There’s something scary—scary in all
the wrong ways—about a “sexy Jane Doe” costume.
The sexy cadaver costume is half of one of those “sexy” Halloween
costume sets that drive some people nuts. You know: Sexy Nurse &
Doc, Sexy Nun & Priest, Sexy Lady Pirate & Pirate Captain. The
girls’ costumes bare a lot of flesh, the boys’ costumes don’t, and that
is sexist and unfair and—wait, a sexy CADAVER COSTUME?!?!
Yes. Someone out there is selling a sexy CSI Halloween
costume set, and it’s no exception to the
clothed-male/nearly-nude-female rule. The girl gets a black, skintight,
miniskirted body bag (!) complete with a zip-up-and-over-the-head hood,
while the boy gets a baggy black lab coat with the word “coroner”
printed on it, presumably worn over street clothes. There’s nothing
sexy about “a man whose job is to deal with dead people looking at a
sexy dead stranger,” Lilith wrote in an October 2008 post at
Feministing.com, “an online
community for feminists and their allies.” No argument from me there,
Lilith, and I agree that there’s definitely a “power dynamic being
displayed” when a woman dresses up as a sexy cadaver for a man on
Halloween and lies down on an autopsy table, per the photograph from
the catalogue. There’s nothing sexy about that.
You know what else isn’t sexy? The grousing you hear, even in the
offices of The Stranger, when ads for “sexy”
Halloween costumes start appearing in early September. People I know to
be reliably pro-pleasure lefties—people who are all for
recreational sex and legal drugs and strap-on dildos—sound like
religious conservatives when Halloween rolls around. A children’s
holiday has been transformed into an opportunity for stupid straight
people to dress up in revealing outfits and make sex-crazed spectacles
of themselves in public. And isn’t that just sad?
Nope. It’s awesome—and long overdue.
I‘m often
asked—confronted—about gay pride parades when I
speak at colleges and universities. Usually it’s a conservative
student, typically someone who isn’t happy about my being invited to
campus in the first place. We gay people like to pretend that
we’re all about love and marriage, the conservative student will
insist, but look at your pride parades! Look at those guys in assless
chaps and all those bare-chested lesbians dancing! Just look! The
exchange almost always ends with this:
Conservative student: “Straight people don’t flaunt our sexuality
like that. We don’t have straight ‘pride’ parades.”
Me: “You should.”
And it seems clearer with every passing Halloween that straight
people do.
Back in the bad old days—pre-Stonewall,
pre-pride-parades,
pre-presidential-gay-history-
month-proclamations—Halloween
was the gay holiday. It was the one night of the year when you
could leave the house in leather or feathers without attracting the
attentions of the police. Halloween resonated for pre-Stonewall
homosexuals because the closeted life—out to a select few
friends, closeted at work and home—was a stressful masquerade
that never ended. We were good at masks, at pretense, at dressing up,
because we had to be in order to survive. Halloween took our skill
set—pretending to be what we are not—and allowed us to find
joy in it one night a year.
While Halloween is still celebrated by gays and lesbians, it’s no
longer the most important date on the gay calendar. Oh, we keep it, but
we don’t keep holy. It’s just another excuse for a party—and
we’re always on the lookout for an excuse—but Halloween has been
downgraded, displaced by other and better excuses for parties, by pride
parades and Folsoms and the weekend. There are still parties in gay
bars on Halloween, of course, and you’ll see plenty of homos in costume
on Capitol Hill this weekend. But Halloween belongs to heterosexuals
now.
And you need it more than we do. Straight people in Brazil have
Carnival, straight Nor-thern Europeans have Fasching, straight people
in New Orleans have Mardi Gras—all big public parties where
straight people show their tits, shake their asses, and flaunt their
sexualities. Booze companies attempted to make a national holiday out
of Mardi Gras, without much success. But straight people seem to have
made a collective unconscious decision to adopt Halloween instead.
You made a good choice, straight people, a better one than the booze
companies were trying to make for you. Whereas the pride parade is now
the big public celebration of queer sexuality with all its squalor and
glamour, Halloween is now the big public celebration of straight
sexuality, of heterosexual desire, every bit—tit?—as
squalid and glamorous.
We don’t resent you for taking Halloween as your own. We know what
it’s like to keep your sexuality under wraps, to keep it concealed, to
be on your guard and under control
at all times. While you don’t
suffer anywhere near the kind of repression we did (and in many times
and places still do), straight people are sexually repressed, too. You
move through life thinking about sex, constantly but keenly aware that
social convention requires you to act as if sex were the last thing on
your mind. Exhausting, isn’t it? It makes you long for moments when you
can let it all hang out, when you can violate the social taboos you
honor most of the rest of time, when you can be the piece of meat you
are and treat other people like the pieces of meat they are.
