10.04.2010

Halloween, or Teaching Girls Their True Value To Society Day

As an adult, I've become painfully aware that Halloween is not "dress up as something cool" day anymore.  It's "dress up as a pornified version of something cool to titillate your male friends" day.  Sexy cop, nurse, pirate, those are standard.  This year, I've seen some incredibly fucking weird "sexy ___" costumes.  Sexy NemoSexy crayon.  I'm not even fucking kidding.  Sexy Big Bird.  Also not kidding, dear gods I wish I was (and does it look to you like a tiny Big Bird is eating her brain? Or is that just me?).  This lead to an afternoon of my Twiends and I tossing around random "sexy ___" suggestions.  We had "sexy fluorescent bulb" and "sexy coffee cup" and "sexy stapler". 
This morning, though, I saw a whole new twist on the usual "sexy ___" costume thing.  Here: 

A simple enough "sexy cop" costume, right?  (I'm not even going to start on the disrespect a costume like this shows for ACTUAL female police officers, who DO exist and do NOT dress like that.)  But.  It's on a child.  And the costume is a "child size medium 8-10".  It's carried on the fucking Toys R Us website.  The "recommended age" is 7-9.  Let that sink in for a moment.  Let the horror and rage percolate through your system for a minute or two.  Now consider:

They are recommending that you dress your 7-year-old daughter up in a "sexy cop" costume.  Oh, it's not called that.  On the Toys R Us website, it's just billed as "Cop Halloween Costume".  Which almost makes it worse.  The adult version at least acknowledges, hey, this is a perversion of something that actually exists, it's only make-believe, this is a "special" version.  You're dressing up as a "sexy cop" not a "cop".  But this is presented as just a "cop costume".  As if this is how female cops dress.  As if this is normal, not something special.  You want to be a police officer when you grow up, honey?  That's wonderful!  Let's dress you in this minidress and heels, because that's how you pretend to be a cop!  (Also, who the hell dresses a 7-yr-old girl in 3-inch heels like those?  Aside from pageant moms.  That's got to be detrimental to her physical development.) 

Maybe I'm just old, and I've reached the point of mourning for Teh Childrenz already at the ripe old age of 25.  But I do NOT remember it being this bad when I was a kid.  When I went as Princess Leia for Halloween one year, it was in the long white dress from Empire Strikes Back, not the gold bikini from Return of the Jedi.  If it's just that my parents were exceptionally good at sheltering me, then Mom, thank you.  But I am absolutely sickened to see evidence that at a mere 7 years old, we're supposed to be teaching her that while the boys her age can dress up as police officers, her only option is "sexy cop". 

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