Halloween porn: Ghoulish celebration has become sexualized

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 30/10/2014 (4193 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Halloween spending is predicted to go up again this year, particularly since the spooky event falls on Friday. Spending on candy at Halloween last year was second only to Christmas, Statistics Canada figures show. Canadians doled out $381 million on candy, confectionery and snack foods last October compared with $451 million spent in December.

That’s an awful lot of Halloween apples.

Halloween is no longer just a celebration for the kiddies either. It has been growing in popularity as an adult celebration since the 1980s. In a 2010 poll conducted in the United States, two-thirds of Americans said they planned on celebrating the holidays, with those aged 18 to 34 most likely to be the ones to dress up.

Every year there seems to be some debate about the issue of what is and is not appropriate to wear on Oct. 31 and this year is no exception, with all manner of costumes in bad taste.

There’s the disgraced NFL’er Ray Rice costume with either an inflatable doll with a black eye or a live woman companion with makeup to depict a bruised face.

Sorry. That’s a no.

Domestic violence isn’t funny. It’s not ironic. Stop.

Then there’s the “sexy” something — as in sexy nurse, sexy lawyer, sexy nun.

Ever notice how the pornification of Halloween costumes relies on women being scantily dressed? I have never seen a sexy electrician’s costume for men. Yes, there’s the old stand-by — Chippendale dancer — but have yet to see anyone actually modelling it in Manitoba’s October temperatures.

I do think the sexy Ebola haz-mat costume is fairly indicative this meme has run its course. A disease that has killed 5,000 people and counting? Not funny.

(As a sidebar, the sexy Ebola costume comes with a warning: It’s apparently not suitable as protection against hazardous materials. Wow, good thing they clarified that.)

While we’re on the topic of sexy, how about the Pocahottie costume? This is a costume that was on sale in Winnipeg based on the aboriginal character Pocahontas. Of course, the newly imagined Pocahottie features a low-cut shirt, short skirt and native feather.

On Tuesday, when an aboriginal woman complained to the store manager that she found the costume to be culturally offensive, the response was disappointing. The regional manager of Halloween Alley stated that while the store respects all cultures, there are no plans to remove the costumes. Thankfully, on Wednesday, the organization changed its mind and they are now off the shelf.

Good thing. After all, weren’t we as a community outraged when a 15-year-old aboriginal girl was pulled from the Red River, tossed like garbage? Didn’t we all meet as a city to honour her memory and to talk earnestly about fears that she had been sexually exploited?

Perhaps it’s because it’s primarily the 18- to 34-year-old set that is most likely to dress up that we have seen a reliance on bad porn film plots for character costumes, the same cohort who spent their puberty having access to online pornography. Indeed, studies have determined the ubiquity of porn online means more than 70 per cent of kids under the age of 18 have accessed porn, some younger than 14. Maybe to them, this is just an extension of what they’ve viewed online.

And some could argue it’s all very fine and good adult women and men are role-playing in a fun and safe environment (hear that Jian, with full consent), but the age at which the “sexy” character is being pushed seems to be getting younger and younger. Value Village recently got into trouble because it was selling sexualized firefighter and police costumes for young girls aged four to six. The boys’ costumes were more like the real thing, with full uniforms. The girls’ costumes featured short skirts and high boots.

Sure, I’m a feminist, I have no sense of humour, but we need to start taking this seriously.

This week has been a tough week in a long line of tough weeks in which we have talked about women being beaten, raped, discarded and trivialized.

Perhaps it’s time we reverted back to the original tradition of All Hallows’ Eve and dress, as we did hundreds of years ago, more appropriately. At that time, Europeans and Celts dressed in costume because it was believed that ghosts roamed the Earth on Halloween. In order to avoid recognition, people dressed in costume to keep the spirits at bay.

There wasn’t one sexy nurse among them.

 

Shannon Sampert is the Free Press perspectives and politics editor.