Is it me, or is anxiety over women wearing “slutty” costumes on Halloween reaching a fever pitch? This Joel Stein column from last week was amusing, but the premise he hung the story on, which is the idea that there’s something unseemly about adults celebrating Halloween, struck me as contrived and silly. He was looking for an angle to condemn women who use the occasion to vamp it up on Halloween, and with that it became clear to me that a lot of the trend of picking on the ubiquitous skimpy Halloween costumes is less about criticizing a culture that defines “sexy” as a single-gendered quality and more about perpetuating a no-win situation for women, where we are both expected to be eye candy and sexually available all the time and condemned for it.
Stein accepts the premise that only women can be sexually attractive.
Neither gender wants men to try to be sexy. Slut Day will embrace that fact by having all men dress like Hef: silk pajamas or bathrobes only. No, those aren’t sexy either, but women feel uncomfortable if they’re wearing a fishnet bodysuit and their date is wearing chinos and a blue Oxford. Or a bow tie and a bookstore bag.
The notion that even straight women find the male body not sexually attractive has always puzzled me; how do men who hold this opinion reconcile that with the knowledge that straight women want to have sex with men? I suppose the cover story is that we women live in a higher moral plane, and that we fall for men’s sparkling wits while they think of baser things, and that we only sully ourselves with the physical aspects of sex in order to enjoy the spiritual benefits. It is, like many patriarchal stories, complete bullshit, but whatever.
I had a German professor in college who asked the class on Halloween why people get so damn excited about this non-holiday (in the sense of having a day off) holiday. And we told him that it’s an opportunity to party down and be more explicit about sexuality than is commonly allowed in our society. He pointed out that other cultures have that already, and it goes on longer than a day and they call it Carnival. Of course, Carnival is celebrated in some parts of the U.S. and called Mardi Gras, but its close attachment to the Catholic religion prevents it from really catching on across the country. So Halloween has filled the void, which says to me that there was a void to fill, and people have this basic need to have time set aside to indulge and honor our sinful sides, and sexuality is going to be part of that. The time of year even makes sense; just as Mardi Gras precedes Lent, so does Halloween give adults a finale shindig before settling into the real holiday season, which is about family and for some, religion. I think it’s great that people want to have sexuality as part of the holiday, and I wish there was a way to do that in our culture without reinforcing the idea that women are the sex class. And I can’t believe that I agree with Cary Tennis for once. Well, somewhat.
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Hmmm. I had no idea Halloween was about trying to be more explicit about sexuality. I thought it was about dressing up and acting silly.
Also, I for one am SICK of Halloween being about “Women dressing up so other people can see even more of their body parts than usual, as if we don’t have enough trouble in that area already.”
AND, I don’t think that when someone DOES want to dress in a manner that shows body parts, that person is acting “slutty.”
But why is Halloween, for women, primarily about showing body parts?
This really seems like an old vs. young thing to me. I don’t know anyone my age (early 20s) or younger who thinks outfits are too revealing.
I think Joel Stein is just whining that he can’t partake in the whole thing anymore. I think the shaming aspect of all this is quickly on its way out.
Hmmm. I had no idea Halloween was about trying to be more explicit about sexuality. I thought it was about dressing up and acting silly.
And part of that is expressing feelings that are not appropriate at other times of year, and some of those feelings are sexual. I would have zero problem with it if men were walking around dressed in loinclothes, What makes me a sad panda is the way that sex is so singularly coded as a female thing, so that you have a bunch of women vamping it up but no men. I saw a classic example last week with this couple dressed as fairies. She was wearing a short skirt, fishnets, etc. and he was wearing a three piece suit. With wings. His was funny and clever, and hers was just sexy.
Love the cat.
It seems the gist of many posts is that women are as wanton, aggressive, and lack maternal instincts just like men.
So what if women do operate on a “higher plane”, not just based on physical attraction. I do not think that is bad or patriarchal. It is enlightened, frankly, and women who possess that ability are fortunate.
It’s also the one opportunity a year for men who are otherwise not-particularly-queer to dress in drag. Both my husband and my advisor’s husband (my husband is queer but passes easily as straight, hers is a beer-swilling rugby-playing South African) tend to wear fishnets every Halloween.
I’m with the German Professor. I don’t understand the obsession with halloween. I can’t eat that much candy, and I’ve always hated playing dress up. I still hate it now in fact.
Also, I don’t understand the obsession with people’s costumes. Halloween’s about self-expression correct? If men or women want to dress sexy, that’s on them. I’d actually encourage it. It would be awesome to see men actually be something other than square.
An inability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes? Or at least a tendency not to do it until called on it I know that I never really realized I even had that contradiction until I got my first job in High School - at a supermarket full of 20-to-30-something aged women who were quite happy to discuss the physical attributes of the men they were currently dating/lusting after quietly in the break room to their friends and didn’t care who else was around to hear it. Quite an eye opener, actually.
How great would it be if a woman (or a man) could dress sexy if she felt like it on any day of the year without getting judged or ogled in an unseemly fashion?
