He'd Rather be a Killer than a Girl: What Halloween Costumes Can Teach Us About the Patriarchal Thinking Within Us All
Part III of a series exploring what Halloween can teach us about the lasting influence of patriarchal ideology
Halloween costumes deserve to be taken seriously for the simple fact they can either reinforce or combat stereotypes that shape our notions of what is individually and socially possible. The emphasis on playfulness and cuteness in the overwhelming majority of girls’ occupational costumes reinforce sexist assumptions about who’s naturally suited for important work in fields like policing and firefighting.
And if we look even closer at ordinary Halloween costuming practices we discover a sexist double standard hidden in plain sight: namely that its cool for girls and women to identify with male characters and heroes but laughable or shameful for boys and men to identify with female figures and heroines.
Policemen, and Firemen, and Androcentrism
Costumes like “Officer Cutie” and “Kids Firefighter Dress Costume” reinforce the presumption that these are men’s jobs. Not only do the names usually remind girls that being cute is most important, but so does the design of the costume, equipped with clothing more appropriate for a dancer than someone battling fires or enforcing the law. Whatever we may think of skirts and dresses, its perfectly clear this isn’t the attire of a serious officer or firefighter. They emphasize appearance rather than functionality in the service of a difficult job.
For those who find such a critique trivial and pedantic, consider the fact women continue to be significantly underrepresented in fire service and police work. Women comprise just 9% of all firefighters and just 13% of all police officers. This reality is built, in part, on the unconscious presumptions many of us harbor that police officers and firefighters are by definition men; they are policemen and firemen. There’s a name for this way of thinking: androcentrism.
The sociologist Lester F. Ward was among the first to identify and articulate the meaning of androcentrism. In his 1903 book, Pure Sociology, Ward wrote that it is
“the view that man is primary and woman secondary, that all things center, as it were, about man, and that woman, though necessary to the work of reproduction, is only a means of continuing the human race, but is otherwise an unimportant accessory, and incidental factor in the general result.”
To put it differently, androcentrism is a way of thinking that takes patriarchal presumptions about the world for granted. It’s a lens that unjustifiably prioritizes the values, beliefs, and preferences of idealized masculinity at the expense of stereotyped femininity.
Specifically, androcentrism conceptually privileges men by linking “man” with power and authority. That’s why words like “manpower,” “fireman,” “congressman,” “policeman,” and “superman” roll off the tongue with ease, but “womanpower,” “firewoman,” “congresswoman,” “policewoman,” and “superwoman” are comparatively cumbersome, unfamiliar, awkward, or even incongruous. Thinking in this manner is not “just how it is.” It’s the result of many centuries of male dominance of culture and social institutions.
The power of androcentrism is that it exerts influence over our thinking even when we consciously oppose its ideological assumptions. A famous thought experiment use to make this point by presenting a scenario in which a father and son were in a terrible car accident in which the father dies. The son is then taken to the emergency room where the attending doctor, upon seeing the patient, cries out, “Oh my God, it’s my son!” The question is this: who is the doctor? (If you haven’t heard this one before, stop here and think about it before moving on.)
When I ran this thought experiment at the beginning of my teaching career, it caused significant consternation in most students. Students often got creative. Let’s just say time travel entered the conversation a few times. Others suggested that the medical doctor might also have been a priest. Eventually more people began to suggest that the doctor could be a second dad since children sometimes have stepdads and some parent couples are gay men. As the reader may have guessed, at this point, another possibility is that the doctor is…the mother. But this answer often came last. In what I consider a positive social development,1 the answer of the mother emerges much earlier these days, so much so that I no longer use the thought experiment.
To help students consider the influence of androcentrism I devised my own simple thought experiment. Write down a few questions that would immediately come to mind if I entered the room and emphatically announced, “Oh, no! An officer has just been shot!” Each question has to be written as a complete sentence. (Think of your own answers before reading on.)
