Summer is officially over, and you know what that means: People are gearing up for Halloween. Jezebel commenter TrulyOutrageous was shopping online for her daughter’s costume when she came across this adorable lion costume at Party City.
Cute, cuddly, lifelike, wholesome, and for boys. Here is the girl’s version:
That sexed-up little number doesn’t look anything like a lion. “This little lion has the cutest roar!” reads the description. The boy’s description says, “This little lion makes a really loud roar in this look.” Girls are coy while boys are ferocious. The girl version is less than half the price of the boy version, probably because it’s made of half as much material.
There is no reason there should be two radically different versions of a toddler animal costume. The lion is far from the only example (look at the leopard!). Of course, one can buy the “boy” costume for a girl — which is what I would do for my hypothetical daughter — but it’s upsetting that there is a demand for separate girlie (i.e. sexy & skimpy) animal costumes at all. Guess they have to be prepared for the day they’ll wear this:
Look familiar?
Excuse me while I beat my head repeatedly into my desk.
*thud thud thud*
Okay, now then – this is clearly ridiculous. When I was a kid I wanted to dress like a lion or dragon or ghost – not a “sexy” lion/dragon/ghost that didn’t even look like the creature it was supposed to be. The only reason a kid would want the “sexy” costume is to be like older girls and adults who they see wearing the grown-up version (and who can blame a kid for wanting to wear what mom/auntie/older sister wears?).
This just makes me want to vomit – the idea that little boys are kids, but little girls are just tiny sexual objects in training.
This is too depressing for me to even formulate a response. I never expected that Sexy X costumes for women would evolve into Sexy X costumes for little girls, and I am the most cynical person in the world.
Gawd, even looking at the body language… Boy Lion is like “Howdy. Imma get some candy!” Girl Lion (but not Lioness) is all “Rawr! Claws! Contrepasto stance! Sexyface!”
Another thing to add to the list of “Reasons not to have kids, even if I wanted them.”
PhDork, this is why I WANT to have kids, who will resent me for the way I will incessantly point out this inequity to them and force them into the “boy lion” costume regardless of their gender.
Oh man, is it already time to pull out that “girls’ costume” video?
Sexy Abe Lincoln! Sexy Jesus!
It’s bad enough when it’s aimed at adults, but, sheesh!
I’m with flackette. If a kid wants to dress up as a lion, it’s pretty clear s/he wants to be a lion lion, not an anthropomorphized one. I bet people wouldn’t even recognize that girl’s costume as a lion. I don’t know about other people, but I believe a costume that cannot be recognized an appreciated is a total failure.
Ooh, Harpy hivemind! I saw this on Jez groupthink and had exactly the same reaction:
Part 1) SRSLY??? WTF??? SRSLY???
Part 2) My daughter would totally be wearing the boy lion costume.
Part 3) See Part 1.
That is beyond awful. I have no words for how fucked up that is.
AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!!
It gets bad for boys too. Mine are at the age (13, 9), where all the boys costumes for purchase are things from shoot-em-up and slasher themes. The only gender neutral available theme is the Harry Potter world(which my oldest, 13, has been for 4 years now). Besides that, I can’t think of a single costume theme which is not sexy girl / violent boy. My fav… the boy “pimp” costume. NOT!!!
Alright so I went in another direction with this for my kids (back in the day). Halloween was when you used whatever clothing and other stuff was laying around the house, and you made yourself a costume. And by you, I mean, the kid, not the me, the mom.
In addition to all the clear, clear sexism, this is just one more area of competition among people (parents) that our society resolves through spending and capitalism. Ugh.
I am thankful for my lovely lovely mother who used to make me Hallowe’en-well, actually Mardi Gras since this was France- costumes (she stopped after I turned ten or eleven, I personally have no idea how she did it for that long), which included a leopard one which looked rather like the boy lion one. I was a leopard, dammit. Not a kid in a furry dress.
This is very sad.
…are you… are you kidding?!
headdesk…
I feel like I need to call my Mom and thank her for not letting me have pre-fab costumes. We usually thrifted my costumes so I had cool made up characters like a tap dancing angel and a princess wizard (with beard). My favorite was when I wanted to be Princess Leia but had short hair. My Mom got ear muffs and braided yarn onto them- instant buns!