A while back you offered a frame-based analysis according to which one way of framing sexuality is as an adversarial competition in which women are supposed to want not to have sex with men, and men’s premised goal is strictly contrary to what women are supposed to want. (Brilliant analysis, btw.) Inculcating the notion that the male body is unattractive enforces that frame: it justifies both the idea that women should want not to have heterosexual sex, since men are unattractive, and also the idea that men would employ deceit, coercion, and violence to have heterosexual sex, since men’s bodies are naturally repellent. As a freebie, this notion also makes male homosexuality hard to account for. So the ostensible unattractiveness of the male body is perfectly at home with that way of framing heterosexuality.
I have no problem with people who decide to dress sexy for Halloween. I think more men should be encouraged to do so.
I just wish that the corporations making millions off Halloween would have a wider range of costumes available for those of us who would like more options than Sexy Nurse, Sexy Snow White, and Sexy Hermione Granger.
(And a wider size range, too, please. I’d love to wear one of those floor-sweeping costumes, but I’m 5′3″ and they’re all made for people 5′6″ and up. And I’m not going to pay to have a $30 Halloween costume altered.)
Nice Guy: It must be terrible to be a man, since you hate men so much.
Good point, Richard.
Inculcating the notion that the male body is unattractive enforces that frame: it justifies both the idea that women should want not to have heterosexual sex, since men are unattractive, and also the idea that men would employ deceit, coercion, and violence to have heterosexual sex, since men’s bodies are naturally repellent.
That framing also gets men out of being (gasp!) openly judged for their appearance; if women are base and physical, then men must be mental and spiritual, appreciated for greater things by women who can do so despite their own baseness, while men, despite being so unattractive, are helpless but to appreciate women on a purely physical level. How fucked up is that. I’m not even sure if I’m making sense, because just like in the previous posts where it’s okay to see a naked woman but not to talk accurately about her parts, whereas the opposite is true for men, this stuff is crazy.
The recent posts here by Amanda have all kind of tied together, but I’m way too out of it this morning to even start on why.
I would dress sexier on Halloween if I knew what sort of outfit made me look sexy. While I don’t think I’m a repellent fellow by any means, I certainly don’t have the male physique that is generally considered attractive.
As an aside, a female acquaintance once said to me, “Men’s bodies are just ugly.” Given that she was ostensibly straight, I didn’t really understand why she said that.
It’s funny. My wife and I have been spending a lot of time watching Xena lately. We often find ourselves commenting on how attractive or unattractive various love interests are, and often enough they’re guys. I’m straight (more or less), but come on. Some guys are hot. Pisses me off too this trend that a guy can’t comment on another guy’s appearance without being ‘gay,’ as if that’s somehow a bad thing.
Hallowe’en is growing into my favourite holiday, just because I love getting dressed up in crazy costumes, and now we have a daughter to dress up in crazy costumes too. My wife and I sometimes just trade clothing for Hallowe’en (we’re more or less the same size), and we can both pass. It’s all just good fun. And I’m all in favour of fun.
In short, let’s not shame women for wearing sexy costumes, but get more hot guys to do the same. I’ll volunteer.
I know this isn’t what the posting was about, but as the former owner of a Siamese chocolate point (now passed on after fifteen years of friendship…I do so miss that cat), thanks for the photo. You always see sealpoints in these pictures but rarely chocolate points. The one in your photo is an adult, pretty much in the prime of his life, judging by his coat. Ah, how I remember the days of Sport’s and my youth together. You’ve made me nostalgic.
I think I have less of a problem with the revealing nature of women’s Halloween costumes (though it does bother me) than I do with the blatant carnival of racial and ethnic stereotypes that come with this holiday. Sexy Cop vs. Sexy China Girl? I’ll take the Sexy Cop anyday.
I was running this morning past a suburban school grades K-4, and saw a girl getting dropped off wearing a “sexy” outfit, with a short skirt and high boots. Frankly, I thought it inappropriate. Does that make me a bad person?
However, in answer to your first question, other than this blog, I have not heard a simgle reference to the issue, so I don’t think the issue is at a “fever pitch.” I think too many people think that whatever happens in their life is universal experience, when it is not. I think the percentage of adults that do anything for Halloween besides dressing up their kids and walking with them through the neighborhood is very, very, very small.
And what exactly do you envision by adding sexuality without women being the sexual class? Does everything have to pit men versus women?
And *that* is what I was referring to in my comment about how women are seen as “dirty” in the sense of sex. A penis is for peeing (and, yes, sex, please, think of the children!). But a vagina is about SEX! A vagina is “the goods”.
(I’ve heard some folks, sometimes in a spiritual context (I’m a Wiccan, so “spiritual” can mean all kinds of funky and freaky shit) point out that the vagina is also scary as all hell because it’s also associated with birth, which is the sign of the ultimate power of women.
Um. Sorry.
It does bother me some. I just had a friend point out how few girl costumes there are (he just had to find one for his daughter - I think he found a Supergirl costume) and was warned “wait until she’s a teen and every costume is about sexiness”)
I think it’s a fine thing for a woman to celebrate sexuality on Halloween… but it does worry me that it’s sometimes the only thing to celebrate. (Or am I simply ignorant of the other options?)
