For all the advances made by feminism and the women’s movement, patriarchal ideology continues to distort our notions of womanhood and manhood. In my October 8, 2023 talk, “Trick-or-Treating with Patriarchy: Unmasking the Gender Stereotypes in Halloween Costumes,” I argue that Halloween gives us a candid glimpse into the dehumanizing gender stereotypes that continue to pervade our society.
Drawing on the insights of cultural analysis and feminist theory, I show how critically examining popular, mass marketed costumes enables us to understand and combat the pernicious power of patriarchy, a 5,000 year-old ideology that quietly shapes our individual and social lives.
Excerpt from “Trick-or-Treating with Patriarchy”
Every Halloween, millions of children in the United States pour into the streets of nearby neighborhoods costumed as super-heroes, villains, monsters, murderers, fairies, princesses, soldiers, and the walking dead. Their motives are clear enough: locate neighborhoods with houses that give out the best candy, in hopes of returning home with a hefty bag of sugary loot that will pay the “parent tax” and satisfy their candy needs for weeks if not months to come.
But Halloween is about more than candy. The widely celebrated holiday offers us the unique opportunity to break with convention and unleash our imaginations. For a night, children and adults can be liberated from the strict confines of their pedestrian identities. We can costume ourselves as virtually anything, provided we can find our desired costume at a store or can afford the materials necessary to buy or construct the required ensemble.
For a night, a human can become an alien, vampire, or werewolf; the living can become the dead; children can become doctors, pilots, or astronauts; the weak can become strong; the fearful can become frightening; the meek can become bold. Halloween offers us the opportunity for instantaneous metamorphosis.
Halloween also offers us an opportunity to better understand ourselves and society. By critically examining popular, mass marketed costumes we learn something about the persistent and pernicious power of a 5,000 year-old worldview that silently shapes our individual and social lives: patriarchy and its narrow, dehumanizing, sexist vision of male and female humanity. It may seem strange to learn about the “real world” through one of our society’s most whimsical and seemingly imaginative holidays. But invaluable insights into who we are and what we believe, as men and women, lie just beneath the witches’ hats, monstrous masks, and muscle-padded superhero bodysuits.
Trick-or-Treating with Patriarchy
Even as modest gains are being made in liberating children of a patriarchal gender ideology masquerading as biology, a closer look at the details of ordinary costume selections reminds us of how much remains unchanged. Costume names and designs undermine what might otherwise appear to be costume gender parity.
At Party City and Spirit Halloween, when boys are pirates they are “kings,” “rascals,” “looters,” or “rebels.” When girls are pirates, they are “precious,” “beauties,” “cuties,” and “sweethearts.” When boys are ninjas they are “warriors,” “avengers,” and “dragon slayers,” while the offering for girls may be something like “Sassy Samurai.” Girls can even be “sassy” space girls, but, unsurprisingly, no such “sassy” offerings are provided in the boys section. She can’t just be a devil, witch, or a cat, she has to be a “Devil Diva,” “Darling Witch,” or “Pretty Kitty.” Even if the girls’ devil costume is called “Fiery devil” the design of the costume, including tights and dress, makes it clear being cute remains a top priority.
Costumes geared toward boys represent characteristics, as evidenced in the names, and/or professions that elicit social respect and financial stability. Those marketed to girls highlight comparatively diminutive qualities and roles, as per the dominant culture, indicating that one is pleasant but not necessarily “powerful.” Given that our society rewards a kind of power associated with assertiveness, leadership, even aggressive dominance, the implications of such symbolic associations are clear.
These symbolic stereotypes reinforce the idea that one group is more valuable or important than the other. Add to this that many continue to find it easier men into positions of power and authority than women and it becomes all too clear that Halloween costumes perpetuate patriarchal visions of girls and women; visions where girls play minor, supportive, or simply unserious roles.
The naming and designs of superhero and law enforcement costumes also tells us something about the continued stereotyping of girls in our society. Batgirl and American Dream, for example, come with skirts or “tutus” that suggest they are more ready for a dance recital than doing physical combat against ruthless foes. This difference further suggests the continued expectation that girls obey patriarchy’s dictate that “beauty” (and “sexual attractiveness,” in adulthood) and agreeability, communicated through “cuteness,” are cornerstone of female identity and worth. That mass marketed costumes reflect and reinforce patriarchy's appearance-based definition of womanhood is further illustrated by the most common words used to describe junior girls’ costume names: “sweet,” beautiful,” “honey,” “heartthrob,” “darling,” “sweetie,” “sassy,” and the most common of all, “cutie.”
The presentation of boys’ selfhood is not without negative implications. Feminist theorists including Jackson Katz and bell hooks argue that gender stereotypes not only dehumanize girls, excessively emphasizing their status as “beauty objects,” they also promote the dehumanizing vision of male-selfhood as fundamentally centered around the capacity for force and violence. Halloween costumes for boys (and men) overwhelmingly identify maleness with a particular kind of power, namely power to provoke fear or enact violent force, through guns, strength and/or superpowers. This is not the only vision of power. As the authors of Packaging Boyhood write,
“Power can be about physical strength and dominance, but it can also be the power to change someone’s point of view, persuade evil to be good, to challenge others to do good things.”
Beyond the toddler age, boys’ costumes overwhelmingly communicate menace compared to girls’ costumes. As the authors of Packaging Boyhood write,
“For the youngest boys there’s the occasional Pooh Bear or SpongeBob, even a cute puppy or lion, but they are buried in an avalanche of ninjas, special Delta force soldiers, and Transformers.”
A few years ago, I watched a father discourage his young son—maybe 4 or 5—from choosing a Thomas the Tank Engine Train costume. The dad urged his son to choose something more menacing, more “cool.” As much as we think of Halloween as a day for children and adults to “dress up” and set our imaginations loose, many if not most end up Trick-or-Treating with patriarchy, choosing costumes that reinforce ancient stereotypes about the essence of maleness and femaleness.
For more on the relationship between Halloween, popular culture, and patriarchal ideology check out this series of articles:
Why So Serious? Halloween, Popular Culture, and the Specter of Anonymous Authority
Costumed in Gender, Haunted by Patriarchy
He'd Rather be a Killer than a Girl: What Halloween Costumes Can Teach Us About the Patriarchal Thinking Within Us All
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