Halloween in Girl World
Every year on October 31st people of all ages come together to celebrate Halloween. Halloween traditions in Canada are quite strong. Thousands of halloween costumes are sold each year from babies up to adults. Younger children celebrate halloween by ‘trick or treating’ around their local neighbourhood, and many teenagers and adults dress up in costumes to attend parties and celebrate the festivities.
Halloween stands for All Hallows Eve in the Western Christian tradition for the feasts of all hallows day. However many sources have noted that Halloween reflects possible pagan roots and traditions.
Over the course of the years Halloween has transformed into one of the top consumerist holidays of the year. Halloween festivities take place for the month of October beginning with picking apples and carving pumpkins to big finale of dressing up in costumes on the 31st.
In today’s adolescent culture, Halloween is a time to dress up in costumes and outfits which one would usually never wear. The popular movie Mean Girls describes Halloween in adolescent culture in the best possible way. The main character states that, “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.” This statement, despite its vulgarity, pertains to be true and is supported by all of the scandalous costumes found in Halloween stores. The demand for sexy costumes is extremely strong and relays a message to women that halloween is a time to wear incredibly revealing clothing in order to look sexy for the night.
Buzzfeed, a popular website which houses all sorts of articles and videos relating to youth culture uploaded a blog post about sexy halloween costumes for women. This particular column is quite new and strongly reflects the dominating sexualized halloween costumes. This article is very hilarious as it displays outrageous costumes ideas for women to look sexy in. All the costumes featured are food items, so this year women can dress up as a Sexy Taco, or a Sexy Pizza Slice.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/ariellecalderon/sexy-costumes-that-have-gone-way-too-far#3ye4dgs
Not only have food items fallen into the category of sexy Halloween costumes; religious figures have also been sexualized. For example, you can dress up as a Sexy Nun or as a Pregnant Nun.
In the picture below, the pregnant nun costume is actually being modelled by a male. These costumes further demonstrate how Halloween has become a holiday in adolescent culture where dressing up in costumes can blur lines between what some people find appropriate and offensive. For young children Halloween is a time for fun, while for adolescents Halloween is a time to look sexy and dress provocatively. With Halloween only a month away, what will you be dressing up as this year?