“It seems the gist of many posts is that women are as wanton, aggressive, and lack maternal instincts just like men.”
There’s not a substantial difference between women and men, on average. The problem you’re seeing comes from trying to put women on some non-wanton, non-aggressive, maternal-instinct-having, “higher plane” pedestal and/or insisting that men are basically animals that can talk and do cute tricks like mow the lawn and change the oil.
Once you realize that women aren’t paragons of virtue just because they have vaginas and men aren’t paragons of vice just because they have penes, saying “women are not substantially different than men” ceases to be a problem.
I personally have no problem with wearing revealing clothing on halloween (or in general). I just think people should be creative with their costumes, and find it disappointing when they don’t. It doesn’t take a lot of thought to be a sexy kitty or a sexy devil or a sexy pirate, and everyone is going to be that. But you can dress up as the Bride from Kill Bill and be awesome AND sexy. Another great costume I saw was Smurfette. It was somewhat revealing, but the girl painted her entire body blue, and therefore wins in my book.
(For the record, I feel similarly about lame male costumes. I’m so sick of seeing guys in a box with “God’s Gift to Women” written on it, or Captain Jack Sparrow, or whatever)
My problem with “Slut-O-Ween” is that I never, ever, not when I was young and hot and not now that I’m middle-aged and fat, wanted to “dress sexy”, ever.
My perspective on sex and sexiness is that I am the gaze. You all, men and women both, are here for *me* to look at, dammit. Obviously it is problematic for a woman in our culture to hold the opinion that she is the gaze and not the gazed-upon, as there is very little in the culture to back that perspective up — thus the lack of hot men dressing in sexy outfits for my consumption (though I happen to prefer outfits that cover the skin on both men and women, and I think my husband in a business suit and sunglasses is sex on a stick.) I manage this by creating my own reality, which is a fun place to live but doesn’t handle collisions from actual reality very well.
So I go to the costume store with my daughter and they have nothing I can wear. Everything non-revealing is a Plus Size. I may be fat, but I am not a size 18 fat — I wear from a size 10 - 12, and Halloween costumes apparently come in size 0 - 6 and then size 18 - 24. The midrange where most American women are is not represented. Costumes that show off your midriff or legs are particularly hideous on a woman who looks like she’s 5 months pregnant and isn’t (if I was actually 5 months pregnant, my tummy would at least be taut, not a saggy baggy monstrosity of overstretched fascia and broken muscles), but I wouldn’t have wanted to show off my midriff anyway — I wanted to be a ninja, or a mad scientist, or V from V for Vendetta, or a gynoid. I can understand that they just don’t have gynoid costumes lying around, and if they did, they’d probably be Sexy Girl Robot; but why can’t I find a V mask? They had a movie two years ago. Why can’t I find a ninja for adults? Why can’t I find a lab coat that doesn’t have stupid sexual slogans on it like Dr. Love and Orgasm Donor?
I have nothing against women who want to dress up sexy. But I don’t want to dress up sexy, and I never did even when I *was* sexy, and I want the option to wear a costume that fits and is not hideous. I really don’t think that was so much to ask.
I don’t know about sexuality - I don’t really notice mine and don’t feel the need to make a public display of ‘getting in touch’ with it. I just like Hallowe’en because it’s the only time of year that you can wander around completely drenched in what appears to be blood and no-one will bat an eyelid. The rules are almost completely discarded for one night of the year, and I’m not going to squander that opportunity by dressing up as a fairy or a patriarchally sexed-up member of the service industry.
I have a hunch that the growing ubiquity of “sexy” women’s costumes and the growing ubiquity of princess costumes for little girls are related.
I don’t have a theory, just a hunch.
That’s only believed by ugly, useless fat pasty white heterosexual Christian men who’d be much more use as spread on a Ritz than they are to the human species as a whole.
“That’s only believed by ugly, useless fat pasty white heterosexual Christian men who’d be much more use as spread on a Ritz than they are to the human species as a whole.”
OTOH, god must love “ugly, useless fat pasty white heterosexual Christian men” - s/he made so many of them…
‘Course my personal belief is that if there’s a god s/he is laughing at us, so it probably doesn’t matter…
I’ve been toying with the idea that Halloween is partly about overcoming our fears/ realizing they are nothing to really be frightened of, so we don’t fall for people tricking us with fear, like the Bush Admin’s attempts to scare us into yet another war, or sales pitches based on an underlying fear of mortality.
In that context, perhaps women dress sexy on Halloween, because of fears — of attracting a stalker, or being judged as being a slutty bitch, or losing people’s respect for her mind, etc. At Halloween, one can toy with it without being branded for the rest of the year, and decide if it really is risky as it seems.
“Inculcating the notion that the male body is unattractive enforces that frame: it justifies both the idea that women should want not to have heterosexual sex, since men are unattractive, and also the idea that men would employ deceit, coercion, and violence to have heterosexual sex, since men’s bodies are naturally repellent. As a freebie, this notion also makes male homosexuality hard to account for. So the ostensible unattractiveness of the male body is perfectly at home with that way of framing heterosexuality.”
