At what point did adult female costumes all become "Sexy [insert character here]"? You can't buy a pirate costume, it has to be a sexy pirate costume. You can't be a Devil, it must be the Sultry Slutty Devil. You can't even find a damn regular elf outfit for a woman without it being a "Ho-Ho-Whorish-Elf"! I can appreciate that there are some costumes that are sexy by nature - take a French maid outfit. Okay - garters and plunging neckline are prerequisites there. But (and now I'm sounding like your Grandma Betsy) why do many women have to dress up as sluts first and then the character du jour a distant (and incidental) second? A ghost with a push-up bra? What the hell?!
Thus ends this year's Halloween rant...
5 comments:
Make-it-yourself costumes are better anyway! Here are two easy, fun ideas for next year!
1-Gorgon. Thrift a close-fitting cap or purchase a bathing cap. Then purchase several rubber snakes and a glue gun (both available at craft stores -- hot glue guns are cheap and great). Arrange snakes in a pleasingly horrible manner, glue et voila! Gorgon. Wear something dreary; use greyish makeup with red-rimmed eyes.
2-Cheap mask of your choice. At most art stores or craft stores you can purchase what's known as a "blank mask," for $3-8 (depending on brand). These are simple white plastic (sometimes papier mache) masks with a neutral expression. Then, get a set of sharpie markers and create a character: scary, cute, whatever (I usually mark out my design in pencil first). Copy cool surreal makeup you see in a magazine, or a character from a story or film. You also can hot-glue feathers, beads, silk flowers, false hair, or other small items to the mask for added personality. I wore one I made to give out candy this year, and everyone loved it!
Cheap, simple, fun, unique... and as sexy as you wanna make it.
(My verification word is "mated."
Agreed, MW! We went costume browsing just for inspiration (we're of the make-it-yourself school), and there was NOTHING for women that didn't have necklines down to there and skirts up to there.
You're no grandma. The ready-made-costumes-for-adults industry just markets itself toward a very specific population with a very specific sort of taste.
On a positive note, a fun store-bought costume on a kid who came to our door: a giraffe. It was like footed pajamas with a hood turned giraffe head. Very sweet.
You're absolutely right.
Of course, when's the last time you saw a woman in a horror movie who wasn't either a sex object or an evil-mother-fantasy crone?
The Halloween industry imagines women pretty much as Norman Bates does.
It was 2003, and in full force by 2004. Sexy everything. Halloween 2004 I wanted to hug every twenty-something I saw dressed up as Bee Girl, simply because that big, round, fuzzy costume -- with horizontal stripes! -- was just so aggressively unsexy.
But yeah, it's a nice meta-comment: as a woman, you can be a nurse, a construction worker, a cat (okay, so maybe not really) -- but first and foremost, you must be sex-ay. It's irritating.
Word.
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