A Boston Marriage

“So, what kind of slut are you being for Halloween?” a male friend of mine asked me this week.

I know this isn’t exactly news. Many of us have made this obvious observation. A character in the film Mean Girls summarized the situation quite astutely when she explained: “In the regular world, Halloween is when children dress up in costumes and beg for candy. In girl-world, Halloween is the one night a year a girl can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it. The hardcore girls just wear lingerie and some form of animal ears.”

I doubt I have to convince anyone of the veracity of this claim. It’s the simple truth. If you doubt me, visit the Halloween Distributors store on Main Street, Moncton. It’s representative of what Halloween has become: it’s half Halloween store, half sex shop – literally, they sell blow up dolls and the kind of frilly, cheap-fabric underwear you typically find at Xclusive Boutique. Their lady-costumes are almost exclusively based on being “sexy”: sexy nurse, sexy nun, sexy witch, sexy convict, sexy bee and so on (note: the sexy designation is not a descriptor of mine, it’s actually printed on all the packaging).

I understand the desire to be a vixen on Halloween. Women face incredible pressure every day of the year to be attractive – and that pressure doesn’t go away on Halloween. Even on the day when anything goes, women still want to be attractive in the end. (Analysis of what that says about our society would constitute a whole other article.)

I’d like to think that although the holiday can’t release women from the pressure to be alluring, at least it offers us a chance to be more playful with the expectations, to take femininity and sexiness to ridiculous extremes – to step out of not only our own comfort zones, but society’s as well. I’d like to think Halloween is a time when women can experiment with expressing their sexuality without fear of repercussion.

I’ll admit that my own costume choices absolutely have to do with being able to feel attractive while dressed up – but they also have to do with making a mockery of femininity, amping it up so it looks like the drag that it really is. In my own Halloween history, I’ve worn more than a few provocative costumes. In recent years, I’ve gone as Magenta, the garter-belt clad domestic from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and as the lingerie draped pin-up queen Bettie Page. I threw down for both these characters with outfits that involved layers of makeup, gluing on fake eyelashes, sporting underwear-as-clothing, and showing off my gams and rack far more than I usually do. Despite being perfectly willing to rock sexiness for these costumes, I wouldn’t be caught dead dressing up as a hot cop for Halloween.

The reason for this? Hot cop isn’t a costume. Cop is a costume. A hot cop outfit is what a stripper puts on before hitting the stage or entering a party. And if I wanted to be a stripper, I’d probably try to at least be creative and be an old-school burlesque dancer with some impressive tassels and a beehive hairdo.

That’s what kills me about Halloween and the sexy/dirty/naughty costumes. Our opportunity to push the envelope and be wild has been reduced to the chance to be one of fifty variations of a not-so-private dancer. All of the costumes available in stores seem to conform to straight male porn fantasies: women in a role, infused with gratuitous sex. Instead of acknowledging our desire to be sexy and trying to find a creative way of accommodating it, we just declare sexiness to be the point, and the costume to be incidental. You could dress up as a sexy pile of dirt and it would be perfectly acceptable by most standards.

Halloween is supposed to be about getting to be someone – or something – else for a night, about complete costumed abandonment to the bizarre, whimsical, and macabre. Uninspired conformity to everyday expectations of attractiveness is, frankly, antithetical. It takes away what is special about Halloween and makes October 31st just like every other day of the year.

This year, I’m dressing up as Morticia Addams. Is she sexy? Yes, the lady is a vamp – but she’s also a rich character to play, a damned creepy matriarch, and a staple Halloween/pop-culture icon. Having those elements in play, in addition to her gothic va-va-voom, is what will make Halloween frightfully fun for me this year.

Originally Published Oct. 29th, 2009 in [here]