It also allows for female homosexuality (which, as a lesbian, I’m always fascinated by the certain limited ways in which female homosexuality is ok, while male homosexuality is OMG TEH GAY!), or at least female homosexual experiences on a limited basis. Since women are by default the attractive ones, no wonder some women are attracted to each other, since men are uuuugly (according to this viewpoint, I may not be attracted to men, but I certainly don’t think they’re all ugly).
Of course, then things get complicated, since a lesbian is a woman who is attracted to women just like a man is! Which makes her more like a man, and therefore ugly! Or something…
Silly culture. I likes me some pretty men. Grolby dear… will you put on something pretty?
Of course, Carnival is celebrated in some parts of the U.S. and called Mardi Gras, but its close attachment to the Catholic religion prevents it from really catching on across the country
Well good thing that All Saints’ Eve (usually called All Hallows’ Eve, or Hallowe’en) isn’t seen as particularly Catholic, then.
Re: Sexy male costumes: A guy friend of mine in good shape did dress as a UPS deliveryman (think Legally Blonde) one Halloween. He carried a small box, and asked all the women he met if they’d like to check out his package.
My problem with the sexy costume double standard is that for most of the country, it’s too cold outside on the last day of October to be showing off your body. So you have all these women freezing their asses off, but men being perfectly comfortable fully clothed. And most of the men barely lift a finger to dress themselves. This is true every weekend, by the way. Women go out dressed to the nines, and men roll out of bed and throw on a sweatshirt.
Amanda, Another Richard is right, and the dynamic reaches its height with MRAs and Nice Guys, who outright argue that women hate sex and hate men and just want to bargain for financial gain. It’s not a higher moral plane, it’s an “all women are whores” argument, thinly veiled.
This discussion reminds me of a quote attributed to director John Waters, who is reported to have said that he would always remain grateful to the Catholic Church, without which sex simply would not have been dirty for him.
MikeEss: Yeah, Darwin was way off the mark when he blithered about an inordinate fondness for beetles.
I think the percentage of adults that do anything for Halloween besides dressing up their kids and walking with them through the neighborhood is very, very, very small.
If that were true, Halloween wouldn’t be the second-biggest sales generating holiday, second only to Christmas, and the third-biggest party holiday, following New Year’s and the Super Bowl.
I can understand that they just don’t have gynoid costumes lying around, and if they did, they’d probably be Sexy Girl Robot; but why can’t I find a V mask?
Sometimes I realize just how spoiled I am by living in Los Angeles. Alara, at least two of the Halloween stores I went to had entire V costumes, and the others had the mask.
I guess you need to move to the West Coast.
For Halloween I dressed up as a fairy princess. I have a floor length gown from when I was a maid of honor at my bf’s wedding, so wings and crown, and voila.
I did look at stores for costumes, but the dirth of “Sexy” costumes annoyed me. I have been known to go for the “dirty slut” look at Halloween, but more and more it is just for the fun of dressing up.
And men are sexy as hell. But I have to admit, the sight of a man walking upright with an erection, makes me laugh. Every time. When he lies back, it looks fine, sexy even, but when he walks with it sticking out like a divining rod, I just die.
I’ve seen women as old as 70 get involved with Halloween before.
If Joel Stein was even half the man he is, he would dress up for Halloween himself — in a chicken outfit because of his gynephobia.
Come on, how hard is this?
For a man to dress sexily is for him to acknowledge that there is a reality in which people are going to look at him, and judge him on his appearance.
And that he will have no control over who it is that is doing the looking and the judging.
If he has an average or less body, then he risks looking either like an idiot or like a failure. Not good.
If he has a good body, and pulls off the sexy look, then there is a very good chance that someone he doesn’t want looking at him (as in, not-hot women or gay men) will look at him and possibly even see him as a sexual object. And that is too creepy for words.
You know, the way he thinks of women. Ick.
Forgive me if it’s been mentioned already, but I don’t have time right now to read all the comments.
I caught the end of “Chuck” last night, and the scene was a Halloween party. Around the corner comes an absolute Adonis dressed as Adam–only a speedo and a snake around the 6-pack and an apple. I thought to myself, “holy shit. Why don’t more men do this, and how can I get invited to a party like that?”
Women don’t find men attractive. Yeah, right. I’ve found that most of the guys who say that are actually right–about themselves. Because of our sexbot status, we women are held to a higher physical standard, and so more of us work out and tone up to achieve the minimum standard. Since men don’t have the standard, most of them aren’t worried about their physiques, and thanks to TV shows like “King of Queens” and “According to Jim,” many men are led to believe that women don’t think about their physiques, either.
Alara Rogers & Mwezzi: Hear, hear!
