And the Most Sexist Halloween Costume Award Goes to….
September 29, 2010 by Carrie Baker · 36 Comments
It’s almost that time of year again—Halloween!–when corporate America encourages girls and women to celebrate our inner sluts.
I took my 11-year-old son to a newly opened “Halloween City” in the small southern town where I live. After wading through all the wonderfully gory zombies, steam- spewing skeletons and catapulting ghouls, we came to the costumes.
From past experience, I generally know what to expect, but even I was surprised at what I saw. All along the back wall in Halloween City were pictures of hundreds of costumes for females displayed under a sign that read “Hot! Hot! Hot!”
I’m amazed at the ability of Halloween marketers to turn any kind of cartoon character, profession or sport into a sexpot costume for women and girls. The sexed-up witch, nurse or cheerleader is predictable, but here’s what I also found:
Police officers: “Officer Naughty,” “Your Busted,” “Handcuff Hottie,” “Dirty Cop” and “Sexy Border Control Costume.”
Fire fighters: “Fire Fox” and “Smokin’ Firewoman.”
Sports: “Tackle Me,” “Boxer Babe” and “Fastball Fox.”
Fairytale characters: “Seductive Snow White” and “Racy Red Riding Hood,” and “Dorothy Diva” (as in the Wizard of Oz).
Pirates: “Pirates Treasure” (yes, she IS the treasure), “Pirate Wench” and “Sex Swash Buckler” for adults, and “Pirate Cutie” for girls, complete with very short, off-the-shoulder dress, hip wrap, fishnet tights and fishnet elbow-length gloves.
Students: To fulfill men’s sexual harassment fantasies, there’s “Teacher’s Pet Sexy.”
At this small-town Georgia store, hypersexualized costumes far outnumbered other costumes for women (by 10 to 1, easily). And there were no sexualized costumes for men, except for pervert costumes like “Banana Flasher” and “Dr. Howie Feltersnatch, M.D. Gynecologist.”
For little girls, there was “Indian Babe” and “Geisha” (sexualizing and exoticizing the non-white other), while for the boys you had the “MacDaddy” pimp costume, complete with hundred-dollar bills.
Many of these costumes come from Dreamgirls. Their Dreamgirl Junior page includes “Robyn da Hood,” complete with corset, lace-up gauntlets and money bag.
After all this, I finally came upon the costume that clearly wins the Most Sexist Award: “Anita Waxin.’” Designed to be worn by men, it includes a long blond wig, artificial breasts, pale flesh-colored stockings and a red lifeguard bathing suit with black hair protruding out of both sides of the crotch. All for $30–a steal!
The costume’s contempt for the female body is palpable. It oozes scorn for women who don’t wax and says that natural women are disgusting and a joke. Can you imagine a world in which comparable scorn for the male body existed to the degree that it ended up in Halloween costumes?
In sum, the costumes I saw at Halloween City are all about women as objects of men’s sexual pleasure, abuse or scorn.
How about you? What Halloween costume have you seen this year that should get the award for most sexist?
Related links: Jezebel “Sexy Nemo and other Questionable Halloween Costumes,” Salon’s “Slutty Halloween Costumes…for your Dog?‘ The Sexist’s “10 Worst Sexy Halloween Costumes,”
Photo from Flickr.com user Brett L. through Creative Commons License 2.0
The first thing that struck me upon seeing this costume is that, as a bellydancer, it's really offensive to see this type of dress hyper-sexualized. This is a play on the traditional dancing costumes, and it's lost on society that bellydancing was danced by and for women only. It wasn't a performance for men, it was a bonding time and fun entertainment for a group of women to appreciate. As this fact is further driven out of public knowledge by costumes like this, it makes it more and more difficult for those who simply wish to learn and enjoy the art and cultural history of bellydance.
I know what you mean. I've been studying belly dancing for about three years now and I've found the "I'm doing this for my man" mentality more than I should've. What makes it even worse is that my teacher's dance partner was teaching a "strip tease" dance and belly dancing in the same class session! But this woman had the poor taste to dance for rap music videos so while I was sort of disappointed, I wasn't surprised….
I do striptease and pole dancing classes. Only for me. It’s a chance for me to embrace myself. Never have danced for my “man,” or my “woman” for that matter. It’s the same as belly dancing that way-it all depends on the intention.
The other thing is…..A “Harem Girl” ( which is what the costume is called ) denotes more than just belly dancing…..in fact, a “harem” is a romantic term for ‘privately owned sex slaves’
It is not a romantic term for it. It is social term. It refers to all the woman of the household, including the wives and slaves.
The practice is STILL prevalent in the middle east with multiple wives and easy divorce and then remarrying so having loads of wives and then loads of slaves, servants, etc. Also, temporary marriage.
