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Giving Children A Costume Choice

© Nancy Coulter

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I love Halloween. It has always been one of my favorite holidays. I'm not sure if it is the jack o'lanterns or the decorations or visiting the pumpkin patch or the spirit of the holiday, but ever since I was a child, I always looked forward to October 31.

As a child, it was a time to dress up and pretend for one day that I was whatever I wanted to be. One year I got to be a princess, another year I was a nurse, and another year I enjoyed pretending to be a ballerina. Anyone notice anything about these costumes? They are stereotypical girl costumes. Not once did I dress up as a doctor of a firefighter or a policeman or a monster. Those were "boy" costumes and they weren't right for little girls.

A boy wouldn't be caught dead dressing up as a nurse, a princess, or a ballerina. That would make him a "sissy". It would make him "less than" a man because he was pretending to be something that, according to gender stereotypes, he's not supposed to be. Little boys are supposed to dress up as powerful super heroes or scary monsters that make the little girls shreak in fright. They aren't supposed to dress up as something that might make them look like a... *gasp* GIRL!

Halloween costumes give us each a chance to be free. Kids plan months in advance about what they are going to dress up as for Halloween. Many schools have big Halloween parades, and it's always a big deal to see what everyone is dressing up as (that was one of my best childhood memories). Children shouldn't feel limited to their choices because they are a boy or a girl.

Now some of you are probably reading this and wondering why I'm making a mountain out of something as simple as a Halloween costume. Well, I'm not trying to take the fun out of costumes. I don't believe that gender-specific Halloween costumes are the root of the evil of sexism, but they don't help at all in the road to equality.

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