Students end up writing questions like “Is he going to be OK?” and “Who shot him?” The point is that an overwhelming majority of students use the pronoun “he” or “him” in their questions, making it clear that even when hear gender neutral terms like “police officer” we think “policeman.” I remember one student being particularly frustrated in her use of “he” and “him” in thinking about the officer in my scenario. She was pursuing a career in policing and not only intended to be an officer but knew policewomen. She was frustrated by the influence androcentrism exerted against her values and experience, both of which insisted that women could and should be in law enforcement.
Most of us don’t consciously embrace or identify with androcentrism. Yet it continues to function as a conceptual lens, inherited from common sense culture, that shapes our thinking in spite of our conscious commitments to equality. This privileging of idealized masculine thought is internalized by women and men of all kinds, including men who struggle to conform to its homogenized expectations of men themselves. (Just consider the kinds of costumes typically offered for women that we rarely see available for men.)
Androcentrism and the Female Freddy Krueger Costume
It could be argued that mass marketed Halloween costumes indicate a breaking down of rigid patriarchal gender norms. Just look at the exponential growth of costumes marketed to girls and women based on male characters, someone might argue.
A woman can be one of the Ninja Turtles, Scooby-Doo, Buzz Lightyear, the Mario Brothers, Jack Skellington, Beetlejuice, Cat in the Hat, Peter Pan, Patrick from Spongebob, Sulley from Monster’s Inc, or the Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz. Women can even find costumes of The Flash, Spiderman, Joker, Superman, Batman, or Optimus Prime made “just for them.”
Women more interested in horror can dress as Pennywise (It), Jason Voorhees (Friday the 13th), Freddy Krueger (A Nightmare on Elm Street), Michael Myers (Halloween), or Chucky (Child’s Play).
Viewed with a more critical lens it we recognize the role of androcentrism in shaping these costume options. In the first place, it’s worth noticing how these costumes are “transformed” into women’s costumes. The formula is simple: just add a dress or skirt, high heel shoes and omit the mask. (Shoes sold separately.) In other words, even these women and girls can be anything they wont to be costumes reinforce narrow conceptions of femininity. Beauty—appearance—remain at the center, even at the expense of embodying essential features of the character in question. (Since when did Freddy not have a disfigured face or Jason wear his mask on his shirt.)
Where are the Carrie Costumes for Men?
But there’s something even more remarkable that is also easy to overlook: while mass marketed Halloween costumes invite girls and women to unabashedly identify with prominent male characters from popular culture, boys and men are offered exactly zero serious mass produced costumes inviting them to identify with popular female characters.
Boys and men are not offered packaged costumes of Queen Elsa, April O’Neil, Velma, Jessie, Princess Peach, Sally, Tinker Bell, Sandy Cheeks or Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. Neither are they offered the option to dress as Wonder Woman, Harley Quinn, Black Widow, Katniss Everdeen, Tiffany from Chucky’s Bride. (That these characters may not even be as recognizable to readers as the list of male characters further exemplifies androcentrism.) And we don’t see opportunities for the horror-loving men to go as Carrie, Regan (The Exorcist), Annie Wilkes (Misery), or Samara—the girl from The Ring.2 And it’s this lack of symbolic identification with femininity—even when it takes the form of bad ass action heroines or iconic figures in horror— among men that shows patriarchy’s androcentric hand.
I can already hear some skeptical readers exclaiming that the critique above is absurd! “What boys want to dress up like Tinker Bell—like a girl!? What grown man wants to show up to a Halloween party as Katniss Everdeen or Carrie!? And if there was a demand for these costumes, what would they look like?” For some this would be nothing short of foolish nonsense.
As I hope the reader will gather, these kinds of questions and reactions only add weight to the argument at hand. The difficulty with which we have in imagining men and boys identifying with women and girls showcases the power of androcentrism to impede our imaginations and ignite irrational scorn. More than anything, these kinds of objections reveal the assumption that females can of course orient themselves around or identify with males, but it makes no (patriarchal) sense for males to orient themselves around or identify with femininity. (Even when the female character in question behaves opposite of what we’d expect of conventional femininity.) In other words, the ugly essence of patriarchal ideology is revealed: the belief that females are inferior to males.
