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...

"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. 

For Some Girls, Life IS a Fairytale: Toddlers and Tiaras

This week's cover of People magazine featured an article on the TLC series Toddlers and Tiaras.  We discussed this television show in class on the first day, but I think it is important to continue discussing this controversial show.  The article states that after three years of the show "viewers and pageant skeptics have been expressing horror at an industry that is now accused of "sexualizing" young girls."  My question to this is: why now?  What has changed in the show in the past three years that now all of a sudden the girls are being sexualized?  Throughout the series the girls have been sexualized while they play "dress-up" and have been infantalized whenever they actually do "act" their age (i.e. crying, temper tantrums, etc.). We discussed this as an example of the absence of "girlhood" on the show.  It appears that Toddlers and Tiaras only promotes the binary of being an infant or being a grown adult, and there is no place for "girlhood". 

Interesting enough, one dissenter of the show was quoted saying...

"Little girls are supposed to play with dolls, not be dolls," New York-based licensed clinical social worker Mark Sichel tells PEOPLE in its new issue, on newsstands now. 

Although he argues against the sexualization of the young girls, he seems to fully support the other gender stereotypes that exist in our society.  Little girls should be able to play with whichever toys please little girls the most.


Mr. Sichel does point out another problematic activity in the show-- the use of 'padding, fake hair, flippers (faux teeth) and spray tans to (re)create celebrity look-alikes'.  Not only does this promote young girls to use and consume these products; it also promotes the adulation of celebrities at a young age.  This contributes to the consumer culture marketers have built around young girls, including the marketing term "tweens" (which I am sure to discuss later in the semester).  It also sets a false and unachievable beauty standard for girls to hold themselves to, which can further contribute to the psychological and physical health risks (anorexia, low self-esteem, poor body-image) that we find in young girls today.