WOMEN'S HALLOWEEN COSTUMES: NON-SEXY NEED NOT APPLY

 For most horror fanatics, Halloween is the most exciting part of our entire year.  For one night, it becomes socially acceptable for us to show off our nerd prowess without fear of judgement.  Now, of course I understand that we are all proud of our geekery year round, but the general populous is less likely to look down upon us around the witching hour.  It also shouldn't matter what the general public has to say about us, but for the sake of argument, let us all just accept the fact that we're more welcome to be spooky this time of year in contrast to say, Easter.  Moving on.  Halloween is a time of tricks, treats, and dressing up as whoever or whatever we please.  The weird thing, is that for women, we are forced to be whatever or whoever we please...within a very specific constraint.  Provocative. Before I even get into this argument, know that I am a HUGE advocate against Slut-Shaming.  If someone wants to dress a certain way, more power to them, this argument is not against women who choose to dress provocatively, it is an argument against perpetuating objectification for no other reason than to excuse objectification with a holiday "tradition".

Without divulging into the history of Halloween and all that jazz, in the western world it is generally accepted as a time of year where individuals dress up in costumes, throw parties, carve pumpkins, and eat an unmeasurable amount of sugar.  Costumes can range from common professions, beloved characters, super heroes, monsters, and of course, sexual fantasies.  Over the past few years, an unsettling trend of women's costumes has grown to a near epidemic status.  It would appear that for a woman to have a socially acceptable Halloween costume, she must wear one in a manner as provocative as humanly possible.  Again, let me emphasize that I have no issue with what a woman chooses to or to not wear.  However, when I walk into a Halloween costume emporium and have to choose between something baring my midriff, something baring my chest, or something so short I'd show my whispering eye if I sneezed, that is a sign of a problem.  The issue here isn't that women are dressing provocatively, the issue is that it would appear that highly sexualized costumes are our only option.  Perhaps worse is the fact that this idea has been so engrained into our skulls, women are starting to believe that it really is our only option.  Are there exceptions to this rule? Of course.  Unfortunately, exceptions are in the vast minority.  

It is true that men and women's clothing must be tailored differently simply because we're built differently. (See: Boobs and Hips)  However, please look at this photo above.  The costume to the left is a familiar Michael Myers costume inspired by the Halloween series.  The costume to the right?  The female version of the same costume.  Seriously. That's supposed to be a Michael Myers costume.  If you look, you'll notice an absence of a mask, a tighter fitting form, a more revealing top towards the breasts, and a set of "fuck-me" pumps.  I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sure Laurie Strode could have knocked the block off of "Michelle Myers".  The first image showcased in this article is the increasingly popular "Mrs. Krueger" costume, the female counterpart of Freddy.  I will admit that this is a costume that particularly tickles my fancy, but seriously...Freddy wore pants.  Freddy also had a face burned to all Holy Hell.  Of course, the woman couldn't have burns though, no.  Then no one would want to get her in the sack.

Perhaps the most alarming aspect of women's Halloween costume is how early the sexualization begins.  I won't even post some of the ridiculous things posted about children's costuming, but please read above the description of a "teen" costume.  Teen as in "more than likely too young to consent to sex".  The description says "...whimsical and girly but you are all grown up now so why not find out if big boys like to play with dolls!" Um. What? This sounds like something out of a kiddie-porn chat session. Remember, this costume is geared towards girls between the ages of 13-18, geared towards women who can't vote or in some instances drive or see an R-Rated movie without the help of mom and dad...AND THEY'RE TRYING TO MAKE THAT SEXY!? The most screwed up part about all of this is that we are still living in a country where lawyers will ask rape victims what they were wearing and yet women are still expected to dress like this on Halloween.  ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!

I'll admit that I'm guilty of dressing "slutty" on Halloween. I always do. I'm 22 years old and I am at college. However, instead of being a half naked "insert profession or object or character" here, I find a way to show of my horror chops as well.  Since starting college I've been a female Ash (complete with chainsaw arm), a Silent Hill nurse, a broken doll, and this year I'll be going as Laurie from Trick R Treat.  All of these costumes, I've had to make myself.  Why? Because not only is it next to impossible to find horror nerd costumes for a girl that aren't the ones featured above,but to find a costume in plus size? Get outta here...

