Opening my eyes on this Halloween morning was as joyous as it’s ever been; the sun was shining, my classes were canceled, and it’s officially my favorite holiday again after months of preparing. I look over to my freshly organized desk in my dorm room and scan the scattered, mismatched pieces of the costume I had laid out the night before. Since I had classes Friday morning, I had planned on putting together a simple cat costume for Thursday night parties. I’ve always loved cats, so this was not my first time debuting the feline costume, but was actually the third.
In the festive spirit, I decided to make a cute “then vs now” on my Instagram story, and reached out to my mom to get her to send images of both 10 and 13 year old me in the “same” cat costume. However, the outfits I had chosen for the previous two cat themed costumes varied drastically than what was sitting on my desk right now. In fact, the only similarity was the cat ears.
I smiled at the long, cat printed tutu and opaque leggings of 10 year old me, compared it to the pleated mid-thigh length skirt I wore at 13, and then surveyed the fishnets and barely passing shorts of tonight’s outfit. These 3 images of myself seemed to encapsulate how it felt to grow up with such toxic Halloween costume culture all around me. I started to ponder, analyzing where this stigma originated from in my life, as well as so many other impressionable young girls.
First, I looked into history regarding specifically costume culture. I found out that Halloween had stemmed from pagan religious celebrations in which people celebrating the day would wear “scary” costumes to feign off ghosts and harmful spirits during their harvests. Around the time of the Great Depression, the idea behind Halloween traditions for children became less of a time for mischief and instead shifted to the much safer, organized, tamer “Trick-or-Treat” dynamic that we know today. In lieu of scary, disguising Halloween costumes, people started dressing children in homemade costumes with characters from shows or movies, such as Mickey or Minnie Mouse.
Next, I did research regarding the wide spread of “sexy” costumes for women throughout this evolution. The idea of a “sexy” costume wasn’t truly apparent until the 1960’s, and these costumes only began being sold as commercial products by the 1990’s. The question still remained, though; Why?
It was time for some guesswork. A quick list of media I had consumed growing up began crossing my mind, and the pieces started fitting together almost immediately. However, one quote from one movie stuck out particularly to me, and probably will to many others. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if you already guessed what line I’m referencing. Here it goes:
“In Girl World, Halloween is the one night a year when a girl can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it… Unfortunately, no one told me about the slut rule, so I showed up like this.”
-Cady Heron “Mean Girls
The thing that stuck out the most about this quote? All of the characters are between the ages of 15 and 18, as they’re canonically juniors in high school. My first time watching this movie was when I was eleven, and I thought that those girls looked insanely grown up and mature. Looking back, now that I’m older than them, I confidently look back and shiver in disgust. I quickly realized that a surplus of media that’s geared specifically towards young girls encourages this behavior from an extremely young age. Even for this category of media that neglects mention of Halloween, such as Clueless, the main characters in these movies are still dressed in small, revealing clothing in the hopes of people replicating these iconic costumes for Halloween.
Thinking deeper, I cringed as I realized the amount of female nudity that the most popular horror movies have, such as Halloween (1978), or the way that every “surviving girl” in old slasher films have wardrobes that just aren’t dynamically convenient for their character.
Of course I wanted to look like those girls, even at age 13. Of course as soon as it was completely acceptable to dress like them (my 18th birthday), I did it, even though I still feel like a child. Who wouldn’t want to look like those girls when it’s all you’ve ever seen and heard and known? As harmful as this is for young girls struggling with body image, over-sexualization, and even harassment from other individuals, there’s no true escape from it. It’s merely a cycle of one generation of unfairly treated women after another with no end in sight.
That being said, it’s imperative for days like Halloween to be fun and safe. Dress how you want, do what you want, and don’t ever water down who you truly are for anybody’s standards. The only advice I offer is to be mindful and aware of the things that may impact people around you. This can just be as simple as thinking twice before showing someone young and impressionable a movie or show until they’re sure they can think independently of others, because it truly does make a difference.