{"id":1916,"date":"2010-10-31T21:04:43","date_gmt":"2010-11-01T02:04:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/girlwpen.com\/?p=1916"},"modified":"2010-10-31T21:04:43","modified_gmt":"2010-11-01T02:04:43","slug":"mama-wpen-just-how-early-does-halloween-sexism-begin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/2010\/10\/31\/mama-wpen-just-how-early-does-halloween-sexism-begin\/","title":{"rendered":"MAMA W\/PEN: Just How Early Does Halloween Sexism Begin?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"My twins turned one last week. She Writes<\/a>, the start-up I’ve been nurturing, turned 1.25. Needless to say, this is the year Halloween nearly blew me by.<\/p>\n

I bah-humbugged it all the way to Tuesday. While shopping for diaper wipes online on Wednesday, a neon orange tagline from the crypt\u2014\u201cLast minute deals on Halloween costumes!\u201d\u2014caught my eye. Who in their right mind could resist images of cuddly babies in bear suits? I landed on a bee costume for Baby Girl (just $12!) and a dragon suit for Baby Boy ($18). The joy of these purchases? Priceless. And that\u2019s how it hit me: At one year old, my babies were people. People who wouldn’t remember what they wore for their first real Halloween, but people who would newly experience the magic of disguise.<\/p>\n

So what do the disguises I chose for these here babies say to them, to you, to me? Bees are busier and daintier than dragons, and they make honey, though let\u2019s not forget: they sting. Dragons lope, and breathe fire. I thought about a ladybug for my son, to match my daughter\u2019s bee, then vetoed it. He\u2019s really more a dragon-y type of guy. And so it goes. Gendering\u2014imposed by even the feminist among us\u2014begins.<\/p>\n

\u201cBabies are born to parents who have a host of assumptions and expectations about gender, whether or not they consciously endorse those expectations. Studies have shown that parents have a tendency to see boys as more boyish and girls as more girlish than they actually are,\u201d says Cordelia Fine,<\/a> author of the new book Delusions of Gender<\/a><\/em>, in a recent interview at Salon<\/a>. Until they reach age two, my babies apparently won\u2019t know which side of the gender divide they\u2019re on. Gender, at this early stage, is what we heap on.<\/p>\n

So why all this fuss around costumes and kids? Because eventually, it matters (and stay tuned, Penners, for Peggy Orenstein’s Cinderella Ate My Daughter<\/em><\/a>, coming soon!). Though my babies are only one, in an era when pre-packaged girl costumes are sluttier-than-thou<\/a> and boy costumes are more violent than ever and make Freddy Krueger look quaint, masquerade is rarely the innocent thing it seemed in the days when my friends and I dressed as a bunch of grapes.<\/p>\n

Dressing up\u2014whether it unleashes a hidden identity or helps us try on a role\u2014makes us feel, deepens our sense of play, enlargens our sense of who and what we are. And dressing up the way a sexist culture tells us to makes us small, current articles in defense of Slutoween aside<\/a>.<\/p>\n

To be sure, at this stage in my children’s life, this whole debate is a lot less about them and a lot more about me.\u00a0 But here’s my question: at what age do new parents like me need to start to care?\u00a0 At my babies’ pre-linguistic stage, can’t Halloween be just what it’s supposed to be\u2026light and silly and fun?\u00a0 Or are costumes–like gender, perhaps, itself–always already predetermined scripts, coded so heavily with trickery that we can’t enjoy the treat?<\/p>\n

Can a dragon and a bee ever just be…a dragon and a bee?<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

(For a fellow traveler’s internal dilemma on it all, see Lynn Harris’ “Raising Girls in Princess Culture: Does it really affect girls\u2019 gender roles?”<\/a> over at Babble last week.)<\/p>\n

I posted a partial version of this post on Friday at www.SheWrites.com, and used the photo of my twins to kick off a caption contest.<\/a><\/em> Got a caption for it?\u00a0 Do share by posting it there! <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My twins turned one last week. She Writes, the start-up I’ve been nurturing, turned 1.25. Needless to say, this is the year Halloween nearly blew me by. I bah-humbugged it all the way to Tuesday. While shopping for diaper wipes online on Wednesday, a neon orange tagline from the crypt\u2014\u201cLast minute deals on Halloween costumes!\u201d\u2014caught […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1902,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21107],"tags":[21273,21387,21395,21690],"class_list":["post-1916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mama-w-pen","tag-cordelia-fine","tag-gender-studies","tag-girls","tag-peggy-orenstein"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1902"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1916\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}