The Feminine Pejorative and Patriarchy’s Demand for Masculine Purity
Boys and men don’t identify with female characters or wear such costumes modeled after them for the same reason they don’t like being told they “throw like a girl” or are “acting like a bitch.” The patriarchal worldview rests upon the fundamental presumption that males are better than females. Though they are not deemed “worthless,” they are deemed worth less than men. As sociologist Judith Lorber has explained,
“Even valued characteristics of women, such as the capacity for empathy, nurturance, and care for others, are ranked lower in Western societies than men’s characteristics for assertion, competitiveness, and individual achievement. Because men and boys are held in higher social regard than women and girls and are granted advantages and rights, gender differences produce gender inequality.”
Women’s value is defined in relation to men; but men’s value is independent of women’s. This sexist androcentric belief system is not incompatible with allowing women to identify with men. Assuming that males are superior to females, it makes sense that those in the lower social strata would look up to the “elevated” ranks. But “going down” and trodding through the mud of an inferior identity is inexplicable if not condemnable.
The common sense of patriarchal culture makes it abundantly clear that boys and men who wish to be respected must eschew the feminine. The one exception to the rule is that men may identify with femininity for the sake of parody or mockery. When boys or men do dress up as a woman on Halloween, it’s almost always a gag—a joke.
The descriptions for “Sleeping Boozy,” modeled after Sleeping Beauty, and “Beauty is a Beast,” based on Belle from Beauty and the Beast, are both described by sellers as “fun and funny.” As their shoes and smirks make clear, neither of the models are interested in identifying with the princess in question. Such costumes are permissible within patriarchy, though still not widely approved of, because the point of the costume is to show how unfeminine a “real” man is. That he cannot pass as a woman ensures his manhood is preserved if not enhanced. Of course the costume design and the choices of the wearers guarantee that the (pretend) attempt at identifying with femininity will fail.
Within patriarchy, maleness is understood as ontologically pure of the taint of femininity. In Passing (2010), philosopher Anna Camaiti Hostert explained that racists conceived of whiteness as the absence of “black blood.”
“One drop of black blood makes an individual black, but it is not the case that one drop of white blood makes an individual white. Whiteness is purity of blood, whereas blackness, ontologically speaking, admits to no absolute purity of blood.”
Just as white supremacy envisioned whiteness as the absence of “black blood,” male supremacy conceives of manhood as the absence of femininity. This ideology results in the cultural demand of gender purity from men. To tell a woman she has “balls” is typically a complement on her courage. No one tells a man he has “ovaries” unless they mean to mock or humiliate him.
The essence of patriarchal masculinity is the exemplification of dominance over and control of others. And since emotional sensitivity to others—their discomfort, fear, or pain—weakens our resolve to exhibit dominance, patriarchal masculinity cultivates emotional numbness. To be sensitive or caring is to be weak or immature. As psychiatrist and expert on violence James Gilligan has written, patriarchal masculinity has traditionally required the
“avoidance of anything that resembles the feminine sex-role stereotype, such as tenderness, intimacy, nurturance, passivity, dependency, forgiveness, and the capacity to feel anything, physical or emotional, including pain, fear, depression, love, compassion, vulnerability, sadness…. The only feeling that many violent men will let themselves feel is anger (rage, hate).”
While patriarchy can sometimes tolerate women and girls identifying with the “manly” realm of culture—after all, this is deemed the best and most important part of humanity—it is significantly less tolerant of men and boys identifying with the “womanly” realm. In the classroom as a professor and in day-to-day family life as a father, I have heard countless stories and witnessed many events where boys and young men have been shamed for a range of behaviors from brushing a sister’s hair, crying, playing with toys deemed “for girls,” asking for help, to holding a woman’s purse.
