Something I started to notice about a decade ago -- the slutification of Halloween -- is now a full-on, well-known culture phenomenon. Back when I was first attending Halloween parties as an adult, females mostly wore "normal" costumes -- something spooky or funny or clever. Then gradually the "sexy" versions of all these costumes started popping up. You started seeing less ugly, warty-nosed witches, and more Elvira, "Mistress of the Dark" type witches (only less '80s). I, being a straight male of hoping-to-hook-up age, rather liked this new slutty Halloween, but I must admit, it might have gotten a bit out of hand, when at the last non-kid Halloween party I went to a girl showed up in just lingerie. That was her entire costume.*
Having a one-year old, I imagine the days of celebrating Halloween in the presence of scantly-clad young women are mostly behind me. In their lieu, I see a succession of things like Boo at the Zoo, trick-or-treating, and sitting on my couch watching sports, waiting for trick-or-treaters who never come, eating handfuls of candy, thinking to myself, "this isn't even very good", and then eating handfuls more (which is what I did last night). But still, it's an interesting topic. I've seen two broad camps emerge on this issue. One is that the slutification of Halloween is an empowering thing, a let-your-freak-flag-fly type of deal that allows women the opportunity to let out their inner trollop** for a night without being judged -- the straight pride parade, as Dan Savage calls it. The other is that it reinforces an unfair and damaging double-standard that women are expected to sex it up and wear skimpy clothing to attract men, while men aren't expected to do the same thing -- a "gender binary" illustrated pictorially in this article.
Personally, I'm more in the former camp. And it's not only because I'm a straight male. It's also because for things that don't directly and tangibly harm other people in a non-trivial way, I generally have a "who gives a shit" philosophy. You have to go down pretty far on my triage schedule of societal problems before you get to grown women feeling compelled by social norms to dress in slutty Halloween costumes when men don't have this same compulsion. Plus, you will see a lot of shirtless Tarzans and Hulk Hogans and whatnot out and about on Halloween. I'm not claiming it's the same ratio, but they're out there. Also, everybody makes a conscious decision to put on his or her own Halloween outfit. If 95% of women want to go as the "sexy" whatever and show a bunch of skin, but only 20% of guys do, then that's just how things shake out. You can blame it on societal norms (and I'm not denying they're a factor), but at some point, don't we have to assume adults in the U.S. in the 21st century can make up their own free minds when it comes to dressing themselves?
Anyway...
I really want to see this Gravity movie I've been hearing so much about. Unfortunately going to the movies is a tall order these days. And when I do get to go, it seems like nothing good is playing. I've heard Gravity is really only worth it, if you watch it on the big screen in 3-D, so my window is limited. S and I talked to a couple we're friends with who have a two-year old about swapping baby sitting duties. Maybe it's time to put that into action.
I'm also slightly intrigued by Ender's Game. It's a terrific book, and this is coming from somebody who doesn't really like sci-fi/fantasy all that much. Here's a tell that it's not my genre; despite really enjoying Ender's Game, I have absolutely zero desire to continue the series or read anything else by its author Orson Scott Card, who, by the way, sounds like a bit of a nutjob. I knew he wasn't really down with the whole gay thing, but there's much more to it than that, which I didn't know anything about, until I read this article by Rany Jazayerli. (He normally writes about baseball, which is how I found the article in the first place.) In the article, Rany links to this correspondence between Card and himself about Islam and terrorism (Rany's Muslim; Card, Mormon) written in the aftermath of 9/11. I found it pretty interesting. And it's funny -- not in a ha-ha way, but in a really sad way -- that their correspondence was written over a decade ago, and yet Bill Maher was talking about this exact same problem on his podcast last week. Ten years from now, I image we will all still be talking about it. Because that's how it goes with religion. When it comes to Islam or Christianity or Judaism or any other faith ... well, Jello Biafra put it best.
Until next time ...
*To be "fair", she had angel wings, but they kept knocking things over, so she took them off.