It’s that kind of pressure—pressure to conform and
maintain—that makes you want to pull on a pair of assless chaps
and march down the street, the kind of pressure that cries out for some
form of organized mass release. It’s the kind of pressure that a pride
parade—straight or gay, Mardi Gras or Halloween—can
release.
Right now things are a little unfair—a
little—on the gender front. Straight girls are expected
to show flesh on Halloween; straight boys aren’t. Sadly, I don’t
foresee that changing anytime soon. People who want to fuck
men—straight and bi girls, gay and bi guys—show flesh
because it works, it will attract positive male attention.
(Well, that depends on how you feel about male attention, I guess.)
Engaging in that sort of display—here are my tits!—is
perceived as feminizing, hello, and that makes it a less successful
strategy for straight males than it is for straight females. Showing
off their tits is an effective way for girls to attract straight-male
attention; guys who show off their tits risk looking like fags.
Straight guys don’t have the same incentive to bare their flesh on
Halloween.
It’s a shame, of course, because there are a lot of straight guys
out there who have amazing bodies, and they should be encouraged to
show off on Halloween, to celebrate their erotic power and do like the
gay boys do: objectify and be objectified at the same time. That would
make the straight pride parades, aka Halloween, feel as egalitarian as
the gay pride parades on which they were unconsciously modeled.
“Every year around Halloween, I see some
columnist or blogger or other talk about how ‘Halloween is just an
excuse for girls and women to whore it up all night,'” writes
nicolechat on a post at Feministing.com. “But every time I read
that, I think to myself, so what? What’s wrong with having a night
where we can say ‘This is my body, and I’m not ashamed of it, or of
using it to express my sexuality.'”
Nothing at all, nicolechat. Heterosexuals in North America have
needed a holiday like this for a long, long time. And now you’ve got
one in Halloween. It’s yours now, straight people. Be good to it. And
remember: Wrap those bandages loosely, and by midnight your boyfriend’s
“mummy” costume will be just as revealing as that off-the-rack “sexy
witch” costume you bought at Champion.
Happy Heteroween. 
I think what people struggle with, myself included, is the individual reasons behind such costumes. I think women who slut it up for the sake of someone else’s approval or because they feel like they have to…then yes, lame and totally ruins the whole idea of Halloween. But if a girl wants to wear them and feels sexy doing so and gets to let loose a little on her own behalf, I don’t want to vilify them for it, don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.
But then I’m probably biased as I have an unnatural love for hot pants and fishnets…I say we head out with a clip board and interrogation light to find out who’s who tomorrow night.
@47, well said!
Honestly, though, is there really “social pressure” to wear a sexy costume? If that’s all that’s available in retail, then make your own damn costume! Funny is the new sexy.
http://www.landlinetv.com/videos/hallowe…
Bravo, Dan Savage. Bravo.
Sexy costumes for straight men with nice bodies:
Pirate
Glam rock star
Adam Ant (which, um, I guess is a combo of those two)
Sophisticated alien
Prince Charming, if you make him a little bit dominant
Vampire, of course!!
If you’re out of shape/fat, I guess maybe a Blues Brothers-type outfit might be your best bet. Or vampire, depending on how well you can carry it off.
Sexy costumes for straight men with nice bodies:
Pirate
Glam rock star
Adam Ant (which, um, I guess is a combo of those two)
Sophisticated alien
Prince Charming, if you make him a little bit dominant
Vampire, of course!!
If you’re out of shape/fat, I guess maybe a Blues Brothers-type outfit might be your best bet. Or vampire, depending on how well you can carry it off.
@27: My views are not at all solidified, and I’m very receptive to whatever actual arguments you have to offer here. Yes, you and I disagree about the intellectual worthiness of the blogger who goes by “twisty” — but you think better of her than I do, and I’m listening.
Dan, you say that you’re often confronted by people on college campuses who claim, “Straight people don’t flaunt our sexuality like that. We don’t have straight ‘pride’ parades.”
Have none of them ever heard of Spring Break?
Halloween is the saddest night of the year these days because I’m shy. Also because I’m in this weird limbo semi-relationship and I don’t know if exclusivity is expected of me, but mainly because I’m shy.
And there are sexy boys, and it just tortures me. And the girls are better at sexy than I am — I simply cannot pull off femme-squeal.
