In today's Baltimore Sun, I am quoted saying that "Halloween costumes are an excellent measure of who it's still okay to hate or belittle." Let's explore:
Due largely to the civil rights movement, Black Americans have managed to politicize their representation. It is now largely unacceptable (in most circles) to dress up as a Black person for Halloween. However, you will see people dressed up as "Indians" every year. These caricatures, anachronistic as they are, suggest that American Indians no longer exist. Of course, they do (and they are as "modern" as the rest of us), and they have to watch their history and, often, their religion parodied and caricatured every Halloween (and at sports events, still).
Similarly, it is still perfectly fine to dress up as a "redneck." Rural working class people in this country are real people who deserve respect and dignity, but we don't have a strong class movement in the U.S. and so it remains rather acceptable to be overtly hateful towards or dismissive of the poor, especially the white poor, since poor people of color have some protection because of the politicization of race.
Women are a striking case because feminists have tried incredibly hard to politicize the representation of women and failed. A glance at any magazine stand will demonstrate as much. The popularity of dressing up as a sexy demonstrates that women and girls use Halloween as an excuse to emphasize their femininity, to be purely female, an object on display, something to be drooled over and desired (see some examples here).
One sexy costume available this year is the Anna Rexia costume. This costume reveals the paradox that young women live with, and often embody. Women are told that being thin makes them powerful. And many of us, whether we like it or not, admire very thin women and wish that we could get our bodies like theirs. They are, indeed, achieving an ideal and this is why we envy them. But they are achieving an ideal that is also belittled. In many ways, being feminine is the same thing as being powerless (being submissive, passive, not too loud, not having strong opinions or desires) and being thin is a way to be insignificant (to be less than, to not take up too much space, to be overlookable). So women who perfect their own femininity, sometimes through anorexia, are attaining a perfection that undermines instead of undergirds their power. The Anna Rexia costume reveals that we have contempt and disdain for perfect femininity. Being a perfectly feminine person is kind of like being a perfect idiot.
Perhaps the ultimate evidence that femininity is hilarious or ridiculous, or even frightening or disgusting, is the fact that men use the category "woman" as a costume. They are not doing so to revere them, they do so to mock them. And it's not simply about being something you're not. You very rarely see women dressing up like men. Masculinity simply doesn't get denigrated as funny or stupid.
So, ultimately, one of the most disturbing parts of Halloween, for me, is the combination of men who are mocking femininity and women who are emphasizing it. That is, while men often go around dressed like women (teetering around uncomfortably in high heels with garish make-up and grotesque fake boobs), women are teetering around uncomfortably in high heels with garish make-up and (grotesque) (fake) boobs. The irony, apparently, is lost on everyone.
Maybe next year, we should make all the kids dress as bloggers.
Or the kid who went as Superman. How atrocious that we hold someone who lives a lie, and hides his true self from the woman he supposedly loves. Clearly a homophobic slam or at least an advocacy for duplicity. Are we to condone such treachery?
Or the little girl who went as Cinderella, buying into the rose tinted fantasy of Prince Charming, when spousal abuse is so rampant in this country. And talk about denigration of the female in society. She’s a textbook doormat, a male fantasy, dreaming of the day she can be wed to some repulsive male.
Or the Incredible Hulk. Did no one sit this little boy down and explain to him bi-polarity and borderline schizophrenia are no laughing matter. Not to mention illiteracy ( as the Hulk wasn’t much of a reader )
How can we stop the madness?
Should the creationists be offended by that costume, the ones who don't acknowledge man's evolution, dinosaur fossils, or a time when men didn't walk the planet.
And I saw one little girl dressed as the Little Mermaid. How can she make so light of the depletion of our oceans, and the almost criminal use of bottom trawls which catch both targer and non target species.
And I saw Peter Pan walking through the mall. As if men who seek to enact prolonged adolescence or practice infantilism should be further encouraged. Of course the five year old cried when I asked him about that.
Come on.
Women dress like men all the time. And its a holiday for little kids, essentially, applying a PC yardstick to its hindquarters, or those who might want to dress as a prostitute, or flapper is ridiculous.
You don't say much about people who dress as political figures, people who are ridiculed on a daily basis.
Halloween isn't about ridicule, although caricature often comes into play. It's about dressing up, acting silly, and occasionally pissing off people who take the world and life a little too seriously.
There are also drag queens and female impersonators who do beautiful women such as Rupaul.
Those that do STUPID hateful black face or NAZI uniforms aren't allowed off the hook even on Halloween, Virgina Tech students and Prince Henry both got nailed on offensive costumes.
Halloween was my favorite holiday even as a child it was bigger than Christmas.
For gays/lesbians (and you'd have a damn hard time finding a group more Americans are allowed to HATE MORE,) we LOVE this Holiday. It's Greenwich and the Castro and other gay ghettos that have the BIGGEST PARTIES, and draw the most straight tourists to see our CREATIVITY.
You need to lighten up and go to a queer party.