[Some kind of clever title about Halloween and gender roles]

Guess what this post is about!

I've talked about this a lot (in my life, not on the blog). What first put it in my head was Social Psych class sophomore year--every year our brilliant professor assigned a Day of Non-Conformity, in which we all went about doing Non-Conforming things and wrote a page about our experience. He then distributed compiled anonymous snippets of our responses, so we'd get a sense of how it affected people. Well, this happened to coincide with Halloween, and one girl wrote about how Halloween costumes exaggerated gender roles. She wasn't talking about sluttiness, but rather femininity--she dressed as a fairy, and other girls went as ballerinas and whatnot, while guys often wore macho costumes like superheroes.

I read this and thought about all my friends, and what they had worn. Male costumes included: Ziggy-era David Bowie, Barbara Bush, and Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro. Female costumes included: all four Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Splinter, and a pirate (which I took way too seriously). Some friends' costumes were femme, but didn't particularly emphasize the fact--the female vampire was a vampire, and female. Etc. So my basic conclusion was: I love my friends.

As for my costumes, they tend to be fictional characters who are somehow bad-ass. Usually physically (Xena, American Maid) but sometimes brainily* (Daria, Carmen Sandiego). This year my costume is uncharacteristically "cute," but I love it nonetheless, as the music video the character's is very uplifting. We are all that little bee girl. But the outfit I'm copying is that of a 10-year-old...and guess what, I'm a little older than that. I feel basically naked in the get up, but whatevs. I'm not sure how I feel about the "slutty costumes" issue. I find them lame, but that might be because I'm so into Halloween--I don't like it being used as JUST an excuse to dress slutty. My roommate was explaining** that costumes can be slutty if they're also somehow clever, and I think that's probably my stance: there's nothing wrong with wanting to look sexy, but be original at least! French maid: bad. Slutty Ghostbuster: awesome (especially on a man, which is where I saw that.) I mean, I'm annoyed by straight-from-the-wall-at-Ricky's outfits to begin with, whether they're slutty or not, so that's my bias. So if your French maid costume is HOMEMADE, I'd probably be ok with it. And if you made your own Slutty Ghostbuster, that's extra awesome.



*Yes yes Steve, not a word, I know.
**I think, it was to someone else so I missed half the conversation but she should still get the credit.