I couldn’t even get the nerve to ask the name of the guy I know only as Deadlift Boy. And gods below I’d like him in my bed.
I was so painfully horny I had to leave the party and play the piano for a while. I’m going to spend a lot of my free time on the piano and at the gym now … they’re the only things that get it out of my system.
Christ. A man with a good body and no hangups. It would be so nice.
“Great post but one thing that always bothers me – ASSLESS CHAPS ARE ASSLESS BY DESIGN! STOP BEING REDUNDANT! Thank you and Happy Halloween! :)”
I had to laugh here…I tend to be a semantics geek myself. I think, though, that “assless chaps” is one of those adopted phrases that evokes a very specific image.
Say “chaps” and I’ll think of a cowboy, with jeans covering what the chaps do not. Say “assless chaps” and I’ll think of a pride parade worthy getup, every time.
Great article!
As usual, Mr Savage has made me laugh and think. Speaking of thinking, I think that the poster called Shelly has accidentally fallen into a fucked-up kind of thinking. Thinking that dressing like a “slut” is a bad idea because of the danger of sexual assault is perilously close to the kind of thinking that has allowed rapists to get acquitted when what the victim was wearing was taken into account. It implies a lack of free will on the part of the perpetrator, as if seeing a little cleavage or a little leg made the person lose control. On the other hand, Shelly did point out that she’d been mauled while wearing a “plain” dress, which proves my point. There are bad people out there and an “opportunity” rapist isn’t going to be picky about appearances. What to do? Go to friendlier places, don’t get so hammered that you’re vulnerable and learn some self-defense. Oh, and the poster who said that Shelly should just move or quit going out in sketchy areas has his or her head way up his or her poop chute. Pretty fucking flippant. Do rapists all live in the same zip code? Really? I didn’t know that. I guess all wife beaters wear “wife beater” shirts and talk like Archie Bunker too.
Halloween is like Vegas, some people need to let their inhibitions go via an alter ego. Others will be uptight that they cannot or will not give in to that liberation.
You can tell who is who pretty easily. Happy Halloween.
it ain’t about being “repressed” Dan, it’s about intimacy and romance, not “look at me” attention whoring.
You people take this stuff way too seriously. Humans are sexual animals. Some choose to display it, some don’t. Individual choice.
Ever see that picture of a guy holding a sign outside of Hooters Restaurant that says that women should not be sexual objects? Right behind him are Hooters employees in uniform (who have chosen to be there, btw) coming out to give him a drink. He has the right to believe what he believes, and so do those women.
#62, Have you ever read any travel books written for women who travel alone to other countries? They are full of tips as to how to dress, areas to avoid, when to have a male escort etc…No one’s ever had to write a book like that for male travelers.
Are these books telling women how to act like victims or to blame themselves for being assaulted if they dress improperly? No, they’re saying, look, unfortunately, this is how it is over there, and here are some things you can do to help yourself out.
Regardless of how things should be for women in this country, they aren’t there yet. And until they are, I personally don’t feel as comfortable as I should be able to when I go out dressed in an overtly sexy costume. Dan’s comment was that Halloween is empowering straight men and women to celebrate their sexuality. As a woman, I can’t acknowledge that I have full control over my body as much as I would like to (I can’t go topless on the beach, I can’t breast feed my baby in public without many people having issues with it), because my body is often only being defined in terms of sex. That’s not empowering to me, and it’s not something I feel like celebrating.
And again, I’m talking ONLY about fucking overt porny/sexy Halloween costumes! I’m talking about costumes that are designed to make men think “sex.” NOT hip, cute street clothes. People keep stating that I think women should dress conservatively. I am only talking about sexy Halloween Costumes, which was the subject of this article.
I’m curious. If you go to a pansexual BDSM Halloween party (the sort of environment where most of my “dressing sexy” occurs), where gay and straight men are in skimpy, revealing costumes, as are both gay and straight women, is everyone a tool of the patriarchy or just the women? What about the transgendered people? Is a T-girl who is dressed in a sexy Halloween costume is the worst of the worst because she’s an original member of the dominant ideology taking on and internalizing its patriarchal oppression of women rather than fighting it from within?
