In an innocent search for a Sherlock Holmsian-sort of cape, I came across this occular offense:
What the bloody hell? How, WHY sexify one of the greatest fictional characters? What bizarre role playing could this be part of? You know what, I do not want to know. I don’t think this ‘costume’ would exist if it weren’t for girls having exhausted every other ‘sexy’ Halloween get-up they could think of. You want to dress up as one of the standard fetishes? Go ahead, be a schoolgirl, or Officer Naughty. But this…this has gone too far. It is time to take Halloween back from the prurient masses!
Halloween evolved from the pagan holiday Samhain, when the souls of the dead would wander the land and the living would attempt to appease or hide from them. It evolved over the years into a kiddie holiday with treats(appeasing) and costumes(hiding). Somehow we’ve let it devolve into a drunken toga party, replete with blatant sexual innuendo and irksome displays of flesh. There’s already a pagan holiday for thinly veiled sexual rituals! Easter!
Did you ever wonder as a kid, ‘what’s the eggs, bunnies, and dancing around maypoles got to do with Jesus?’ Pretty much nothing. That’s right, it’s one big fertility ritual. So take your sexy barista costume egg-hunting and leave Halloween alone.
I understand it’s a transformative holiday, where society gives you permission to become something completely other than you are. Lots of people use this as a way to channel their latent wants, or at least that’s my theory as to why so many jockish thugs dress up as gigantic-breasted women. Whether they want or want to be them is their druthers. But ladies, why emphasize society’s viewing of the female as sexual object to an outlandish degree? The worst example are couples who go as pimps and whores. Wow, real subtle with the gender roles there. I also get the sense that many of these people aren’t shy wallflowers using Halloween as an excuse to throw off societal constraints. It’s more like an army of ‘Sex & the City’ fans using Halloween as a megaphone for their libidos. Isn’t wearing a sparkly ‘Slut’ shirt grocery shopping enough?
The men are no better. It’s like the holiday gives them permission to become walking erections. In fact, that’s a pretty popular costume, along with ‘Free Mammogram Booth’, Female Body Inspector, and the addition of large plastic breasts and buttocks to any given costume.
It takes a stronger ego to duck this grossly exaggerated display and dress up as something ghoulish, disgusting, or just plain unattractive. It’s a slippery slope between telling a girl she should be something pretty, like a princess or fairy, to this bull:
That’s why this Halloween I’m going as something big and ugly, like the MetLife building or Captain Ahab.
