Questioning Halloween costumes for teen girls
By Caitlin Cozine, Contra Costa Times
As a teenage girl, the idea of choosing a Halloween costume fills me with dread.
Browse any Halloween costume website, and you’ll see that for girls who have outgrown children’s sizes, selections are limited to costumes with names such as Bad Kitty, Teenage Runaway Schoolgirl, Maid of Lace and Sweet Suga Mama Sexy Adult Pimp/Ho. In case you think you’ve accidentally clicked on a porn site, be assured you haven’t. These are actual names of costumes.
Halloween used to be my favorite holiday. I loved the opportunity to dress up and act silly with my friends. I still love the holiday, but now I agonize over the lack of costume choices. When I visited a Halloween store recently, the female section had frilly princess costumes for children, and the aisle directly across had women’s costumes that ranged from a sexy police officer with a miniskirt and fishnet leggings to a naughty vampire slayer equipped with a skintight shirt and extra-short shorts.
In the male section, options abounded: superheroes, ninjas, pirates, cowboys, even professionals such as doctors or firefighters. The only occupational costumes in the female section were prefaced by the word “sexy,” as in sexy doctor or sexy nurse.
The message is clear: Boys have lots of choices to be whatever they want, while girls generally fall into two categories — princess or trollop. These categories don’t mirror the reality of girls in our world. Do people seriously think that teenage girls transition immediately from children’s costumes to fishnet stockings and sequin-tasseled bras?
Here’s an idea: Instead of buying someone else’s concept, make your own! Use your imagination, and think of what you’d like to be, and DO it! The BEST costumes are the ones you create yourself. Really. We have lots of thrift stores here for inexpensive materials too. Ghosts, goblins, witches, zombies, mummies, nurses, fairies, forest creatures, all sorts of things can be cobbled together with spare parts. Who cares what the marketers want you to be?
Right on, Dog.
Not everyone is or wants to be that creative. It is the fact that there ARE no options that is a sad commentary.
Sadder commentary that you would find fault with the suggestion that a young girl should use her own ingenuity to solve a problem.
Bah. Humbug.