With Halloween just around the corner, and midterms nearly over with, many university students are looking forward to a good party at the end of October. But that means they’re also looking for the perfect Halloween costume. And what that Halloween costumes looks like, is very different for men and women.
Harambe
Harambe has been the meme of the year, and is certain to be a hit Halloween costume this year. But it’s interesting that the women’s Harambe costume is advertised as “sexy”, and doesn’t really resemble the fully covered men’s Harambe costume at all. Should it really be such a surprise, though, when “sexy” has been thrown in front of every possible costume for women? It certainly doesn’t shock me to see costumes with short skirts, while the exact same Halloween costume for men comes with long pants. There’s very little I can say that hasn’t already been said about the sexualization of women’s Halloween costumes. Instead, I’ve asked various University of Toronto students to share their own thoughts and feelings on it.
“I think stores go two ways – they’re either selling these sexualized costumes because that’s what the results of their focus groups or research show – that it’s what the consumers want. Or the costumes are poor/good decisions made by marketing groups to target young females. On the other hand, stores probably would’ve stopped with highly sexualized costumes if they saw that they weren’t getting any profit from them,” one student said.
“Like many other things for women, Halloween costumes are sexualized from a young age,” said another UofT student. “If you check, you’ll notice that the amount of fabric decreases from tweens and forward! The hem lines keep getting shorter and shorter. It’s unfair that this happens only to girls and men get the same costumes their whole lives.”
“If you want to be something sexy for Halloween, go for it. I don’t have a problem with that,” another UofT student commented, “But I do think it’s a problem when pretty much all of the costumes for women are labelled as ‘sexy’ and are half the fabric that make up men’s costumes. What does that say about the state of our society?”