Why Can't My Daughter Be An Astronaut?

My daughter is too young to care about her Halloween costume.  She was born shortly before Halloween last year, and since my son is about to enter preschool and still doesn't care what costume I pick for him, I hope that I will have a couple more years before I am fighting off any of her requests for princess finery.  This works out well for me, because though I like to dress my daughter in girly outfits, I don't think that most of the costumes I've seen in the various Halloween catalogs are at all appropriate for my child.

Have you noticed how Halloween has become such a sexy holiday for women?  If not, do a Google search for "Halloween costume woman" and count how many UNSEXY costumes you get back as results.  I don't mean unsexy as in "zombie" or "Big Bird," but unsexy as in longer skirts (or better yet, pants!), loose bodices, costumes with sleeves, costumes that cover enough to go out trick-or-treating with your kids.  You know what I mean: costumes that you could wear to the Playboy Club without being mistaken for a Halloween Bunny.  I found a couple; they are out there.  For the most part, though, if I want to buy a ready-made costume, I need to prepare to be either completely hideous or a sex kitten.  Some costumes even let me be both!  If I want to wear pants instead of a skirt, my choices are even more limited.  Apparently, modern Halloween exists for women to slink into skankiness, just as Lindsay Lohan's character Cady Heron says in the movie 'Mean Girls,' "In Girl World, Halloween is the one night a year when a girl can dress up like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it."  It is a time for us to dress up like the showgirls that men know we secretly are inside (watch out for sarcasm!)  For more comparisons and a great analysis of this, check out the awesome blog Responsible Men.

My daughter, however, is too young to be sexy, and I hope she will continue to be for at least the next 16-17 years.  My daughter is a child, and by definition, a child is not sexy.  The nightmarish parents from Toddlers and Tiaras aside, I would like to think that MOST parents agree that children have no business being sexy.  We might disagree about at what age a child moves into adulthood, but to save time, let's settle on the idea that anyone who hasn't hit puberty yet is still a child, and has no place associating with the word sexy, either in their own minds or in the minds of others.  Looking around at the costumes that will be available for my baby next year,  though, I wonder if I am alone in my analysis of a child's sexiness, because sexy appears to be just what the makers of Halloween costumes want my pre-tween daughter to be.
 
I decided my daughter will be a butterfly for Halloween this year.  It seemed like a safe, sweetly feminine choice, and very fitting with the way I think of her.  So, I went looking for butterfly costumes.  I was startled by what I found.  The costume to the left, for example, is relatively unoffensive, except that it is almost identical to the one on the adult woman above, complete with a corset, a barely-there skirt, and strappy heels, all of which would be more commonly found in a Redlight district than on a child's body.  Of course, the little girl's costume doesn't look sexy, and it shouldn't.  A child's body is not designed to look sexy.  I personally think the outfit looks cute - like a cross between a butterfly, a fairy, and a ballerina, and I might let my daughter wear it if she asked.  But the costume is also teaching the girl what clothing is appropriate, and parents who choose such a costume need to look closely to decide if this costume sends a message they want to teach to their daughters.  For the sake of being practical, I'd like to add that at least where I live, this costume is not weather-appropriate, either.  By Halloween, our temperatures are pretty cold, and my daughter doesn't need to be taught that being pretty is more important than being practical!  An awesome blog posting has already been written about this topic by Pigtail Pals, and I highly recommend you read it.  She also delves into the value of a home-made costume, which I will not address here but think is a very worthy way to avoid the sexualization and sexism I am discussing in this posting.

Fortunately, there ARE cute, unsexy butterfly costumes out there if you look hard enough.  Walmart has an awesome one that I wish I had found earlier, and you can find plenty on Google as long as you have the time to overlook the less appropriate versions.  Most of the more modest costumes are designed for infants and toddlers, but some come in larger sixes (the one from Walmart is available though a child's size 6).  I got my daughter's costume at a yard sale, and it is similar with full pants and sleeves.  I am sure my daughter will be a darling butterfly, and I know I have learned a valuable lesson about costume selection that will serve me well over the next couple of years.

For now at least, dressing my daughter modestly and appropriately falls to me.  The costume companies are not evil; they provide what people are willing to buy.  It is up to Mom and Dad to decide that certain outfits aren't appropriate for their little girls, and that is what I will do.  For now, the hurdle has been cleared.  But what if my daughter doesn't want to be a butterfly next year?  What if she would rather be an astronaut?

She is out of luck, then.  I did a Google search for "Halloween girl astronaut costume," and got a bunch of costumes...for boys.  I thought perhaps my search had been too broad, so I went to different stores, such as Target, Walmart, and Costume Express and searched their sites directly.  I got the same results.  My daughter can be Princess Leia, but she can't walk on the moon.  The ONLY girls' astronaut costumes I could find were designed for strippers - oh, I mean, adults.  I got similar results when I searched for "Halloween girl police costume."  There ARE policewomen costumes out there for little girls who dream about strutting their stuff in sequins, heels, and a miniskirt in front of suspects, but none for little girls who would like to actually dress up as, uh, a policewoman.  Frankly, I find these costumes considerably more offensive than the pixie-butterfly above.  God forbid our real policewoman had to walk around in such a get-up; I can't imagine how anyone could earn the respect of their male colleagues, much less chase down a perp. When compared to the boys' police costumes, which look like true police uniforms, the difference stings.

I had only slightly better results when I searched for "Halloween girl sports costumes," since most of the costumes were sexified baseball players or cheerleaders, but there were a couple normal baseball costumes and a very cute referee costume that were mostly appropriate (both had short shorts instead of long pants, but were otherwise unobjectionable - good, perhaps, for Halloween in Florida).  In general, because costumes are divided into boys' and girls' costumes, my daughter would have to buy a boys' costume if she wanted to be an astronaut or a policewoman-sans-the-stripper.  And shop in the boys' section we will, or make our own costumes, in order to follow her dreams.  But there may come a time when she will feel a real or imagined stigma from shopping for boys' clothing.  She might avoid being an astronaut because she doesn't want to wear a boys' costume, and that could affect how she views what is appropriate for women, and for her own future.

I do not have an objection to girls looking like girls and boys looking like boys (as is evidenced by my selection of a butterfly costume for my daughter).  Growing up, I never dreamed of being an astronaut: I wanted to be a princess, an angel, a cat, etc.  If my daughter takes the girly-girl route for Halloween, I will be happy to provide, but I do not want my daughter to adjust her aspirations for life around what she believes to be a feminine or masculine occupation.  These costume limitations send a clear message: boys are astronauts, boys are policemen, and it is more important that girls look sexy in heels and skirts than get the job done.  Apparently, 21st century Halloween is stuck in a 1950's nightmare.  It is disheartening, but as parents, for the sake of our kids, we need to continue to push the envelope, to refuse to buy costumes that sex up little girls and insist that companies supply costumes that will encourage our daughters to shoot for the moon.





***Credit where credit is due: I was delighted to find that there is a wide range of girls' doctor costumes available online, with scrubs in a variety of colors (not just pink), and the same goes for girls who might dream of going into the army - they can pick from mini-skirts or full-body khakis.  This is great progress.  But flipping through the catalogs, she is bound to notice, as I did, that even the doctor and army costumes only have male models, not female, even if the costumes themselves are listed as unisex.