Yeah, me too. I get wanting to be sexy on the one day of the year you can get away with it without being judged (as much). But I went to a Halloween party this year, and many of the men were wearing these fun, creative costumes (my favourite was three guys dressed as Snap, Crackle & Pop… hee!) and all the women were… you know. Sexy fairies, sexy devils, sexy geishas (*cringes*… that one was particularily popular this year, not sure why). It made me sad because I’m sure some of the women had creative costume ideas, but the fact that none of them were wearing any made me think they were discarded for being insufficiantly sexy. Because it’s okay for men to sacrifice attractiveness for humour or creativity, but not for women. Women have to be pretty and sexy so the men will have something to look at. It’s depressing and frustrating.
Oh, speaking of the connection between Carnival in Europe and Halloween in the US, the famous West Hollywood Halloween street party is actually called the Halloween Carnaval. So, yes, Halloween is the US version of Carnival in other countries, if that clears things up.
Roses and speedbudget, you are both correct. It’s pretty sad that women can’t dress as slutty as she wants without being judged by other people. I have not judged any woman for the way she dresses since 2002. And I intend to keep it that way. It is her choice to dress however she wants to without being harassed or catcalled.
I love-love-love dressing up (but then, I consider it a costume every time I get dressed — “I think I’ll go as Advertising Copywriter today.” “Ah, Saturday, the perfect time to dress up as Woman Who Can’t Be Bothered!”), but I haven’t bought a Halloween costume since I was a kid. For me, most of the appeal has always been in seeing what I could gin up on my own. This year’s Amy Winehouse costume — towering beehive, heavy eye makeup, mole — was pretty easy, but past costumes (Marge Simpson, Pregnant Britney Spears) have been more labor-intensive.
I was considering one “sexy” costume this year. I was trying to figure out how to do “Sexy Pope Benedict,” with miter, red shoes, and shorty papal robes, but I couldn’t afford the fabric. I don’t know how many people in my neighborhood would have gotten the joke anyway.
Jovan:
Forget slutty. You can’t even go out in jeans a T-shirt without being ogled.
“The notion that even straight women find the male body not sexually attractive has always puzzled me; how do men who hold this opinion reconcile that with the knowledge that straight women want to have sex with men?”
This also ties back to homophobia. Heterosexual men who believe this bull about what women desire feel incredibly threatened by the ultimate gender traders, gay men. It forces these straight men to realize that they can be objectified to the same extent that they objectify women and that scares the crap out of them. They have been successful enough in propagating an idea of what women desire to suit their patriarchy but the existence of homosexuality is a threat to that myth making.
This anxiety has led to gay men being portrayed as sexless “feminine” eunuch hairdressers or sex-obsessed possibly pedophilic predators. The former helps to alleviate anxiety while the second creates more anxiety but acts as an incentive to discrimination or violence to deal with the horrible threat of TEH GAYS!! (or, more appropriately the gaze).
So, what do you think Daniel Craig’s Halloween costume would be?
A few unrelated points:
- The Tennis column was pretty good; I was surprised. He completely ignores the issue of a 16 year old girl thinking she has to dress sexy for Halloween, but I’m still glad for the column.
- The connection between Halloween and the beginning of the Christmas shopping season has only been about 10 years old. The beginning of the season used to be the end of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, when Santa would come down the street. I know trying to stop revisionist consumerist history is like spitting in the wind, but I felt I had to try.
- As far as comparisons to Halloween and more explicitly religiously connected holidays like Mardi Gras/Carnivale, all I can say is that, from my perspective, for dressing up and cutting loose Halloween in the US sure as hell beats Purim!
“So, what do you think Daniel Craig’s Halloween costume would be?”
Daniel Craig needs a costume?
~snark~
There’s a similar thread in punkassblog.com, and someone said…
Exactly.
So, what do you think Daniel Craig’s Halloween costume would be?
I vote for this.
Yum.
Alara, Mnemosyne, and others: I am a size 12 - 14, (5′7″ tall) and I am not fat. Thicker around the waist than I’d like, but no excess jiggly bits. No one smaller than I am is fat, either. We are, ahem, adults. We are also the average size for an American woman. The fact that only Disney.com has Halloween costumes in our size is a classic market failure.
Oh, for no really good reason, why aren’t there more costumes for the adult Harry Potter characters?
How much of the gender imbalance in revealing costumes do you all think is due to women not feeling like they are “allowed” to view men as sexual objects? I wonder. If straight women felt more open in expressing their sexual attraction to men, would we see more revealing male-themed costumes? Or is the vein of sexiness that includes skimpy or revealing clothing not open to men as a way to express THEIR sexuality, because straight women don’t find it attractive? Straight women obviously have a monstrously large range of sexual appetites, but are revealing costumes for men not popular because women don’t find men wearing them to be attractive, or because women aren’t allowed to ‘look’ at men that way?
I’ve had numerous conversations with my female friends, many of whom were very fond of sex with men, where they either wouldn’t acknowledge their desire for the male form, or outright indicated that they felt men were less pleasant to look at than women (these were straight women, again). Obviously, anecdotal evidence isn’t worth much, but I wonder how much those statements are driven by true feelings (that men actually aren’t that attractive/interesting to look at), rather than socially trained responses women are expected to give in response to questions about their own sexual drives.
