Happy Halloween, everyone!
Popular television/fashion icon Kim Kardashian debuted on Instagram and Twitter one of her possible Halloween costumes for this year’s many extravagant Halloween parties. In the pictures she is decked out in a tight, full-length body suit with a pair of animal ears and stiletto heels. What’s she supposed to be? She’s a kitten, DUH! Now I am pretty sure most kittens are not walking around in six-inch stiletto heels — maybe somewhere on YouTube, but definitely not anywhere else.
So why is she dressed like this? The sexier, the better! Halloween costumes are now being designed to ensure that girls and women are meeting the sexiness criteria presented to them by society on this night every year. But what if we don’t want to dress this way?
There is certainly nothing wrong with dressing sexy for Halloween, or any time for that matter, but shouldn’t we have more choices?
Halloween is a holiday that encourages people to dress up as anything their little hearts desire, but for so many of us females, we feel the push from society to dress in costumes that are skin-tight, short, very revealing, and not to mention extremely UNCOMFORTABLE. I have walked into so many costume stores where there are hardly ever any costumes that go past my knees, and I am FIVE FOOT ONE!
Not only are we expected to look sexy 24/7, but we are expected to do so on the one night we have free reign to be ANYTHING we want. What if I do not want to be a sexy little kitten in a costume that hugs every curve of my body? What if I would rather be a ferocious lion in a huge furry costume with paint all over my face and crazy wild hair? Halloween is all about choices.
We women and girls should have a variety of choices for Halloween costumes, whether sexy or not. If everyone else gets to choose from such a large variety, why can’t we?
As females, we need to start challenging this expectation of sexiness on Halloween, and demanding more options. Maybe, just maybe, having more options for Halloween costumes will challenge society’s expectations of what we’re expected to wear on the other 364 days of the year!
Sausha Gruca is a Psychology major and Gender and Sexualities Studies minor at the University of San Francisco. She enjoys learning about the construction of gender and the various expectations society places people. She also volunteers with the youth in her community in the hopes of encouraging them to make a change.
I absolutely agree! We are maturing and evolving, yet there are still neanderthals (men and women) who have a way to go in their understanding who women truly are.
I am doing a story for my high school journalism class about the oversexualization of women in society ESPECIALLY on Halloween, and I was wondering if you would be available to interview by email or phone. Thank you!