SEXXXY Gendered Halloween Costumes

It's that time of year again...well...almost! Yes, that time of the year when it's totally acceptable to dress however you want and stay up watching horror films all night long, at least that's how I usually spend Halloween. I tend to dress up and go visit friends on Halloween, but this year i'll be handing out candy to little ones, so my outfit will likely be traditionally "scary". If you have any tips, please share!

However, if you have some ideas...make sure they aren't SEXXXY ones. Halloween is also a day dedicated to mass-marketing and promoting of rape culture influenced costumes! It's all about living some hetero fantasy and getting in touch with patriarchy. Every year new there are new "sexxxy" adult costumes that are released into stores; every year they regurgitate the same gendered bullshit, too.

I just happened to be browsing an online site for Halloween costumes and i found that the only really cool ones were made for dudes. If you wanted to be a pirate and you happen to be a dude, the costume actually looks like a pirate. If you are a woman looking for an adult pirate costume, you get a tattered mini skirt, a barely covering your breasts tank top and fishnet stockings. Why does Halloween mean different things for men? Why do men get the scary, realistic costumes and we get some twisted pornified version? I don't get it.

There's also the run-of-the mill "job" costumes like police officers, fire fighters and doctors/nurses that are popular every year. These costumes are gendered as fuck, too, if not more so. These costumes send out the message that women cannot be taken seriously in a male dominated work-force unless they are there to sexually arouse the men. Women's only purpose, apparently, is to give boners while men do all the hard work. If a woman dresses up like a cop, she becomes a stripper-dominatrix-porno cop. Women must be sexual if they want to take on a male-dominated costume (like a police officer) because it's "butch" or "un-lady like" for a woman to become just a police officer. So, if i want to go fetch a police costume or a nurse costume, i'm going to end up being forced to purchase a skirt so short that my ass cheeks will fall out and a push up bra to smash my breasts together as far as they can go. Why do I not have the option to be a fucking police officer? Why do I have to use my night stick in some fucked up BDSM scenario? I mean, really. Look at this shit




You see in this photograph that the man is wearing an actual police officer costume. How often do you see a female cop represented in the way that this woman is shown? It's pretty unlikely that you will find a female cop wearing this pornochic getup.

It's not "sexy" to be a police officer, so you have to make it sexy. If it's not sexy, it's bad according to dudes. If you are a woman and not providing boners, you aren't doing your job!

Now, I know people will say things like, "What's the harm?" and "Who cares, it's sexxxy!"

Yeah! The problem is that it is harmful. It shows how rape culture is embraced and even celebrated, and rape culture leaks into mainstream culture constantly. This leaking contributes to all kinds of societal problems, one major one being RAPE. Another major problem is GENDER ROLES. How more BLATANT do gender roles need to be? I mean, marketers know they can make big bucks off regurgitating old gender roles and giving dudes a hard on. When you go out on Halloween, watch the way men objectify and stare at the women dressed in these "sexxy" costumes. It is a big deal because our culture doesn't think women are humans, but rather merely sex toys just waiting to be used and degraded.

I'd love to be able to counter the message sent out by these gendered costumes in a costume of my own...any ideas?

Until then, here's some more of what i am talking about...