This blog entry by Yutaka Iwakiri. The story: "The Hottest Sexy Halloween Costumes for 2007"
The analysis:
- I found this article at Yahoo Finance. The article is about Halloween costumes. It talks about how adults in greater numbers than ever before are choosing sexy over spooky costumes. In addition to that, it discusses how Halloween has become more and more of an adult holiday rather than just a holiday for kids as has been the tradition in the past. Why did this happen?
The reason why I chose this article is because simply that this is the Halloween season. Plus, when I read this article, I thought media and companies associate sexiness with Halloween costumes and deliberately manipulates consumers to make them buy more costumes.
These days, it is apparent that Halloween costumes, especially for women are very sexy. Not only are their costumes sexy, but also people started to accept that sexiness is a symbol of Halloween. Since I was born in and grew up in Japan, the first time I saw Halloween in Hollywood was a few years ago. I even thought that to wear sexy costumes is the norm of Halloween in general. However, it is not. Halloween is traditionally a holiday for kids. It is a special day for kids to wear spooky costumes such as witches or monsters and visiting houses to go trick or treating.
How does this transformation; spooky to sexy, occur? One of the reasons we can think of is the influence of advertisement. As we studied, advertisement, particularly the advertisement of women has been changing over the years. Today, women have more sexual liberty, and thus, media and advertising companies market more sexy images of Halloween costumes to make more sales. Anther perspective we can think of is sexual fantasy. According to the article, most costumes buyers are women buying sexy costumes, but also men have been getting more elaborate and sexy costumes as well. This means we can guess both men and women are buying those costumes not only for Halloween, but also for their entertainment.
I personally do not care if the Halloween is spooky or scary since I do not celebrate it anyway. However, to make Halloween too sexy might causes controversy related to sexual equality, increases the possibility of sexual assaults and also creates debate about what costumes are appropriate for children and teenagers.
1 comment:
I think you make a good point about how costume trends might be reflective of other trends in advertising writ large. I also think it's a product of more liberal sexual mores in our society. Especially with a holiday like Halloween, that encourages us to take on other identities vis a vis costumes, it's also a license to be more "expressive," or at least, provocative in what kind of appearances we let our imaginations take us too.
Of course, it could also be seen as another sign of how women in our society are mostly distinguished by their sexuality first rather than some other dynamic (their intellect, their professions) unlike men who tend to have a broader set of identities they're encouraged to inhabit.
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