It is NOT a romantic term. Unless, calling a girl slut is romantic too.
What makes this really interesting is my experience at a Halloween Party last year. Only *ONE* of the women there wore a "slutty" costume. There was a young woman dressed as a goat, a bunch dressed as zombies, and another that was dressed as a ghoul. A number of couples came crossed dressed but even then it was tastefully done. And then the *ONE* woman dressed as the slutty french maid confessed to me that she didn't want to wear that costume but that her boyfriend convinced her that "all the other girls at the party would be wearing slutty outfits." This experience convinced me that most women really don't want to purchase those sexist costumes. My guess is that the people who design them are NOT women.
So I'll probably lose my feminist credentials with some readers (though I still will proudly proclaim them), but I have to confess that in college — I love Halloween — that I went costumed in various years as 1) a Playboy bunny 2) a "hot" cop, and 3) a Joan Jett-style rock and roller. (I also went as a lesbian nun one year, but that's a different story). I can assure you I wasn't doing this for male attention; I was taking pleasure in dressing my own body in this way (and I REALLY don't think I was suffering from "false consciousness.") Now don't misunderstand: I find appalling the way that girls, younger and younger, are being encouraged to be sex objects and horrifically oversexualized — and marketing some of these costumes to children is reprehensible. CONTINUED IN NEXT COMMENT SINCE THERE'S A LIMIT TO HOW LONG IT CAN BE.
CON'T FROM PREVIOUS COMMENT:
And to be sure, there is inequity in the erotic nature of adult women's costume's vs. adult men's costumes commercially available and there is the weight of history behind that. I can also appreciate Erika's comment above and it could certainly apply to the other professions or practices represented in the women's costumes — that it trivializes the real world work of women in these professions. But I wonder if — FOR ADULTS — there is more of a happy medium? Can it be carnival? Performance? A reveling in one's own sexuality? Becoming someone else for just an evening? Just some food for thought. I have no regrets about my college Halloween costumes and have wonderful memories about wearing each of them. I STILL like Halloween, so don't be surprised if you see me this year got up in a white slip and pumps ala Liz Taylor in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof."
As with a lot of these things, it’s the difference between sexy and degrading. Women’s sexuality is wonderful; celebrating the sexual degradation of women, not so much.
Yes of course there’s a happy medium – that’s why we have extremes. How could we define the medium if we didn’t find the extremes?
And, since Anita Waxin “clearly” beat out Harem Girl for “most sexist costume,” I think we’ve found our extremes.
This pretty much sums up the women’s Halloween costume market: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4rUiV_Hh74 However, I was surprised to see in a party store flier a few days ago sexy CRAYON costumes
As the grandmother of a young (9 year old) girl I am appalled and alarmed. There is a direct line from Barbie dolls and children's bikinis to these "Halloween" costumes. I can't understand the drive to sexualize children, making them miniature adults and eliminating their all-too-brief opportunity to be truly young and innocent.
First off, I don't like the use of the word "slutty" – even if it is being used as an appropriation of society's ideas of women and girls and not ideas we have given ourselves. Sluts are not real; it is a subjective word meant to control our bodies. Second, yes I think this costume is too revealing for a child this young (but that is just a personal opinion that I do not want to put on anyone else) and is not representative of Belly Dancing culture. However, showing skin is not the problem, if it's by choice. I don't think a young girl knows enough about Belly Dancing to dress like this for halloween. What if she was Princess Jasmine? Would that be different since she knows who that is? As far as adult costumes are concerns, I am bothered by the limited choices and realize a lot of it is for men's pleasure; however, if a woman wants to dress up and show some skin, as a feminist, we should respect that. Period.
I agree that there is nothing wrong with showing skin if *we* want to, but as someone pointed out above, many times the issue is not women showing skin because they want to, but instead women showing skin because men want them to, or because they feel it is expected of them. When a woman puts on an overtly sexual outfit, is she taking her own feelings into account, or is she bowing to the male gaze? Sometimes it's the former, and sometimes it's the latter. We need to ensure that these popular costumes are not pushing women into the latter.
As for children…a child wearing a sexualized costume – whether it be a gross misrepresentation of belly dancing (apparently all belly dancers are prostitutes; who knew?) or a Jasmine costume – is a serious sign of child sexualization, which is *never* a good thing. The problem with the pictured costume, I feel, isn't how much skin the girl is showing (after all, most bathing suits are more revealing) so much as the name of the costume and the message it portrays.
***To clarify- All belly dancers ARE NOT PROSTITUTES- the above costume is supposed to be a “Harem Girl” costume- Not a “Belly Dancer” Costume. They are very different things. A Harem was a group of women kept for the purpose of sexual slavery by usually by a wealthy or powerful man. A Belly Dancer is a Belly Dancer. Two different things******
This is like over a year later, but you do realize I was kidding about belly dancers being prostitutes, right? Actually there were so many alarming things about your response that I’m not totally sure where to begin.