I do actually get it that things are not equal in this culture (or any, for that matter). And that it can be personally dangerous to simply act as though they were and expect to be treated as I wish to be treated (going topless on the beach, for instance). However, I do still think that it’s both empowering and important to act as though things were free, fair, and ideal when it is safe and fulfilling to do so. And to push those boundaries wherever possible. If I want to run around the dungeon butt-naked because it’s fun and silly to do so, I am not going to be constrained by political ideology into worried that I’m not properly subverting the dominant paradigm. I’m going to take my pants off and run around like some kind of giggly feminist lunatic. Will I do that in the supermarket? Sadly, no. But I’d like to live in a world where I could, and I like to think that living our sexual freedoms in safe environments helps to integrate those freedoms into larger life through normalizing them. After the revolution, you will not only see me in Kroger pants-free, but dressed as a sexy ladybug whenever I bloody well feel like it. And that’s a revolution I can dance to.
If third wave “sexy” feminists claim to be for women’s expression of their own sexuality, why do they choose to objectify themselves? Shouldn’t they be objectifying the other person?
I feel that women are actually being treated like objects now more than they were pre-movement. I was in college in the early 90s and guys back then used to at least pretend to be respectful toward women. Now men seem to feel like they can say every nasty thought that pops into their heads and ask me all kinds of inappropriate questions. Since the rise of this movement, I’ve been cat-called/groped/harassed more than ever by guys who suddenly assume that I’m OK with that because things have changed, since they aren’t sexist it’s not a problem, and women are happy to openly flaunt their sexuality, so what’s the big deal?
God, you can’t even read music reviews of girl bands in this paper without the male reviewers writing about how hot the musician is or commenters pointing out how fat she is. This used to be taboo, and it was a taboo I was very happy living with. Now it seems that when it comes to talking about women and sex anything goes.
shellym,
YOUR comfort level is YOUR problem.
assless chaps = gay pride or David Lee Roth. Halloween = CANDY. Even candy corn
I’d have less issues if there were more options beyond Sexy XYZ. But, hey, it’s more fun to make costumes, anyway, so I’ll shut up about that.
That said, I think part of the reason so many male costumes are more realistic doctor, police, gangster costumes are because that’s what straight women like. Men in uniform/suits are REALLY hot.
Still, I really don’t like the one-sided power dynamics, but that’s where Making the Costume comes in again.
Why the hell don’t you write about the appeal of DOMA? You should right about that everyday, until it happens. I am so glad THIS is what is happening in the LGB arena.
write*
i thought you were only allowed a heterosexual pride parade when your city won the superbowl? or stanley cup? or… the basketball… thing…?
Great stereotyping there shellym.
Ok shellym, pardon me if this has been said already, but don’t even start trying to assume that the power structure between every man on this planet is “completely equal.” I call major bullshit…. and I could go on, but alas, no point.
“their answer to the “problem” of Mardi Gras isn’t to strip straights of their rights, funnily enough.”
Once they fully strip the gays of their rights, that’s still on the agenda. Lower priority, but still there.
“If third wave “sexy” feminists claim to be for women’s expression of their own sexuality, why do they choose to objectify themselves … I was in college in the early 90s and guys back then used to at least pretend to be respectful toward women. Now men seem to feel like they can say every nasty thought that pops into their heads and ask me all kinds of inappropriate questions.”
Ah, I see – so you’ve basically taken a right-wing woman’s rant about how “filthy homewrecking whores” are ruining it for good girls like her, and painted it over with a thin veneer of feminism.
Go figure.
So I’m too lazy to read all of Shellym’s tl;dr. Is she just an overly sophisticated troll or a normal internet denizen with way too much time on her hands who wants everyone else to know her way of thinking is absolutely right.
Gender studies support group. Anyway, gay pride’s fuckin’ gay compared to halloween. Halloween’s the best holiday we have–and if that means reclaiming it for the gays, so be it.
I find it interesting that women worry about dressing provocatively for Halloween. If they could see some of the outfits that women wear to the office and especially see some of the outfits women wear to go shopping or to go out to the clubs, dressing like sluts for Halloween would not be a biggie at all, merely an extension of their normal dressing.
Not all women dress provocatively for the office but a whole lot of them do and don’t even try to set dress standards or the women really complain. At my last job a lot of them wore skirts so short that they had to be careful of how they sat and yet the men would not dare even mention it. I got in trouble once for telling an older women who was dressed to celebrate her anniversary after work that she looke great. My (female) boss thought that was over the line. Needless to say I got out of that place in a hurry.
Now extend that same mode of dress to what is worn to the clubs and then further extend it to dressing up for Halloween. What is the big difference?
shellym, you’re confusing men with rapists. There is a difference. Rapists may well be men, but not all men are rapists. We are sexually equal, and rape is assault. Back to gender studies 101 dear. Straight girls can like to fuck without being scared of rapists and there’s nothing wrong with that. If fact your argument smacks of asking for it…
a
shellym=most dedicated internet troll ever! get a life
I just love insecure men like ha! who not only can’t dare to be even marginally un-anonymous in posting, but fling around words they clearly know not the meaning of, or more likely wish to pretend not to know because they themselves are the thing they wish to accuse others of being.