**By the way, have you ever noticed how many synonyms there are for slut? Ho, whore, strumpet, harlot, trollop, tramp, quean (Scrabble word), woman-of-ill-repute. And that's just off the top of my head. I'd like to have a "synonym off"someday between slut and pot. I think pot wins, but slut could put up a good fight.
Having a one-year old, I imagine the days of celebrating Halloween in the presence of scantly-clad young women are mostly behind me. In their lieu, I see a succession of things like Boo at the Zoo, trick-or-treating, and sitting on my couch watching sports, waiting for trick-or-treaters who never come, eating handfuls of candy, thinking to myself, "this isn't even very good", and then eating handfuls more (which is what I did last night). But still, it's an interesting topic. I've seen two broad camps emerge on this issue. One is that the slutification of Halloween is an empowering thing, a let-your-freak-flag-fly type of deal that allows women the opportunity to let out their inner trollop** for a night without being judged -- the straight pride parade, as Dan Savage calls it. The other is that it reinforces an unfair and damaging double-standard that women are expected to sex it up and wear skimpy clothing to attract men, while men aren't expected to do the same thing -- a "gender binary" illustrated pictorially in this article.
Personally, I'm more in the former camp. And it's not only because I'm a straight male. It's also because for things that don't directly and tangibly harm other people in a non-trivial way, I generally have a "who gives a shit" philosophy. You have to go down pretty far on my triage schedule of societal problems before you get to grown women feeling compelled by social norms to dress in slutty Halloween costumes when men don't have this same compulsion. Plus, you will see a lot of shirtless Tarzans and Hulk Hogans and whatnot out and about on Halloween. I'm not claiming it's the same ratio, but they're out there. Also, everybody makes a conscious decision to put on his or her own Halloween outfit. If 95% of women want to go as the "sexy" whatever and show a bunch of skin, but only 20% of guys do, then that's just how things shake out. You can blame it on societal norms (and I'm not denying they're a factor), but at some point, don't we have to assume adults in the U.S. in the 21st century can make up their own free minds when it comes to dressing themselves?
Anyway...
I really want to see this Gravity movie I've been hearing so much about. Unfortunately going to the movies is a tall order these days. And when I do get to go, it seems like nothing good is playing. I've heard Gravity is really only worth it, if you watch it on the big screen in 3-D, so my window is limited. S and I talked to a couple we're friends with who have a two-year old about swapping baby sitting duties. Maybe it's time to put that into action.
I'm also slightly intrigued by Ender's Game. It's a terrific book, and this is coming from somebody who doesn't really like sci-fi/fantasy all that much. Here's a tell that it's not my genre; despite really enjoying Ender's Game, I have absolutely zero desire to continue the series or read anything else by its author Orson Scott Card, who, by the way, sounds like a bit of a nutjob. I knew he wasn't really down with the whole gay thing, but there's much more to it than that, which I didn't know anything about, until I read this article by Rany Jazayerli. (He normally writes about baseball, which is how I found the article in the first place.) In the article, Rany links to this correspondence between Card and himself about Islam and terrorism (Rany's Muslim; Card, Mormon) written in the aftermath of 9/11. I found it pretty interesting. And it's funny -- not in a ha-ha way, but in a really sad way -- that their correspondence was written over a decade ago, and yet Bill Maher was talking about this exact same problem on his podcast last week. Ten years from now, I image we will all still be talking about it. Because that's how it goes with religion. When it comes to Islam or Christianity or Judaism or any other faith ... well, Jello Biafra put it best.
Until next time ...
*To be "fair", she had angel wings, but they kept knocking things over, so she took them off.
**By the way, have you ever noticed how many synonyms there are for slut? Ho, whore, strumpet, harlot, trollop, tramp, quean (Scrabble word), woman-of-ill-repute. And that's just off the top of my head. I'd like to have a "synonym off"someday between slut and pot. I think pot wins, but slut could put up a good fight.
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