What happened to the scary, more playful costumes of our childhood?
Modern Halloween celebrations stem from the Celtic festival of Samhain, where it was believed wearing costumes and lighting bon- fires would scare off ghosts. Children would wear hand- made costumes like witches, ghosts, and cats, which are still symbols of Halloween.
During the 1940s, Hollywood Studios decided to advertise Halloween in a new, scandalous way. Actresses dressed in revealing costumes, for example when actress Veronica Lake posed to promote the 1942 film ‘I Married a Witch’ dressed in a short skirt and fishnets.
Furthermore, dressing up in revealing costumes became popular among adults in the 1970’s due to the sexual revolution. Queer communities in major cities hosted parades where people expressed themselves with skimpy costumes and drag outfits to compete for the most “outrageous” costume.
Later in the years, people from all sexualities and genders joined in, turning Halloween into a widely celebrated adult holiday. In the early 2000s, teenagers began to participate in this trend. “Mean Girls” main character Cady famously said, “Halloween is the one night a year when a girl can dress like a total slut and no other girls
can say anything about it.”
Modern teenagers such as one anonymous student say “I’m pretty influenced by the people around me and what’s kind of trending. I tend to pick[…]cuter Halloween costumes to do with friends rather than huge ugly,
scary Halloween costumes.”
Another Roosevelt student, Zoe Bates ’27, said that as she’s grown older, she feels more pressure to look pretty on Halloween. “Even as I’m planning out my Halloween costume now[…] I find myself feeling pressured to choose something sexy.”
The anonymous student also notes that other teenagers are also influenced by what is popular and trendy on social platforms like Tiktok. The student notices that, “there are sexist costumes, especially like in Spirit Halloween[…] school girl costumes or police costumes, you can see that they’re definitely more skimpy.”
Bates explained that in the media, there’s an expectation for girls to look sexy on Halloween. She added, “as much as I don’t want to be seen as desirable, it’s still something that I think is really pushed.” The anonymous student said, “It just sucks that girls and women are sexualized daily, even from big brand stores[…] I think people should just be able to wear what they want to wear without being pressured by outside factors.”
Bates pointed out a double standard and said , “I feel like a guy can dress whatever he wants for Halloween[…] I think it’s more normalized for a guy, even in senior year of high school, to dress up,” When Bates wore an ordinary costume in middle school, she recounted, “A guy walked down the hallway and he said to me, ‘Why would you choose to dress like a zombie? You look so ugly right now”.
I felt so terrible for the rest of the day, and for the rest of the month. […] To have somebody tell me that I didn’t look pretty, and to tell me that I [didn’t meet this expectation] really harmed my self-esteem in a way that I think still harms it today.” Bates said, “I’m allowed to be a zombie with blood, guts, and gore, not wearing a crop top.”
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