And Wendy, WTF? Are you threatening Shelly because she feels threatened? That totally makes sense, really. Your argument was silly enough, since you seem to be arguing that if men aren’t rapists they’re perfectly okay regardless of whatever else they might do, but that last line was just whoa.
Speaking as a heterosexual man, I just wish there was a way for me to present myself in a sexual way, as women can. A woman can make a costume sexual just by showing some breast & leg. What can make a man’s costume sexual? We just don’t have goods to show off.
What Dan describes as having been the case for the gay community once, is still the case for genderqueer folks. Halloween is the one day a year that a non-passing transperson can dress the way they want to dress without taking all kinds of hell for it.
Every day is straight pride day.
phaedrus, show off your dick! get a nice cod piece! as a straight woman, this would totally be hot for me!
gladiator? wrestler? circus performer?
great article!
Last night I wore a silver wig, silver eyelashes, skintight high-waisted sparkly blue leggings and a purple tube top.
I felt awesome and completely bad-ass.
Does any of this matter? Nope. I’m a consenting adult, and what I choose to wear at ANY time is completely my business.
Sexy Halloween costumes are not empowering to women at all. They would be if we got to choose, but we don’t – all the outfits offered are sexualized. Even the ads on Stranger for Halloween show women sexualized and objectified and NOTHING ELSE. There are NO other options.
I wanted to be a conductor so I was looking for a woman’s cropped tux top – only available on sexy tuxedo lady and playboy bunny! I then though star trek zombie – normal shirts only available to men, all others are sexy Uhura outfit!
So really how is this a choice to exert our own sexuality and not the same old place of existing to titallize men?
Geez, Dan… some people go all the way to the Northgate area to get their costumes from Display & Costume. They happily serve the LGBT community as well as all the slutty straight folk.
It’s sad how we feel the need to sexualize young girls. And a SEXY NUN! They are holy women who devoted their lives to serving Christ. You shouldn’t sexualize them. It’s just plain wrong. You could dress up as a NUN but not a SEXY NUN.
Sorry, lamesters. Sexy outfits on Haloween, or any day, are fun, fun, fun!
Creativity wins out over storebought fantasy/club wear on Oct 31, but hey, who doesn’t like a little T&A?
If you don’t, you’re a bore and you should stay home. Or you have some sort of other problem that prevents you from putting on something skanky and having a little fun.
Attention whoring is unattractive no matter how you try to dress it up as a feminist display of empowerment.
Of course, you’re always free to do all sorts of unattractive, boorish things — just like we’re free to call you out for it.
HEY ANGRY GAY PEOPLE.
Not all straight people hate you, so stop GENERALIZING straight people as GAY HATIN.
I’m straight, and I love Pride. I think it’s wonderful.
Lots of straight people do!! I go every year to show my support (and see the sexy trojan soldiers. mm).
Standing ovation!
I’ve walked thru some creepy areas in not much…I’ve never been ‘afraid’ like one woman wrote. You could be mistaken and if you were stalked, it was probably your wallet they were after. The way you write you’re actually playing into the old ‘she was asking for it’ song and dance. Egad.
Yes, men, show us your abs and pecs – even if you think they’re not much.
I agree with comment #96, attention whoring is always unattractive. I used to work in an office with two skanks who thought that braying at the top of their lungs while cavorting around with their muffin tops hanging out was really cool.
Don’t miss the job, certainly don’t miss the skanks.
Halloween is over and I don’t know how many will care, but a guy can have a sexy costume by dressing up as pretty much any character Johnny Depp has ever played.
To kersy, comment 92, who complained that the sexy costumes are the ONLY choices – do you have a creative bone in your body? Go to Goodwill/Red Light/Buffalo Exchange with your friends and come up with something new yourself from the vintage/used stuff! Isn’t that the definition of empowering? ALL of the pre-packaged costumes, for kids, men, women, sluts, etc, are cheap, cheesy, tastless, poorly made and never fit anyone!
One concrete thing we can do to help women both express themselves and be safe – Coat check rooms! Venue/Club owners and party-planners, can we please have a safe place to check our coats?
Lastly, yes, straight men need to show their stuff more! Come on, if a 5’4″ 190lb. woman can put on a corset and shove her tits across the room, then all the less-than-model-perfect men out there can oil up and go topless.