PUKE!!! Ick, ick, ick.
And yes, finding boy stuff that’s not violent, or related to trucks and sports, is damn near impossible.
So fuzzy animals and dinosaurs it is. If my son wants to be a dinogiraffe (his favorite animal right now), we will make it happen. With no sexy bits and no slashing knife claws.
Is that poor little girl doing a literal “come hither” motion with her left hand? It looks to me like she has her palm turned up and her finger crooked to motion toward herself.
Fucking vomit everywhere.
When did ugly Halloween costumes go out of style? I thought part of the appeal of it as a holiday is that it’s a chance to look socially-unacceptable without *actually* suffering social consequences?
Harrumph.
I remember that for about 5 years, every year I wanted to be some kind of cat. I was a panther one year (my favorite animal) that was basically a cat mask, black tights, leotard, and a tail made out of a black sock. I wore the leotard for a year or two after that to gymnastics until I stopped going.
Another year I was a snow leopard–I think I was about 10. That one involved a mask (I had seen the mask at the zoo and planned the costume around it), a piece of gray fake fur that my dad and I turned into a vest. (I did the sewing by hand, just a basic stitch to hold it together.) The rest of it was a pair of leggings and an old turtleneck dyed gray with spots drawn on.
I’m not sure that any of the kids I knew at school would have been able to recognize me as a cat in either case if I had been wearing a skirt. Cats don’t wear skirts, and in fact, we are generally more mammal-shaped when wearing pants, tights, or leggings than a skirt, due to being, well, mammals. Why change that? When did Halloween costumes become less about resembling something else, and more about looking cute/sexy? (I hate this for adult costumes too. Once I got past the big cat stage of childhood, I made costumes with friends so we could be candy bars, mushrooms, and silverware. We won the costume contests at school several times. I feel like I could never get away with any of these things as an adult woman. Inanimate objects that don’t show skin–so out.)
Congratulations, Little Girl – now you too can be a stripper at a furry convention.
/fail.
When I was eight, my mum – at my direction – made me a spider outfit. It was highly creative, and not a bit sexy.
This drives me insane. The second costume is ridiculous and as Kat rightly points out cats (and lions) don’t wear skirts. My daughter went as Max from Where The Wild Things are last year because she has always wanted a wolf suit ever since she could create a rumpus. It had claws and a tail and everything. There was no skirt.
And frog.
Of course this is all kinds of screwed up. The real surprise is that the girl costume, being made of half as much material as the boy one, doesn’t cost twice as much.
I grew up wearing store bought costumes, but our kids never once wanted one. They always fabricated their costumes from stuff around the house or from simple materials we could get at the grocery store or K Mart. And they always looked great!
Thanks for the shout out, SarahMC. Great post. My daughter (2.5 years) got her tiger costume and loves it. Yes, it’s from the “boys” section. Whoop-dee-doo. I can assure you that even if they had had a tiger print dress available, and I were crazy enough to suggest such a thing to her, it would have been deemed unacceptable in no time flat.
This pisses me off even more than pink dump truck toys with pretend “diamond” loads. (I kid you not, they do exist, but that is another post for another day.)
I wore a costume almost exactly like the “boy lion” when I was about that age. Every stitch was sewn by my poor mother in between her full time job and three kids under age ten. That same year, she also made a tiger and a bear for my brother and sister respectively. Excuse me, I need to go hug her.
And then I need to go punch someone because it shouldn’t be that hard.
Thanks, Party City, I really needed *another* reason to be terrified of having kids.
Wow.. I’m kinda glad that halloween isn’t really celebrated in Australia..
Coming from a big family, there really weren’t gendered clothes or costumes. For book week, I remember dressing up and helping my younger brothers and sisters dress up from created costumes at home using what we had. At no stage was there “skimpy” tiger..
When I was three I was really into tigers. If someone had bought me a “sexy” tiger costume, I would have been pissed. And I was one ferocious three-year-old. The someone would have returned it.
