About a month ago, I took my kids to look for Halloween costumes.
My son found the costume he wanted right away. Being nine, he naturally went for something gross and ghoulish. The costume looks like this, except the mask is one of those black, faceless things. He thinks this is very funny, since he can pull faces at you from behind the cloth and you can't see him. Personally, I think the biggest attraction to this outfit was the sword that is as tall as he is. His father already had to confiscate it until tomorrow because my son tried to hack-and-slash his sister one too many times.
As easy as my son was to find a costume for, my daughter was difficult. This isn't just because finding a costume is difficult; it's because my daughter can't make a decision to save her life. Last year, she had to be Belle from Beauty and the Beast.
But while this year there were lots of Belles, last year, there were none and I wound up having to improvise. I bought a yellow ballgown at a thrift store and cut the bottom off to make it her height. Then I bought a crown and some yellow toy shoes to complete the outfit. Such is the life of a mother!
I don't really mind having to come up with creative ways to satisfy my kids' costume desires. Over the last 15 years, I've made costumes, bought costumes, and rented costumes when I couldn't find something they wanted. They've gone as dalmatians, ballerinas, Lifesavers, M&Ms, Barney, mermaids, pirates, and spacemen (not all at the same time, mind you).
But while hunting all over town for something appropriate for my young daughter, I discovered a disturbing trend: sexy child costumes.
Joe Thaler, head of TransWorld Exhibits Inc., runs the annual Halloween Expo for big-box retailers. He said suggestive costumes for girls burst onto the scene about three years ago and the phenomenon is so big that he's had to create a separate fashion show. The costumes have since moved to the plus-size market for adult women and now come in teen and preteen versions. Even little girl costumes show more leg and tummy than they used to. "They're just good sellers," Thaler said.
There's something really disturbing about seeing 10-year-old girls in a french maid's outfit, for instance, or as something called "Devilicious."
I can't understand why any responsible parent would want his/her elementary school-age daughter to dress like a tramp, but evidently, there are parents willing to do this. And not only do they permit their pre-pubescent daughters to look slutty, they pay top bucks for it, too. All the costumes at one store were 20 bucks or more.I guess nobody makes their own costumes the way we used to. When I was my daughter's age, I went trick-or-treating as Little Red Riding Hood. My costume was made from an old pair of red curtains that we didn't use anymore. My brother was a hobo (can we say that?), and my sister was a princess of some sort. All our outfits were homemade and required more imagination than sequins. But for all our imaginations, it wouldn't have occurred to us--or our parents--to let us dress in "adult" Halloween outfits. Why do parents do it now?
The Halloween costume trend is not only leading to tense mother-daughter standoffs, but it is also part of a far larger worry that young girls are becoming sexualized. Task forces of psychologists study the trend. Books and academic articles are being produced with such titles as the upcoming "So Sexy So Soon" and "From Barbie to Britney: The Sexualization of Childhood." And yet the costumes sell.
"Youth isn't being lived through anymore. It's being rushed through," Stephanie Terrazas, 20, said as she watched her 11-year-old sister pick out a "deluxe" sequined Dorothy dress that, unlike the chaste, high-necked one in the little girl size, was lower cut and had two strategically placed poofs of fabric.
Megan Smith, 16, perused the costumes at Party City with her father, Dan. She first tried on the Prisoner, a slinky spandex number with a little button at the throat and open chest like a '70s disco halter dress. She settled on Raggedy Ann, a blue mini dress so mini that the lacy underskirt barely dusts the bottom of the fanny.
No one does scary costumes anymore, Megan said. Blame that on the teen movie "Mean Girls," she said, quoting a line verbatim: "Halloween is the one night a year when girls can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it."
Her father laughed nervously. "They're all a little risque, and I don't like that," he said. "She'll be wearing shorts underneath."
I've watched the slutification of little girls for a decade, going back to my oldest daughter's stint as a drill team member. When the routine required these seven- and eight-year-olds to shake their nonexistent boobies, that was when I decided dance wasn't for us.
I'm sure Amanda would say this is all much ado about nothing. After all, it's their choice, isn't it? Unless, of course, she were to go into some screed on Teh Patriarchy making them do it.
But I think the problem is more insidious than Teh Patriarchy or choices. The problem is that too many adults don't want to be the adults. They are still behaving like adolescents, so they can't impose parental control on the real children. It's sad, really.
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