I’m a straight man and I find it difficult to come up with a sexy
halloween costume for myself that doesn’t boil down to wearing womens’ clothes. For that matter, I find it hard to find sexy clothing in
general. Let’s say that my best feature is my bum and legs and I want to show that off for all my lady friends. My options are either to spend a
fair bit of money on a really tight pair of pants, wear speedos and
build a costume from there, or wear a tight skirt. The speedo option is
out due to weather. Tight pants made for men tend to be more expensive that going to the thrift store and buying an $8 skirt or even an $8 pair of tight womens’ stretch jeans. The market for tight stretchy clothes for women is much much larger than the corresponding market for men.
Of course, if I’m going to wear a skirt, then a pair of high heels just
goes naturally and helps accentuate the legs while a pair of tights
rounds out the outfit. So the easy way to show off my assets leaves me
dressed like a woman. I suspect that similar concerns drive a lot of the
male halloween crossdressing that we see. It seems hard for men to find
socially acceptable ways of showing off their bodies in daily life…
Suggestions are welcome…
The thing that bugs me about all the complaining is the part of the narrative where women who dress as sluts are supposedly “revealing their true colours,” or “letting something hidden come out.”
A costume is something you put on, not an externalization of your hidden fantasies or something. It’s play, not the whore at the heart of every woman or however you want to put it.
Kitty, some women do have jiggly bits at size 12-14 (I wear a size 14 and have very jiggly thighs). Depends on height, build, and how the fat is distributed. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with being fat or jiggly, and it is ridiculous that halloween costumes only come up to a size 8 or 10… women who aren’t thin like to dress up too!
For what it is worth, the Halloween party I attended last week included a number of men dressed revealingly or sexily (if you count tights as part of a pirate costume as sexy, which I do) and several very creative non-sexy women’s costumes, including a home-made Mr. Potato Head with all sorts of removable and repositionable bits.
But then, the party was hosted by a gay couple, and well over a third of the attendees were gay, so maybe the vibe was different.
Then again, several of the most revealingly dressed guys were straight, and one of the hosts was dressed as Elmo, the other in full Grim Reaper robes.
Ah, if only the Gay Lifestyle would catch on more, straight people could relax so much more.
It’s called Carnival in the US, too. The season is called Carnival and the day is called Mardi Gras.
I don’t think it’s the attachment to Catholicism that keeps it from spreading cross-country. I think it’s the perceived sinfulness that keeps it from spreading.
I, however, think it’s awesome.
They can’t even keep their stories straight. Do they really not remember the Diet Coke commercial with the office women lusting after the bare-chested construction worker? To posit, generally, that straight women would not want to look at good looking men is utterly ridiculous.
When I was in Madison, WI for Halloween there were some hot guys dressed as Chippindales strippers. They got plenty of attention. In fact, my friend ran right up to one and kissed him. Joel Stein’s problem is that he’s A) a douche and B) probably doesn’t look good enough with his shirt off to pull off any kind of sexy costume.
I wish we had Carnival everywhere. Although it may be impeded by the simple fact that being half-naked in Wisconsin in February just isn’t much fun.
Well, Turbulance, from your vocabulary, I’d say you’re British, so yeah, a scanty costume can be hard at the end of October (no pun intended.
If your best feature is your legs, why not try a gladiator costume, or dress as a Greek soldier? Lots of women loved “Troy” and it wasn’t because they were big Homer fans. If you get cold, you can always cover up with a cloak.
Here in the Midwest, most women think a guy’s cowboy look is sexy, and all that requires is tight jeans, boots and a cowboy hat (shirt optional). I’m a fan of the leather and sunglasses look myself, as long as he isn’t wearing them while he’s driving at night.
Without invalidating anything else you said, there are lots of options in the fantasty/superhero/Renaissance/Pirate sort of world that also more or less invove tights and do wonrders for showing off assets. So do quite a few sports uniforms.
But they don’t usually show up as off-the-rack items, and they aren’t really available as combinations of thrift store items, so the “sexy men’s costume” world pretty much lines up with the “creative but not explicitly sexy women’s costumes” — as in, you have to make them from scratch rather than buy them, which involves time and skill with a sewing machine (and in some cases, a noticeable investment.) Which was one of the points of the original post. Full circle.
A slight disagreement, I think: a Halloween costume can be an externalization of your fantasies, and usually is. Right now, I’m really hating on our oligarchy, so I’m dressed as a French revolutionary — you know, the ones who ran around chopping off the aristocrats’ heads.
However, one thing that a Halloween costume definitely is not is an unconscious externalizations. Women wearing minidresses aren’t wearing short skirts without realizing what message they’re sending — they’re doing it to look sexy. They’re not doing it because all women are secretly whores — they’re doing it because they want to look sexy. End of story.
So, what do you think Daniel Craig’s Halloween costume would be?
Hopefully Tarzan or Adam from the Bible.