WOW! Those costumes are so bad. And the titles…my God…who would buy them?
As for what I think the most sexist costume is, I think I'll have to go with Down for the Count, which is a vampire (a decent startl) with a blow-up sex doll attached to it's crotch. Wait. What? What the hell does that have to do with vampires? THAT'S NOT EVEN A CLEVER PUN.
Want to see? No, you really don't, but you can't help yourself. http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/sexist/f…
Check out the other costumes on that webpage, by the way. The one right below the Count makes fun of fat people, and there's also Camille Toe AND The Spaghetti Penis costume. http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/sexist/2…
Halloween is my favorite holiday, because I love dressing up. And I am considering going as a pin-up girl this year because it's my last Halloween at college and frankly I want to get a little sexy. Nothing wrong with sexy, but you can bet it'll be on MY terms.
"my God… who would buy them?"
That's the scariest thought! (How appropriate for Halloween!) Who on earth is buying this junk that there is a market to sell it? And, you are right, I couldn't help myself from following your link. On the happy side, I had no idea there was such awful stuff out there (happy to have not randomly encountered it). On the sad side, who on earth finds this stuff the least bit funny? It's just so incredibly stupid (Camille Toe AND The Spaghetti Penis costume == "Tee hee hee! People have private parts. Tee hee hee!" Really?! How very clever of you to notice!)
Oh….wow. Down for the Count. Wow. All time low.
I too just blogged about this very topic on (insert shameless plug here: (http://wwwiamwomanhearmeroar.blogspot.com/2010/09/evolution-of-bunny-costume.html), and as mom of a seven year old girl I was appalled at what was out there. Our tweens are forced to grow up faster and faster with every passing year and it's because of this crap. Enough! Great article Ms.!!!
I feel that the notion of it being Ok to be "slutty" one night out of the year is ridiculous. Often times the same girls that wear these slutty outfits spend the rest of the year critizing other girls for their slutty appearances but find it ok to publicly pretend to be sluts on halloween. I believe that if a woman wishes to wear outfits that show off her body, she shouldnt need an excuse that is based off of male desire and hype. If you want to dress as a "Slut" do it for yourself because you feel beautiful, not because Joe blow nextdoor is expecting it at the halloween party.
The 2004 film "Mean Girls" addresses this issue. Well, its not so much addressing it in a constructive manner as it is acknowledging the hyper-sexualized costume antics.This is an excerpt from the monologue that Lindsay Lohan's character, Cady, states as an explanation to the holiday of Halloween in 'girl world' : "In the regular world, Halloween is when children dress up in costumes and beg for candy. In girl world, Halloween is the one night a year when a girl can dress like a slut and no other girls can say anything about it. The hardcore girls just wear lingerie and some form of animal ears." This movie came out when I was in high school and perhaps I was becoming more aware at this time but I noticed that this movie catapulted girls, or at least the ones around me, even further into world of sexualized costumes. Perhaps Tina Fey was aiming to me satirical (and perhaps analytical?) in her writing on young girls Halloween wardrobe choices but I think it compounded the issue even further.
I think costumes let us live out fantasies and it is a good thing to let ourselves feel sexy once in a while instead of always repressing it. For adults that is. Even for children, maybe the belly dancer is a better role model than the princess? And on the MOST SEXIST, unfortunately, body hair on men is now ridiculed as being gross too. I guess no one wants to admit we are mammals who have hair, sometimes even GRAY hair. Oops now we are getting into the witch costumes, darn.
Halloween is a stolen pagan festival anyway.
Hi Carrie – Great article. It makes me glad I finished raising girls a while ago, tho I fear for my 10-year-old nieces. My most memorable clash about sexual expression with my tween girls was not letting them watch "Pretty Woman" (which largely soured me on Julia Roberts). Years later, of course, they confessed that they did anyway, but it was the message about values and not romanticizing prostitution and transactional relationships that counted. Halloween is also my favorite holiday – mostly celebrating with the small children for whom the sense of magic and wonder is still alive. We get about 500 kids at our door each year, and I'm glad to say that they are mostly not in sexed up costumes (small town New England)… so far. I think there's a big difference between dress-up and role play fantasy at adult parties and pimping out your kids for door to door 'trick or treating'. Expressing sexuality can be a healthy component of ritual release, but not not in kids' costumes. We need to recover the sacred dimensions of Halloween – in which death, sex and harvest play out their pageant.
