Girls' Halloween Costumes

In recent years there has been a lot of talk about the sexualization of girls' Halloween costumes.  The costumes are said to be getting more revealing as the years gone on and are even given names heavily laden with sexual innuendo.  Again the Halloween costumes pose women as objects and suggest they be looked at via Laura Mulvey's infamous "male gaze".  These overtly sexualized costumes are not only available for tween and teenage girls, but are available for girls even younger.  What is particularly disturbing is that many of these costumes are aimed at young girls, ages 8-12.  These are not only sexualized, but also have girls "dress-up" in the feminized roles, including witch, dancer, and flirty Army general.  Halloween costumes need to be more age appropriate and provide girls with an equal number of non-feminized outfits.  Here a few examples of what I mean by sexualized costumes for girls...

Passion for Fashion

Tomorrow we are visiting the mall to look at girls clothing and jewelry stores.  So I decided that before going to the stores in the mall, I should examine the websites of the stores to see if the store's websites are feminized with pink, purple, sparkles, etc.

Justice Clothing @ www.shopjustice.com (Previously known as the Limited Too!)


This website was coded in the colors pink and purple, as expected would be in a gendered girl's clothing website.  Here are a few snapshots of the website.

What I found to be particularly interesting of this girls' store for girls age 8-14 is that the website feature's a college fan shop.  As the target of this store is not for college-aged girls or even high school aged girls, it is interesting to me that this would be a line of clothing for the brand.  Are they actually targeting these young women who may/may not be fans of college teams?  I know that when I was a young girl in that age group, I didn't have a favorite college or follow college sports at all.  Is this encouraging girls to think about college at a younger age?  Or perhaps some older girls go into the store and buy this college wear for themselves?  I'm not quite sure, but I think it is a very interesting element of the brand and should be further investigated.  

Claire's Jewelry @ www.claires.com

Again another girls' clothing and accessories website that is gendered with the colors pink and purple.   This brand is aimed at girls of an older age, but still fits the color-assigned design for girls sites.  Because the online stores are coded with pink, I am curious to see if the actual set-up and design of the mall stores are also gender-coded with these traditionally female colors.  What about certain colors are particularly male or female? Why have certain colors been assigned to each gender?

"My Bedroom"

This week's assignment was to design a bedroom on the website www.dressupgirl.net.  The instructions were to chose an age (birth-teenager) and design a bedroom based on building a specific persona for that age.

I chose to design the bedroom of a 16 year-old teenage girl named Jessica.  Jessica lives in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. with her parents, sisters, and cat named Georgia.  She is in the eleventh grade at Archbishop Ryan Catholic High School.  She plays the violin in the band and runs varsity track.  Her favorite color is purple and she loves hanging out with her friends and listening to Coldplay.  She hangs out with the "preppy" kids at school, although you can't tell because uniforms are a school requirement. 

She loves watching Gossip Girl and her favorite movie from her childhood is Now and Then. 

White Girl Problems

This twitter account known as @WhiteGrlProblem.


Here we have a micro-blog dedicated to talking about "white girl problems" in society.  It is a parody-style blog that critiques issues that are commonly associated with "white girls" in American society.  For example, recent #whitegirlproblem tweets include...

To explain the significance,  #hashtags on Twitter are the latest way to "trend" and connect with others who are speaking on the same topic.  This trend is just one example of how social media and online culture connects girls from all different areas to state their complaints and issues with a certain aspect of life.  Although many of these 'problems' are stereotypical 'women's issues' these are often some of the most "re-tweeted" posts.  Girls often 'tweet' their own #girlproblems as a way to connect with other girls who are facing similar problems.  This creates a culture where girls can find a sympathetic ear of another girl who can relate to the girl's problem or respond with positive advice.  This tweeting trend has also lead to similar problems including all types of #_______girlproblems.  Just proving that girls will find ways to connect and unite together, even if it involves complain together at the same time.