Halloween essay

            Halloween is a time of year when people can escape from their ordinary, normal personas and branch out and experience the feeling of being someone else for a day, night, or in the case of college life, an entire week. Every year people flock to thrift stores, Halloween shops, and other textile merchants in order to find or create the best (or worst) Halloween costumes imaginable. However, Halloween costumes have very different intentions for feminine or masculine purposes. While masculine costumes often represent folk heroes and strong, powerful personas, feminine costumes rarely represent the same. Halloween is a gender stereotypic holiday because it does not promote equal expressive opportunities for both ends of the gender spectrum.

            Halloween costumes that promote masculinity are particularly popular, and provide an enhanced sense of testosterone boost around the holiday. As Alexander writes in “The Corporate Masquerade”, Halloween costumes are usually pulled from mythical stories from pop culture that celebrate masculine champions of humanity. Examples like Superman, Batman, cowboys, Native American chiefs, and other figures commonly regarded as exceptional beings identify as strong personas that are extraordinary in ways that normal people could never hope to be. These costumes provide an escape for people who choose to identify with masculine gender types to a sort of fantastical element that cant be reached during everyday life.

            On Halloween, people choosing to identify with the more feminine end of the gender spectrum cannon enjoy quite as many powerful identities. When one walks through a Halloween store or shops for unoriginal costume ideas, they will easily find a vast majority of Halloween costumes to be scanty and unprofessional. These costumes often do not try to hide what they are, being called “sexy nurse” or “sexy policewoman” or other degrading concepts, but even costumes that are not outright scandalous can carry unappealing stigma with them. Last Halloween, a mother took action against Party City for only having three costumes for little girls, one of which was a police officer wearing a low cut shirt and short skirt. This is an outfit unbecoming of an officer of the law, and certainly even less appropriate for a little girl who simply wants to go out and get candy on Halloween night.

            One bright spot for the future of humanity is the growing population of gender neutral costumes with clever based ideas. More and more people are leaning away from the ideas of basic, store bought costumes and branching out to try to be clever and use new and original ideas. For example, one idea seen over Halloween weekend was three girls who wore white shirts with yellow circles in the center and devil horns on their heads, calling themselves “deviled eggs”. Ideas such as this are becoming more and more popular as people are beginning to defy gender stereotypes. Maybe this just has to do with college kids being poor and not being able to afford store bought costumes, but it does reveal a slight generational shift. As generations progress, people will carry more situational awareness and Halloween will experience progressive change just like every other aspect of human life.