The problem is the same as it's always been, we as women (unless you're a lesbian) are always trying to appease men. Why do you think we buy make-up, just to look nice? Yeah right, we have a biological imperative to breed and if looking sexually accessible will do the trick then that's what we aim for but why not just release our "inner slut" all the time? Because then we'll have to raise all those kids by ourselves. Those costumes are a cry of desperation by women who would rather give into their hormones and be a man's fantasy, then be their own person.
Thank God I'm too fat for those costumes otherwise I might be tempted to wear them too…..actually, I always thought one should be scary on Halloween, perhaps a zombie this year!
This was such a great blog! I don’t want to be too cynical or cliche but it truly seems to get worse every year. Which is no surprise with all of the things coming out for young girls all of the time. We now have padded bras for 5 year olds (thank you bratz company), we have string bikinis and dance costumes for young girls that are made to sexualize these young pre-pubescent girls. It is scary how young even toddlers are being sexualized these days. All of these unhealthy things happening in our society just to sale products. It all comes back to human greed for me- we have no boundaries it seems when it comes to big corporate America making another dollar. It is also sad to me that such a wonderful earth centered holiday this time could be we have lost that tradition of communities coming together and celebrating a transition in seasons. I know i jumped around a lot, but what I am trying to say is that this blog got me thinking about all of this again. Also, I think it shows the inequality that still exists in making women into objects for male pleasure. I think corporate America uses this without loosing any sleep at night knowing it is making them money to sale the bodies of young girls.
@tweetraptor
First: ‘As for the sexism debate, snore. Our society’s treatment of women and their Halloween costumes is old news’
The fact that it is still an issue is part of why it is awful. Bad things don’t become ok just because they’ve been happening for awhile.
Second: ‘It’s not going to stop anytime soon, and why would it? If a woman succumbs to the pressures of society and dresses like a “slut” for Halloween, then that’s on her.’
Well, it might stop eventually if people stopped accepting it as normal. The onus shouldn’t be on girls and women to resist pressure, it should be on society to not create that pressure in the first place. I’m all for getting slutted-up occasionally (you know my appreciation for Rocky), but there is a difference between confidently expressing your sexuality because you want to, and being expected to because you’re a woman and that’s what you’re there for.
A sentence was removed from my comment (I assume for language, this is why reading posting rules is a good idea), but the basic gist was: I know @tweetraptor in real life, he is a wonderful human being, his comment makes him sound like a jerk.
How I wish this wasn't an evergreen issue — but it is! Thanks, Carrie, for bringing this to our attention again.
When I read this blog I was not completely aware of all the inappropriate Halloween costumes. I've always known about the sexy adult costumes and the comedy costumes; however I didn't realize that overly sexualized costumes were being produced for young girls. I thought I would comment on this blog now considering Halloween has just passed and I observed a first hand view of some of the ridiculous costumes out there.
The Friday before Halloween me and a friend were walking through Wal-mart and of course the Halloween costumes caught my eye. I was looking through the Halloween costumes in the juniors department (12-17 years old) and I came across costumes like "Sexy Cheerleader" and "Naughty Witch". I was shocked that they had costumes like this for 12 year old girls. Girls are starting to learn from an early age that they're suppose to be the object of a man's desire which is very dangerous. Girls will grow up thinking that the most important thing about them is the way they look and how guys perceive them. Girls not only get these kinds of messages from Halloween costumes, but through the media. The media tells girls to look a certain way and when a girl cannot achieve this it can lead to body image issues, eating disorders and even depression. Halloween costumes are going to continue to become more sexualized so educating your child about body image and the media is the best solution to the problem of the "Naughty Witch" or the "Slutty School Girl".
these costumes are very bad for little girls, but often they choose to wear these sexy costumes may be because they are innocent. if you’re looking for costumes appropriate for girls here http://www.oyacostumes.ca/eg/Kid-Costume-Hallowee…
Doesn’t anyone make their own costumes any more? All I see is complete ready-made plastic outfits, churned out by the million from Chinese /Mordor factories. If the kids were involved in improvising their own outfits from bits of jumble, wouldn’t that be more fun? And less landfill to boot.
I made my own costume, modeled after the dresses worn by women in the original and most recent reboot Star Trek (I didn’t have the money to buy one and anyway I wanted one in yellow (command color) and with captain’s bars, which they don’t sell because apparently women can’t be Captains at that point in time (spin-off series aside). I was worried I looked a little sexualized until I realized that a. my breasts were covered b. my skirt was at arm’s length c. my costume was not of a character type (like “harem girl”) specifically designed to be sexy and d. that was the exception to the rule.
Has everyone forgotten what a “Harem Girl” is? It is a SEX SLAVE….not a princess, a SEX SLAVE.!
Is it bad that I kind of just sigh and move on? I feel like I’m becoming jaded by this even though it’s CLEARLY wrong.