This was a topic of conversation this year (as it usually is) amongst my group of friends…we had come to the conclusion in earlier years that the lack of clothing was due to the hot weather here in FL. Honestly, you really can’t wear a costume that covers you up much unless it is REALLY loose fitting, like a monks robe - and then it better be cotton. It’s rarely below the mid-80s during the day this time of year, and even at night the humidity is still pretty high.
I LOOOVE Halloween - it’s my favorite holiday. I like dressing up as a different character, and having the ability to be whatever I want to be for one day without having people stare at me like I’m some kind of weirdo. It goes back to me being some kind of weirdo as a kid, I think.
As far as men dressing hot…we get lots of that here, again due to the hot weather. Cowboys in nothing but bikini undies & chaps, shirtless vampires with just pants & capes, etc. Yummy.
Right again, speedbudget. If sexist men don’t have legs to look at, then they will look at the rack (top) of the woman.
I think that if human people want to dress “sexy” or “slutty” or whatever floats their boats, more power to them.
But I think that people should feel free to make other choices, too. Without being dismissed as “prudes” or “killjoys” for choosing to dress as Cthulhu instead of a Sexy Pirate.
Also, everyone who wears a size 10 and calls themselves “fat” is being silly. You may be out of shape, less fit than you’d like, flabbier than you think is attractive, over your personally preferred weight, whatever, but “fat” you are not.
Once upon a time, when I was younger, I worked at a theme park during “FrightFest” as a character a couple of seasons. We could generally pick whatever we wanted to be on a day to day basis, and it was probably the coolest job I ever had.
I was a vampire exactly once. The catcalls were unbearable. They started the instant I walked out into the park. It got to the point where one of my coworkers (a giant man who dressed as a zombie every day and scared the shit out of, well, everyone who didn’t know he was one of the sweetest men I have ever met) stayed near me the rest of night to scare off the pigs.
So the next night I decided to be a mad scientist. The difference was night and day. I had big hair, a blood soaked lab coat, and a cleaver, and not a single person hit on me, although I got a lot of people talking to me because I was (apparently!) funny. Ever since then, it has been my costume of choice when I dress up. I can be loud and crazy and no one tries to grab my ass. That experience as a vampire chick has made me just never, ever want to be “sexy” for Halloween.
By the way, if you want a lab coat that doesn’t have stupid shit written all over it, try a medical supply store. You can usually get scrubs or a lab coat, and they’re made to last and come in a huge variety of sizes and stuff. They’re more expensive than a costume version (I think?), but they’ll last (if you want to reuse it sometime!) and they’ll fit and stuff.
For a man to dress sexily is for him to acknowledge that there is a reality in which people are going to look at him, and judge him on his appearance.
And that he will have no control over who it is that is doing the looking and the judging.
Nailed it. If no man can ever be sexy, then no man can fail at being sexy. If you don’t have to play the game, you won’t lose. For the most part, you won’t win either, but being a patriarchy fan means that sometimes you have to fuck things up for yourself to make sure they’re fucked up for everyone else.
While i disagree with Stein, I can see his point. I’m very turned on by male bodies, but i can’t think of a way to dress them up on Halloween that would sex them up. Women have the sexy witch, sexy vampire, etc. costumes but men in costumes just look goofy.
Maybe a lifeguard, but that’s a pretty lame costume.
An annecdote. Today at work, one of my female co-workers was fooling around with a bunch of patches of fake fur. She had a lenghth of fake zebra print here and a lenghth of fake lion print there. Lots of it, and she was trying to make it into a costume of some sort. Athens is big on the whole Halloween thing.
Anyhow, she was getting frustrated because nothing was coming together, so I said, “Well, why don’t you go dressed as a cavegirl?” She said, “I don’t want to look like a slut!” We eventually sussed out that one could indeed dress as a cavegirl that was non-slutty, however you want to define “slutty”, but it did strike me as interesting.
I wouldn’t try to dress up “sexy” for Halloween not because I’m a guy, but because I am light years away from sexy. I can do “charmingly goofy” but that’s about it.
For me, any kind of costume that puts a man in a skirt (like a gladiator) is insanely sexy. But I might just have a thing for guys in skirts.
You’re right Erin. I hadn’t thought of that.
Yeah, my problem with the Sexy Noun costumes is that they’re just really boring. Sexy Nurse? Boring! Sexy Pirate Wench? Boring! Now if you were an ACTUAL pirate (or even an actual pirate wench!) that could be badass. Or, alternately, something like a Sexy Zombie–your skin would be all moldy and decomposing, but your clothing would be really revealing because, duh, you ripped it crawling out of your grave! Sexy AND scary–best of both worlds! (of course, if you are of a certain mind, “sexy and scary” is probably redundant).
I don’t understand why that’s not a more popular costume. I think I may be that next year.
Cary Tennis’s interlocutor in the linked column named herself Concerned About the Kids. Concerned about the fucking goddamned kids.
You know what? I’m concerned about the kids. I’m concerned that everyone out there who is actually concerned about the kids for a non-bullshit reason is going to bury that concern deep inside because they’re so fucking sick of hearing about concern for children from fucking morons who are terrified that women will let someone see their fucking vajayjay before they’re married.