Those skeptical of the claim that patriarchal masculinity teaches men and boys to to view femininity as inferiority can conduct a simple test: make a list of at least ten of the worst things you can call a person. (Make your list before reading on.) If you look at your list you’ll find multiple terms explicitly referencing femininity. Most of the worst insults in common use are derived from the basic put down of calling someone a “girl” or “woman.” Anyone who turns the pages of the great thinkers in history such as Roman emperor and Stoic thinker, Marcus Aurelius, finds the casual use of the word “womanish” as a derisive term for a man who fails to live up to his full human potential. To be womanly is to be less than, to be inferior.
From a very young age, boys are subjected to a pervasive education in the patriarchal masculine ideal. Just take a walk through the toy isles of a mainstream department store. There you will find isles filled with pink baby dolls, household items and the like, beckoning girls to enact roles as mothers, helpmates, and homemakers. While our society cultivates mothering along with patriarchal compliance in young girls, boys are, on the other hand, being prepared to wage war through endless marketing of war toys, war games, and military dress-up.
Patriarchal gender prohibits boys and girls from freely exploring and developing complete, multifaceted human identities. Instead, they’re pressured or shamed into fitting themselves into limited one-dimensional models of selfhood. These misguided gender stereotypes are nakedly on display on Halloween as girls are encouraged to exemplify conventional feminine beauty, even as they identify with their favorite superhero, while boys are silently urged to “muscle-up” as their favorite superhero or to cosplay as a villainous monster who symbolizes transgressive power.
In maintaining gender stereotypes that identify care, nurturance, and love as more natural and appropriate to women, we prevent boys from discovering and nurturing fundamental human qualities necessary not only to their health but to the prevention of violence. These sorts of early but formative experiences lay the ground work for men’s alienation from not only values culturally linked to femininity like compassion but also from women and children. This emotionally truncated male socialization lays the groundwork for the alienation of emotional and psychological wholeness, aspects of human personality that are vital, particularly when facing profound life challenges.
The power of patriarchal gender is that so much of our sense of our dignity or self-worth is psychologically tied to living up to gendered expectations: to being the right kind of man or woman. And yet this ancient ideology premised on antiquated and dehumanizing ideas is treated as though it were an unalterable reality. So much so that it’s hardly ever named let alone explicitly discussed.
It is no small dose of irony that by entering the dream land of pretend that is Halloween we can awaken our critical consciousness to recognize the shadowy but ever-present patriarchal ideology that haunts us each day of the year. We can see on full display the way in which women’s self worth is anchored in sexual attractiveness while men’s worth rests in their avoidance of femininity and capacity for dominance.
Most frightening of all, we discover that on Halloween night, millions of boys are more comfortably imagining themselves as crazed clowns, brain-eating zombies, or cinematic serial killers than a female heroine. For most boys, nothing is scarier than “acting like a girl.” Boys who do dare transgress the patriarchal injunction against feminine identification are usually subject to ridicule by not only their peers but also adults in their lives. Put plainly, large numbers of boys aren’t going to clamor for “Princess Peach” costumes when being called “princess” is the polite version of being called a “pussy.”
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It’s also possible that people mention the mother more often because they simply know the thought experiment. But it might also be that there are more representations of women in medical authority throughout society.
Credit to my wife, Megan, for pointing out the absence of mass marketed costumes for men based on classic female characters in horror.
Spot on, I struggle with the term "mankind" and it makes me think of Lester Ward's quote. Genius idea to highlight andocentricism with halloween costumes.
Great essay. It’s argument applies far more widely than the US, as I’m sure you know, but you pick an excellent illustration. I was a big fan of John Stoltenbergs Refusing to be a Man in my 20s. He argues that the common modern notion of “man” is nothing more than “not woman.” Any man whose consciousness is evolving has to look to women for evolutionary cues. Few men are able to provide satisfactory role models.