"BUT MEN ARE OBJECTIFIED TOO!" You may cry. No. No they are not. Stop right there. You're wrong. Yes, there will be some skimpy and/or tight fitting costumes here and there, but NOT many.  Seriously, I could count on my fingers how many "sexualized" male costumes there were.  Hell, even the ones that are there are clearly for the empowerment of the man and not for the female gaze. The “sexy” costumes will either be ridiculously jokey with some sort of visual reference to a penis on the exterior of the costume, OR nothing special. Many of the "sexy" male costumes are just different colored boxers, sometimes with a set of suspenders.  The costume to the right is meant to be funny.  There's a reason the "Dick In A Box" video got so many hits, and it's not because it was sexually appealing to see Andy Sandburg gift wrap his johnson.  Of course I'm not saying that men aren't objectified at times, but in the world of Halloween costumes, men can do whatever they want, but if a woman doesn't dress completely risque, she's "doing it wrong".  This is a huge problem and unfortunately, because we keep dishing out the dough for these costumes, it's a problem that isn't going to be resolved anytime soon.

I cannot stress again that I have no qualms with women who decide to dress sexy for Halloween, I do it, I love to do it. It makes me feel good about myself. The problem is that women aren't allowed to make that decision.  Dressing sexy is our only option. Unless we make a costume by hand or forego the costumes all together and wear street clothes, women are forced to pick through the aisles of costumes with hemlines growing shorter and tops squeezing tighter.  We need options, we need choices, and unfortunately for us, the only decisions we get to make in Halloween costume selection is whether or not we're showing leg or breast this season.

WHEN EARNING YOUR RED WINGS REQUIRES A SWIFFER AND EXTENSIVE THERAPY: A REVIEW OF J. DOUGLAS SMITH'S THE PERIOD

As a functioning member of the female species I must take this time to admit that like my fellow XX chromosome sisters, I too suffer from the curse, the proof of Eve's weakness, the period.  I know, I know, I still cringe at the thought of my third grade health class when a wrinkly nurse with halitosis broke out a suitcase full of maxi pads and graphic pop up books about women bleeding for seven days without dying.  There's no way around it, menstrual cycles may be embraced by radical feminists as a beautiful act of our prowess as birthgivers and a sign of our transition into womanhood...but we know that's all a load of shit. Periods are gross. They're icky, they're inconvenient, they make you irritable, the cause you to retain water, they instill mood swings that would make All About Eve look like a romantic comedy, and cause debilitating stomach contractions that make ripping a uterus out with your bare hands sound like a pleasure cruise. Periods. Frackin'. Suck. This past weekend, my two best friends joined with my partner in crime, Zach Shildwachter, and myself endured 105 minutes of a film that I will pray to the holy lords of Tampax to erase from my memory.  J. Douglas Smith's feature film The Period is about a girl named Sharrie Heiman (yes, you read that correctly) who finds herself afflicted with an intense visit from her Aunt Flo. The film surrounds her struggle to plug it up with her pissy Georgia O'Keefe art inspired girlfriend Clitoria (I can't make this shit up), the obsessions of a perverted gynecologist, and other horrifying issues full of menstrual mayhem.  This film is a clustercuss of terrible camera work, horrendous acting, unintentionally brilliant puns, atmosphere resembling the love child between an acid trip & The Tim & Eric Awesome Show, editing that appears to have been completed by blind children with safety scissors, music that even Justin Beiber dubstep aficionados would cringe at, and more fake blood than anything Peter Jackson ever touched.  I wish I was exaggerating about all of this, but I'm not. I'm really, really not.

I am struggling on where to even begin with this review, so bear with me.  It opens with a rather gratuitously graphic and quite possibly seizure inducing female masturbation scene, which completely set the tone for the rest of the film. I mean, I've seen softer uses of vaginas in porn flicks on fuzzy cable channels than the borderline exploitation of muff shots in this film. At one point, there's a close up of not only what a hairy butthole looks like when releasing a fart, but also the opening of vaginal lips when shooting out an egg.  Again, I can't make this shit up.  There's horrible continuity issues like referencing spilled Tang when the bottle CLEARLY says Sunny D, and the plot is only understandable for about 35 minutes of the entire film.  The keep having cut scenes to what would appear to be a stereotypical tampon commercial (girl running in nature, comments like "be a goddess") but the graphics were made with MS paint or Microsoft WordArt at best.  There's a lot of unnecessary pushes for humor (Sharrie spraying period blood from her vagina on art students as she acts as a nude model, the pink extension underarms of Clitoria...or the fact her freaking name is Clitoria), and misuses of green screens that would make Megaladon look like Jurassic Park.

