French maids, sultry secretaries and no doubt a few virginal Anastasia Steele’s will all be making appearances this Halloween Night. But for many men and women putting together a Halloween costume is less about the scare factor and more about the sex factor.
After the unprecedented success of 50 Shades of Gray, this year women in particular are likely to be as confident as ever to display their sexuality. One of the most remarkable aspects of the phenomenon was it was women bringing sex into everyday life as they read the book on trains, cafe and lunch break. Just a quick dose of arousal before it’s back to the grind stone. And that is what Halloween is all about.
This year it started when Kim Kardashian tweeted pictures of herself shopping for a Halloween Costumes in L.A., all of which were chosen to extenuate her ample assets “Rawarrrrrr!” she teases, “Shopping for Halloween Costumes.” Seizing the opportunity the tabloids ran with photo galleries of top 10 sexy celebrity Halloween costumes. And right on cue, feminist blogs began the annual demonization of the women to don the Risqué outfits and those who promote them. They talk of the hyper-commercialisation of Halloween and how sex is used to ‘sell’ it in the same way it’s used to sell just about everything else.
But this is just another calendar date in the sexualisation is slavery versus sexual empowerment debate which has been raging among women since they first realised that showing a bit more leg can sometimes get them ahead in life. A worthy, but heavy debate, and its Halloween- surly time to let loose and have some fun?
Yes, Halloween, like everything else in western society and been sexualised for commercial gain, but unlike Mrs Clause costumes that would make a French maid blush or Easter’s Playboy bunnies, Halloween remains rooted to its ribald history and at least in this respect – nothing has changed. Old customs find new ways of expression and it would appear especially at Halloween. Even the elaborately carved pumpkin began as a humble turnip, scooped out to create a simple lantern.
Initially as autumn harvests were brought in, people took stock of what they had prepared for the winter and then they celebrated by praising gods of harvest, fruits and seeds, the gods of reproduction- and it was sexy then too. Halloween has a long and fractured history with origins in the world’s pagan Harvest Festivals and is generally celebrated in some format wherever autumn descends.
Even when early Christians rolled all these festivals into one 'All Saints Day' it was regularly celebrated with costume parades that descended into wild parties and licentiousness. Up to the mid-18th century it was celebrated in rural areas with ritual fertility rites and cities erupted in carnival-style parties.
With the emergence of Victorian morals, Halloween became less public and more a private, family holiday. Costumes became more demure, homemade, and it became an event that was largely focused on children. But, it wasn’t long before opportunities to shed the daily obligations of manners, humility and chastity were seized upon by adults too and Halloween could scarcely escape its rather virile origins.
By the turn of the century children celebrated the ghouls and ghosts that emphasised the pagan and the Gothic. Meanwhile adults were inspired by the emerging pop culture and started to use Halloween to emulate the sirens of the silver screen and an excuse to show a little more flesh than was usually acceptable. Then when Hollywood started making heroes for kids, they adopted their guises at Halloween too.
By now the deconstruction of this strict moral code is almost complete with a particularly rapid decent in recent times and we regularly see displays of and everyday outfits designed to titillate and excite. Raucous parties fuelled by alcohol and lust are a standard weekend for many. But at Halloween it has an added Oomph! as the feast-day continues to invite modern revellers to draw on its origins to inspire costumes and capers.
So perhaps what we are seeing at Halloween is simply all the layers of traditions past piled on top of one another, from trick or treat to the humble origin of the carved pumpkin as a turnip. Bonfires harking back to pagan times are still lit to ward off evil spirits with effigies of Guy Fawkes thrown on top.
And so it would seem that the costume parades of the All Hallows were bound to find a place in modern society where we still celebrate bounty and are partial to a carnival; where the call to emulate screen sirens is in the daily papers and we still need an escape from the daily rules and routines.
Initially as autumn harvests were brought in, people took stock of what they had prepared for the winter and then they celebrated by praising gods of harvest, fruits and seeds, the gods of reproduction- and it was sexy then too. Halloween has a long and fractured history with origins in the world’s pagan Harvest Festivals and is generally celebrated in some format wherever autumn descends.
Even when early Christians rolled all these festivals into one 'All Saints Day' it was regularly celebrated with costume parades that descended into wild parties and licentiousness. Up to the mid-18th century it was celebrated in rural areas with ritual fertility rites and cities erupted in carnival-style parties.
With the emergence of Victorian morals, Halloween became less public and more a private, family holiday. Costumes became more demure, homemade, and it became an event that was largely focused on children. But, it wasn’t long before opportunities to shed the daily obligations of manners, humility and chastity were seized upon by adults too and Halloween could scarcely escape its rather virile origins.
By the turn of the century children celebrated the ghouls and ghosts that emphasised the pagan and the Gothic. Meanwhile adults were inspired by the emerging pop culture and started to use Halloween to emulate the sirens of the silver screen and an excuse to show a little more flesh than was usually acceptable. Then when Hollywood started making heroes for kids, they adopted their guises at Halloween too.
By now the deconstruction of this strict moral code is almost complete with a particularly rapid decent in recent times and we regularly see displays of and everyday outfits designed to titillate and excite. Raucous parties fuelled by alcohol and lust are a standard weekend for many. But at Halloween it has an added Oomph! as the feast-day continues to invite modern revellers to draw on its origins to inspire costumes and capers.
So perhaps what we are seeing at Halloween is simply all the layers of traditions past piled on top of one another, from trick or treat to the humble origin of the carved pumpkin as a turnip. Bonfires harking back to pagan times are still lit to ward off evil spirits with effigies of Guy Fawkes thrown on top.
And so it would seem that the costume parades of the All Hallows were bound to find a place in modern society where we still celebrate bounty and are partial to a carnival; where the call to emulate screen sirens is in the daily papers and we still need an escape from the daily rules and routines.
No comments:
Post a Comment