Feminist Halloween
Hart Hagerty
Issue date: 10/26/05 Section: features
Versus Magazine Online [Image based format]
It will be a dark and stormy night at the end of October...when Frat Row will inevitably be awash in scantily-clad girls hoping for more than just candy corn. Like the delicate, flickering flame within the hollow belly of a jack-o-lantern, happy remembrances of childhood Halloween costumes extinguishes when I consider what Halloween this year will be like. As female trick-or-treaters age, costumes start functioning more as seductive lures than as garbs meant to scare and disgust, however pathetically.
To be fair, however, Halloween seems to occur every weekend here at Vanderbilt. The same crisp, white bed sheets children throw over themselves as ghost costumes are spray-painted and displayed by fraternities to announce the theme-du-jour, like "CEOs and Office Hoes." No matter what the theme, girls see the same message as clearly as a cherry lollipop through cellophane wrapper: dress as provocatively as possible. There is a definite disparity between the goal of looking attractive and the actual aesthetic requirements of the theme. There is nothing sexy about rotting teeth, slimy hair and skin, and frilly, tattered clothes - yet at a "Pirates of the Caribbean" theme party girls are expected to make it alluring. The situation is similar on Halloween. For a girl to don a traditional "evil" Halloween costume, such as an ugly witch, perhaps generates more shock and horror than if she wears lingerie and some form of animal ears and tail accessories, a get-up barely considered a "costume" in some parts of the world.
On the other hand, males do not feel the pressure girls do to dress suggestively; in fact, they often wear ridiculous, even unflattering garb. Furthermore, sororities never have "Chippendale!" parties, hoping guys will show up sporting only velvety Speedos and black bowties. Yet, I admit I do not take as much offense as I should to such obvious gender inequalities. I continue to join my fellow freshmen girls in kinky interpretations of "Gilligan's Island." We giggle in knee socks and miniskirts, our pigtails bobbing behind us. Entering into the energetic buzz of a frat party, I immediately drown my self-conscious thoughts of "Oh god, what am I wearing?" with cheap beer.