And then who will think of the children?
I see Hector has already pointed out that Halloween has deep Catholic roots.
Furthermore, Mardi Gras/Carnival is deeply rooted in African traditions too, though the one folks recognize outside of NOLA is the white appropriated and modified version. It’s association with both racist notions of hedonism/sexuality and a more contemporary/consumerist Bourbon St bachnalia are probably why it has “not caught on.”
I think one of the subtle things going on with the whole “women don’t find men sexy” thing is that when thinking of a man in a sexy context people usually think of real men , a little fat , not all rippling muscle, a regular shmo (like me). In the case of women the image in most peoples mind would be the patriarchy approved “perfect” woman we see in TV, movies and magazines. So men are ugly because they are real people with minor flaws women are sexy because we hold them up to an impossible standard that almost nobody can actually achieve.
Just a pet theory of mine
DeadMan
My fiance dressed as a sniper in a gilly suit, camo paint, the whole nine yards. It was very sexy, IMO. Only sucked cuz I couldn’t kiss him without getting facepaint all over my pretty fairy face
A man can be sexy in voluptuous materials and decadent clothing, and he doesn’t have to be shaped like a Chippendale’s dancer to do it. Satan can be a charmer, offering money, chocolate, or other earthly delights with a wicked smile. Formal attire is made to flatter most male shapes, so an average man in a tuxedo or nice suit tends to look good.
On the other hand, if a male does have a conventionally sexy body, he can flaunt it. There were at least two buff gladiators in loincloths at the (large outdoor) festivity I attended last night.
That cat is a slut. I mean, look, no pants!
Won’t anyone think of the felines?
The uptight wingnut perverts at Fox Newsiness and elsewhere seem to have forgotten 13-year-old stars like Deanna Durbin and Judy Garland. They were presented in a rather sexy manner. Here is one of Deanna. Not short skirts, but short shorts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k867RezewKw
Then there was Judy singing “You Made Me Love You”.
BTW, look up a lot of clips of Deanna Durbin, it will do your heart good.
Just had to say something regarding fat, in reference to my comments and others’ responses:
I am 5′0″ and 160 lbs. My thighs chafe against each other and make it painful to wear`short shorts or skirts in the summer, I have a double chin, and my stomach muscles were pushed to either side of my abdomen by my pregnancy, so now, with my baby almost 18 months old, I look five months pregnant. I am, by any metric, fat. But because I am only 5′0″ and small framed, I only wear a size 12. If I was 5′7″ I would not be fat at all.
This, BTW, is why I profoundly hate American sizing. The notion that a 5′0″ and 5′7″ woman could possibly wear the same size clothes, ever, is insane. In order to find pants that fit my huge ass and can pull up over my giant belly, I must wear pants in a size where the legs trail all over my shoes and I end up ruining the bottom of the pants (and no, I am not skilled enough with a sewing needle to hem the damn things.) Men’s sizing, where there is a measurement for the waist and one for the leg, seems much saner. When I was healthy and a good weight for my body, I was a size 6 or 8. If I was a size 18, at my height, I would probably be dead.
So yeah. I’m not saying anything about anyone else’s weight based on their clothing size, because I don’t know their height and I don’t know their muscle density and I don’t know how well they carry the weight, but I am size 12 and I am fat. Sorry, you can’t look pregnant for a year and a half and not come to the conclusion that you are fat. The worst of it appearance-wise is actually not my fault — the broken stomach muscles and pregnant-looking belly are not actually the result of my weight at all and losing weight would not help them — but the big butt, thick thighs and double chin are me being fat.
While i disagree with Stein, I can see his point. I’m very turned on by male bodies, but i can’t think of a way to dress them up on Halloween that would sex them up. Women have the sexy witch, sexy vampire, etc. costumes but men in costumes just look goofy.
Maybe a lifeguard, but that’s a pretty lame costume.
Your imagination is completely colonized by the Patriarchy.
And lifeguard is a lame costume???? Assuming a hot guy is wearing it, how is that possible?
Other suggestions - and as with hot costumes for women, it helps immensely if the men wearing them have great bodies and pretty faces. Screw double standards.
Elizabethan apparel w/codpiece
Saint Sebastian
A figure from a Greek vase painting
http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en-commons/thumb/1/1b/250px-Ganymede_hoop_Louvre_G175.jpg
Roman centurian
Sexy Indian brave
Sexy cowboy
Leather dude
so many more..
We can’t let them constrict our minds with their gender cages
I never considered men to be sexy until I started to stare at ancient statues in high-school. I’ve wondered at this until I realised it’s possibly because they’re *meant* to be ideal and beautiful and everything attractive, regardless of personality.
I’m all for men taking up short chitons and tunics for Halloween or any soldier’s uniform prior WW2 or normal clothes prior Victorian (hah, when gentlemen’s clothes got *comfortable*)
It’s funny how the standard dress for men turned *less* sexy as time goes on while the standard for women seemed to be more sexy. Sometimes I suspect it’s because when women got out of the house, men wanted another way to disparage them….