The “Beauty” of Today’s Halloween Costumes

Beauty and the Body in an Imaged Society

Journal #1

Halloween in the US has come a long way since its origins. Over 2000 years ago, the Celts first dressed up for Halloween in celebration of the sacred bonfires that signified sacrifices to the Celtic deities The costumes usually consisted of animal heads and skins and the European immigrants brought the tradition over to America (“Halloween”). It wasn’t until the 1920s and 1930s that Halloween became a secular, community holiday and eventually, the holiday was geared towards young children. Today, Americans spend approximately “$6.9 billion annually… making it the country’s second largest commercial holiday” (“Halloween”). Costumes have shifted dramatically from the Celts dressed up as scary characters to overtly sexy costumes that are popular today.

Foreplay Catalog encouraging shoppers to be "The Sexiest Girl" this Halloween

There has been a drastic shift from scary and grotesque costumes to hypersexualized child-like costumes. Why are the “Sexy (fill in the blank)” costumes so much more appealing and popular to women today? Do women favour the sexy Halloween costumes over the scary ones because of beauty and attraction? In Umberto Eco’s On Ugliness, the author highlights that beauty has been associated with the bodily proportions established by Vitruvius in Ancient Greece—“the face was one tenth of the total length, the head one eighth, the length of the torso one quarter…” (Eco 159). However, the only proportion applicable to today’s Halloween costumes is fabric to skin ratio—approximately 1:10.

Sexy Granny 

It is interesting to note that young female costumes, such as the School Girl, the Girl Scout, and various fairy tale protagonists, are more popular than mature or older female costumes. Why is Sexy Granny not offered as an alternative? Why is it unpopular to put on a grey wig, fake wrinkles, and wear an oversized and unflattering printed dress? In On Ugliness, Eco states that in the Middle Ages, ugliness was portrayed as an “old woman, a symbol of physical and moral decay” in juxtaposition to “youth as a symbol of beauty and purity” (Eco 159). Similarly, in Roger Scruton’s Beauty, he traces the idea of beauty and purity to Plato and Aquinas. Plato’s view on beauty that it “is an ultimate value—something that we pursue for its own sake… therefore [beauty should] be compared to truth and goodness” (Scruton 2). Similarly, Aquinas thought that, “Beauty and goodness are, in the end, identical” (Scruton 4). This idea of beauty and goodness continues to be reinforced in the variety of Halloween costumes today. Foreplay Catalog, a popular on-line store for adult Halloween costumes, offers a plethora of innocent and morally good characters. Meanwhile, only pirate, witch, gangster, and vampire are the only evil characters available in a sexy reinterpretation. Foreplay Catalog’s overwhelming selection of costumes ironically lacks variation and further reinforces that only youth is desirable and attractive.

Sexy Snow White

From an early age, young girls learn about beauty in goodness in the form of fairy tales and Disney movies. In Nancy Etcoff’s “Beauty as Bait”, she highlights Robin Lakoff and Raquel Scherr’s quotation, “Beauty is not instantly and instinctively recognizable: we must be trained from childhood to make those discriminations” (Etcoff 31). Young girls begin to associate beauty with Disney princesses after watching similar portrayals of women in similar storylines. They learn early on that “good triumphs over evil” and “once upon a time…” will end in “happily-ever-after in the form of marriage to a handsome prince” (Linn 37). Furthermore, they learn that villains are “thoroughly bad… [and] ugly” and their “physical traits reflect character flaws” (Linn 38). Disney’s depiction of bad and ugly does not differ from Baldassare Castiglione’s definition of ugliness in the 16^th century. Castiglione explains that “ugliness is a sign of the bad, mad or dangerous. Deformities, ugliness, and disease were seen as stigmas branded onto the body by a wrathful God…. [and] the ugly are also evil” (Etcoff 41). The portrayal of beauty and morality versus ugliness and evil in the Middle Ages continues to be perpetuated in fairy tales. Disney heroines are “as beautiful as they are good” (Linn 38) and evil characters are easily identified due to their physical imperfections. In Susan Linn’s “A Royal Juggernaut”, the author claims that young girls familiarize themselves with “what it means to be female” through the portrayal of Disney Princesses and molds their own “view of femininity based on stereotypes of beauty, race, class, and behaviour” (Linn 40). While working with an 8-year-old girl who had Aperts Syndrome, the author learned that the young girl hates playing make-belief with her classmates because “they always make me be the witch or the monster” due to her facial deformities (Linn 38).  

Example of Sexualized Teen Costumes

Today, Halloween is the one day that girls feel it is socially acceptable to dress as provocatively as possible. However, with the introduction of sexy teen costumes, costume companies are encouraging girls to dress more provocative at a younger age which is further reinforced by the media. The teen movie Mean Girls illustrates that by wearing a conservatively covered costume, one will not be socially or physically attractive. Protagonist Cady Heron learns that “Halloween is the one night of the year when girls can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it” (Mean Girls, 2004). Cady realizes this the hard way as she arrives at a party dressed as a zombie bride while her peers are dressed in next to nothing—only in lingerie and animal ears. The protagonist immediately feels insecure and self-conscious about her costume. Because she was unaware of Halloween social norms, she chose a scary grotesque costume and her lack of self-confidence is reflected by her costume. This is further reinforced by Etcoff’s conclusions from a study where psychologists gave a Polaroid of a woman to a man who is talking to an unknown woman. When a man was given a Polaroid of a beautiful woman, Etcoff claims that “she [becomes] more animated and confident in conversations with men who believed her to be good-looking” and she “[sounds] attractive when she was presumed to be attractive” (Etcoff 47).

Cady (left) dressed as a Zombie Bride in Mean Girls

Plato states that “let him be aware that he will behave in a similar fashion” (Etcoff 42) and if one believes one is a fox, one will act like a fox. Halloween functions like an ego boost and as girls venture out in their sexy costumes, they give off a more attractive and confident personality as they feed off from the attention they receive from men. The appeal of morally good and sexy Halloween costumes is closely tied to the concept of beauty. If beauty is synonymous with good, perhaps it is why people avoid evil costumes so they will not be associated with ugliness. While sexy Halloween costumes seems harmless, it becomes dangerous when pre-mature girls dress provocatively when they are still learning about themselves. Because the young girls will receive an overwhelming amount of attention from men, they will mistakenly believe that flaunting their body is the only way to attract.

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Bibliography

Eco, Umberto.  On Ugliness.  Milan: Rizzoli International Publications, 2007.

Etcoff, Nancy.  Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty.  Ch 2, Beauty as Bait,” pp. 29-53.

“Halloween.”  History.  A&E Television Networks.  Modification Date: 2010. Access Date: 4 October 2010.  <http://www.history.com/topics/halloween/>

Linn, Susan.  “A Royal Juggernaut.”  In S. Olfman (Eds.), The Sexualization of Childhood (pp 33-50).        London: Praeger, 2009.

Mean Girls.  Film.  Paramount Pictures.  2004

Scruton, Richard.  Beauty.  New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.