“Halloween is the one night a year when girls can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it.”
Mean Girls isn’t always the first movie we look to when identifying social cues, but the Halloween scene speaks volumes about women in modern society, and not only because Regina steals Aaron right under from Cady’s nose. When Cady shows up at Chris Eisel’s Halloween party (who even is Chris Eisel?) in her Bride of Frankenstein costume, complete with fake rotting teeth, basically everyone is appalled. No one bats an eye when Regina, Karen, and Gretchen show up in lingerie and animal ears, though. While the movie came out over 12 years ago, not much has changed about Halloween.
When Halloween became accepted into mainstream American culture in the early 20th century, it was celebrated in cemeteries and predominately used to pay tribute to the dead. The rise in costumes and the arrival of trick-or-treating in the United States began in the 1930s and its popularity has not diminished for nearly a century. However, while the tradition has remained, the evolution of women’s Halloween costumes has reflected the shift in society’s view of women. The scare factor has been eliminated from mainstream society’s Halloween practices, and just like many other practices in American culture, the holiday has been extremely sexualized. Over the past few decades, as a women’s role has shifted from docile housewife to sexual object, Halloween has been used as an opportunity to reflect the role society has imparted upon them.
Women are practically required to wear short skirts, low cut tops, and generally the bare minimal amount of clothing possible without being naked on Halloween. Go to any of the Halloween pop up stores and you’ll see walls full of “sexy nurse” and “sexy witch” and, the newly added, “sexy Ken Bone” costumes. Nearly every costume option will be preceded with the word “sexy,” despite its ability to be a costume in and of itself. As a recent Buzzfeed article highlighted, these sexy costumes don’t begin and end by shortening the skirt and maximizing the cleavage of a basic costume, but creating something sexy out of nothing. Ever want to be a sexy Game Boy? Have no fear, there’s a costume for you! The fact that this costume is easily accessible and there are numerous tutorials online to DIY your own is astounding. On the other hand, finding a realistic female military costume from a mainstream vendor, like Party City, is impossible. Sellers frequently offer only sexualized versions of costumes and not their realistic counterparts, making it virtually impossible for women to purchase conservative costumes at a store.
The result of juxtaposing commercially available women and men’s costumes is shocking. Sure, there are some ultra-sexualized men’s costumes out there, but far less than the amount marketed to women. While there are two or three sexy cop costumes available for men, they are seriously outweighed by costumes that reflect actual uniforms. For women, Party City offers a single, more conservative police officer costume, but the costume is a dress, and clearly not the uniform worn by female officers. On the other hand, they offer over half a dozen sexy cop, hot SWAT, and skintight firefighter costumes. The stark contrast in the availability of non-sexual costumes for men and women exposes another facet of women’s role in society reflected onto how they should be dressing for a centuries old tradition.
What’s wrong with women wanting to spend a night showing a little more skin, dressed up as a sexy Bambi? Nothing! The issue here is that dressing up as a sexy this or sexy that seems to be the only option. Cady Heron’s Bride of Frankenstein costume, which is completely appropriate for a holiday with a strong relation to the dead, is viewed as outlandish and not “normal” for a 16-year-old. We live in a society that commends Regina, Karen, and Gretchen’s costumes and chastises Cady’s. A teenage girl from an entirely different country, not to mention continent and culture should not be thrown into American society and know that she is a sexual object. A teenage girl should not have to dress like someone she’s not in order to appease the masses. A teenage girl should not feel obligated to wear near nothing to a high school party in order to be accepted. A teenage girl should not have to do any of these things, but our society has conditioned us to think that, one, she has to, and two, she is an outsider, an Other, and not “normal” if she does not conform.
So, if you want to dress up as a sexy cat for the third year in a row, go ahead! If what you want to do is aligned with a social norm, there’s nothing wrong with that. However, if you’re throwing on your most revealing clothes because you feel obligated to, don’t do it. If you’re more comfortable covering your face in fake blood and wearing a dress straight out of the 17th century, do it! If you don’t want to wear a costume at all, don’t wear one. Despite what society has conditioned you to believe, you have full discretion on your Halloween apparel, and people definitely won’t be judging you as hard as everyone judged Cady at Chris Eisel’s Halloween party.