SANDWICH CHAIN SUBWAY recently released a diet ad to ensure that us women don’t scare any kids while we’re roaming the streets this Halloween in our sexy Snow White costumes. Queue buckets of outrage and the ad was quickly banned.
You see, Halloween has been gradually transforming from a night that commemorated our ancient superstitions into a night that exists as a way to get off with a Catwoman whose costume came in a clear plastic bag and cost €45. But quibbling over whether it’s OK to go the full strumpet – or better for a lady to use Halloween as an opportunity to show off her intellect and hidden depths – is a vicious debate with little consensus.
In 2004, Mean Girls articulated what everyone thought but hadn’t yet put into words about Halloween: “Halloween is the one night a year when girls can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it.” Too true. But a decade later only half of this is true and the so-called ‘Slutoween’ phenomenon has become such a Salem witch hunt.
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Policing sexuality
Now, I probably wouldn’t dress like Regina George outside my house if you paid me, mainly because I couldn’t ever pull off something that skimpy. Still, 31 October is the one night of the year that we’re able to tune out all of society’s confusing expectations of what we should or shouldn’t be when it comes to how we look and how we should cover up our bodies if they’re larger than a size 8.
We’ve all been at that party where a provocatively dressed woman walks in and immediately ups the bitchiness factor in the room. According to a new study, there’s real science behind it. A group of researchers dressed a woman up in “sexy” clothes and sent her to classes at a Toronto university. They then measured the response and found that how she was dressed changed how she was viewed: raised eyebrows and tutting from all.
As this study makes clear, women always police other women’s sexuality. It reminds us, too, of what we already know: that policing does tangible damage to women’s relationships with other women. And it seems that the bonds of the sisterhood are stronger in midwinter than during summertime’s flimsier outfits.
While it’s not new that women are competitive and view those who push the sexual envelope as suspicious (because they are competition), will it ever end? Just think about the internal dialogue each time you meet one of your girlfriends. ‘Why is she wearing those low-rise jeans that showcase her belly ring so obviously?’ ‘Why is she showing off cleavage in the morning?’ And there’s plenty of self-doubt in our observations too. ‘She’s skinnier than me’ or ‘She’s got better legs’. You see, the bitter truth is that a woman can hurt you more than any man. They can make you feel twisted, bitter and resentful.
Stop slut-shaming
Ultimately, whether Slutoween is empowering or degrading depends on the individual woman’s sense of self. It’s not as black-and-white as being attention-seeking or empowered. Maybe some women are simply taking advantage of one of the few evenings during which they don’t feel sexually inhibited and flaunt the results of their barre regime in a flesh-flashing number. Maybe others like that Slutoween is a time when body image doesn’t dictate what one can or can’t ‘get away with’ wearing. Probably everyone just wants to have fun dressing up and letting loose for a night.
We can’t call ourselves liberal until we stop slut-shaming. The bottom line is that it all comes back to the awful fact that we also think women in revealing costumes are asking for trouble. It’s why we blame the rape victim for daring to wear a miniskirt.
Still, I keep dreaming of a world where “slut” doesn’t even make sense as an insult, where communities do not further abuse rape victims, and where a woman can choose to be sexually active (or sexually passive) without shame. This is why, sisters, I’m zipping myself into my tightest nurse’s outfit and twerking it up.
Lorraine Courtney is a freelance journalist. Follow her on Twitter @lorrainecath.
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