dress up in school uniforms to fulfill the fetish.
The over-sexualization of these costumes is impacting the actual women who work in the fields that are fetishized. Nurses are more likely to get harassed and sexualized than male nurses or doctors. Maids and others who work in homes also constitute a heavily female-dominated demographic that is sexualized by our society. Ask most men, or even most people, to picture a maid outfit and they immediately imagine a skimpy short black and white uniform that barely covers their mid-thighs. Add the porn industry into the mix and you get a huge fetishization over female-dominated jobs. These fantasies, validated by the unsafe costume and porn industries, have made the workplace unsafe for females. While male-dominated jobs are also sexualized, females are way more sexualized on a daily basis than they are, and to a broader extent. Male jobs are typically sexualized during Halloween or in strip clubs, but besides that, they avoid the everyday sexualization women in fetishized industries face. Males rarely fear whether they will get inappropriate remarks in their workplace or gawked at while working.
Sexualization is not only limited to occupations but is also affecting different cultures. A common Halloween costume that I have seen would be a sexualized version of qipao or cheongsam worn in Chinese culture. No cultural outfit should ever be sexualized or modified to fit someone’s fantasy. East and south-east Asians are already so heavily sexualized that we do not need silly costumes like the picture below to add to it. There are so many cases where Asian women are approached by men because of our exoticness and their twisted idea of how Asian women are like.
You may be wondering how one night of sexualization can affect women in such a pervasive way, but it really is just one piece of the puzzle, and it all adds up. Women are constantly being sexualized from small things such as advertisements to undergarments to Halloween costumes. Yes, Halloween has been like this for ages but it does not mean that it is too late to change now. Women are already working against a society that does not appreciate them beyond their bodies.
There are so many alternatives, even sexy, costumes that people can wear that are not occupation-related such as the common devil and angel duo, animals, characters, and more. The list goes on so removing work-related costumes will definitely not cause a shortage in costume ideas. Halloween costumes have no boundaries and you can dress up as anything so why choose to dress up as something that will impact women in their jobs?
Before you decide on what costume you want to wear for Halloween, think about whether that costume could add to more stigma and consider fun alternatives. Because that’s what Halloween should be—fun.