When my son was five, I took him to Hancock Fabrics and we looked through the Halloween costume pattern books. He decided he wanted to wear a cape that was black on the outside and red on the inside and a witch’s hat. So, I bought him the hat and made him the cape and off we went. The neighbors were very confused. I just said “He’s a wizard” with a “well, duh” tone of voice. But if he said he wanted to be a witch, I would have called him a witch.
Seriously, why are people looking for reasons to tell their kids that they can’t be who they want to be? It’s worse for girls than boys, in ways that really make me sad.
This makes me want to cry. WHY ON EARTH is a LITTLE GIRL dressing sexy? Why is our gendered culture already telling her she’s no good unless lots of skin is showing?
…I’m going back to bed.
A spirit Halloween store popped up in my town last year and, being the sociologist that I am, I simply had to take pictures of the massive FAIL for girls, tweens, and teens on display there.
The lion costume featured above for little girls is manufactured by a company that makes lingerie the rest of the year. This company was responsible for the creation of virtually all of the women’s, teen’s, and tween costumes on display.
Out of the costumes for little girls, only 3 featured a model of color in the display. One was a sexualized Devil costume with an assumed African American model, one was called Dragon Ninja (also in a short skirt) with an Asian model, and the last was an Asian Princess costume with an actually long kimono in pink also featuring an Asian model looking down at her feet. Ironically, the cover model for the Geisha costume (and yes, it was called Geisha) was a white girl with heavy eyeliner on her eyes to give them a more slanted appearance.
Other costumes I saw that were rather breathtaking for me: Enchantress (supposed to be some sort of witch?), Hot Stuff (pink one-piece jumpsuit with pink sequin horns supposed to be a cute/sexy devil – I was surprised they didn’t call it “Hawt Stuff” personally), ALL of the pirate costumes for girls had skirts and ran on similar themes of “Cutey” or “Beauty” or “Pretty” (except for one labeled Punk Pirate – if by “punk” you think of Avril Lavigne), the ONLY costume I saw for girls with pants featured a pinstripe suit and hat called “Gangster Girl” – I actually liked the costume until I looked closer and realized that the stripes were pink, and Purrty Kitty – just as bad, if not worst, as the lion costume above except with pink fur.
There was a small section of Tween costumes available and these looked the same as the Teen costumes which were virtually identical to the offerings for women which were all the same “sexy” lingerie costume, just in different colors or with slightly different themes. Tween’s could choose Goldilocks – extremely short yellow checked dress with small apron featuring a teddy bear on it and a gold ribbon choker, Dorothy – same costume but in blue checked fabric and extraordinarily short skirt, Pirate Cutey – same costume but in red and black, AND the worst I saw – French Maid – short black and white dress, lacey head piece, and GARTERS (which, for some reason, they didn’t put the garters on the model).
Tweens are typically anywhere from 8 to 12 years old.
I still have those pictures on my facebook profile if you guys want to see them. Let me know.
jenn_smithson: Lovely. Dress little girls like sexxxified grown women, and dress grown women like sexxxified little girls.
Sexy Abe Lincoln!
A friend of mine actually went as sexy Abraham Lincoln last year, to be ironic and mock the Sexy Costume Industry. The scary thing was how many people thought she was completely serious.
@That Queer Chick – Hilarious! I’ve never seen that before.
God am I glad I grew up having no concept of the sexxxy Halloween costume. For at least three years in middle/high school my friends and I were GI Joes – bought camo gear at the Army Surplus Store and called it a day. I wore my dad’s actual referee jersey one year – NOT tied up under my non-existent 11-year-old breasts. I know I wore more traditionally “girly” costumes as a small child – I was Rainbow Brite a couple years, a princess, a witch – but never was I ever in anything remotely sexy. So sad that little girls don’t have the luxury of not knowing they’ll be expected to be HAWT on Halloween in the very near future.
I did sexy/slutty a couple times in my early 20s, but these days if I wear anything at all to dress up, it’s usually my old college cheerleading uniform. Which certainly poses its own concerning gender implications, but it’s not midriff-baring or super short like a cheerleader Halloween costume. Hell, the liner that goes underneath the shell is a damn turtleneck. “Slutoween” is a thing of my past, at least until I have to deal with its encroachment on my hypothetical children.
Bring on the four horsemen.
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