In Girl World…

Two New Roads 9th graders choose between safe and scandalous just in time for this year’s Halloween Season.

As fall begins and Halloween is approaching we have been thinking about our costumes from the point of view of two 9th-grade girls.

For years, as we’ve walked through Spirit Halloween, the costumes objectifying girls have always been prominent; we’ve never questioned them. Now that we’re entering highschool and everyone has the freedom to pick out their outfits, we have found ourselves entertaining these costume ideas — despite them feeding into the fetishization of the male gaze.

We are faced with the question: are we objectifying ourselves? And the simple answer is: yes. We grew up idolizing celebrities wearing elaborate lingerie costumes, and looking up to older women donning a variety of revealing clothes, so it’s been built into our brains that, when we reach a certain age (that seems to be getting younger and younger), we must wear them too.

Cady Heron in Mean Girls says it perfectly: “In the real world, Halloween is when kids dress up in costumes and beg for candy. In Girl World, Halloween is the one day a year when a girl can dress up like a total slut and no other girls can say anything else about it.” Dressing as a sexy nurse or a Playboy bunny is something so natural to us that we’re sure many other girls never consider who is responsible for making these choices for us, and if the options we’re being given are something that needs to be changed, or if it’s just us having fun and dressing up cute for all the Halloween parties we’re planning on attending this fall season.

This year, after months of thinking, we have decided what we are wearing, and it’s nowhere near the feminist ideals that preach to us to wear a trash bag to battle against the patriarchy. Does the choice not to wear a Hefty Garbage Bag mean that we are against women, or do we just like the outfits that girls wore in the movies that we grew up watching?

As would-be costume wearers, we are constantly receiving comments about what we are wearing and how we are acting, from subjective criticism to unsolicited praise. If we dress “maturely,” our parents tell us to “dress our age,” but if we show up as Thing 1 and Thing 2, our peers will not hesitate to hide their obvious disapproval.

So what are we doing? What are we wearing this year after we just got done blabbering about a patriarchy that shames any girl who wears what she wants? Well, one of us is going out on Halloween night dressed as a fembot from Austin Powers, and the other is sporting the Sexy Red Riding Hood fit from Trashy Lingerie…and what does that say in relation from our moral standpoint? And why are we degrading ourselves? Is it for the few, scattered and random glimpses we’ll be getting and the endless compliments from our friends? To be blunt, we genuinely couldn’t care less; if we’re declared bad feminists, so be it . Because, we’re fifteen, and these outfits are cute. We’ll admit it, it’s a flawed perspective, but does that detract from the fact that we’ll be having fun?

Our overall sense is that Halloween is a marketing ploy that, once again, has women pitted against each other, whether out of jealousy or pity, the banter is real, and you have to choose a side. Either, you can understand that, while fulfilling male fantasies, some girls like how they feel dressing scandalously for one day a year and believe they are reclaiming the degrading titles men have given them, or take the side that chooses to wear something more covering because that’s what those women like to wear for a holiday focused on children. Understanding these different approaches and whether you agree with one and not the other doesn’t mean you should shame the girls who don’t agree with you – focus on blaming the man who’s dressed as Hugh Hefner for turning a sweet holiday into a concerning fetishization parade.