There's a catch, though.  I had a hell of a time watching this movie.  I really, really did.  I even laughed to the point of tears at the insanity of what I was sitting through.  For instance, plagued by the blood terrorizing her existence, Sharrie begins to hallucinate a giant, stomping, naked lower torso destroying a city with Godzilla style screams erupting from her ham wallet causing a bystander (a cameo from the director) to exclaim 'VAGJIRA!!!" A lovely nod in comparison to Clitoria's insult of "Clitty Kong" from previously in the film.  The dialogue seems to be nothing more than vagina and blood jokes strung together by a few complaints about doing extra laundry, the lack of Clitoria being able to munch on a fur burger, or getting blood on the floor...and I loved it.  It was truly insane, but this film completely took the Maude Lebowski style of art and ran with it.

It pains me to admit a film as horrendous as this could be a feminist horror film...but it totally is.  The film exploits the fact that women (and especially the female genitalia) are either feared, discarded, or worshiped simply because of something as ridiculous as a natural body cycle.  It isn't until towards the end of the film when it takes a short left out of the cyber/raver/punk/porn realm and into the poor man's Cannibal Holocaust that the true "moral" of the film is revealed.  It's almost depressing to think that it took a film about a never ending waterfall of poonani goo for someone to finally tackle the depressing truth of how menstrual cycles are handled by our society, but I doubt any one else was really up for the challenge.  I commend all of those involved for being able to sign a paper attaching their name to this vaginal voyage and you know something...I'll actually recommend it. I cannot agree that I'll have had the same opinion about this film had there been less alcohol involved, but that's neither here nor there ;)

BLACK CHRISTMAS: KEEPING THE FEAR DURING THE CHEERIEST TIME OF THE YEAR

I'm definitely going out on a limb when I make this confession, but I didn't see the original Black Christmas until about three years ago.  In my defense, I was only eighteen years old...and not Canadian.  Black Christmas isn't exactly a film that is just sitting around suburban video rental stores screaming "WATCH ME!".  I was only able to finally experience the film that ignited the flame of the horror movie fanatic's obsession with slasher films when I was given a copy of the DVD as a gift.  As the holiday season begins to rear it's ugly, LED blinking head, Day of the Woman is going to shine a divine light on a film that often goes overlooked.

What first attracted me to the film was the simple, yet believable storyline.  In typical horror fashion, the story is centered around some drunk and horny college kids disobeying Mom & Dad.  Things are only a little strange when the kids start receiving calls from a deranged caller making graphic, sexually inappropriate statements.  Now, what we tend to forget is that this film took place in the 1970's, a time when caller ID and *67 didn't exist.  They were still using rotary phones for God's sake.  Bart Simpson would have had a field day back in the 70's.  Since there was no way for anyone to tell who was calling, it made it even more horrifying to discover the calls were coming from inside the house.  Caller ID or not, knowing someone is in the house and screwing with you...is scarier than one would think.

Maybe it was just the filming styles of the 1970's, but the coloring of the film really added to the irk of it all.  I mean that literally.  Horror films in the 1970's didn't have these bright and vibrant CGI colorings the way horror films do now.  It had a very bleak and depressing feel even when the scary moments weren't happening. Bob Clark used a hell of a lot of interesting camera angles including the "point of view" shot which allowed audiences to see the world from the view of the psychopath, and added an element of danger towards the unsuspecting victims.  This concept was relatively new for slasher films and gave a claustrophobic feel.  To put it simply, this film created some of the horror staples that are executed in all horror subgenres today.

The ballsiest move was perhaps having the film take place around the holiday season.  When we think of films like Halloween, we expect to be scared.  It's the night of monsters and ghouls, if we're not scared, we're not doing it right.  However, Christmas is intended to be the polar opposite.  We're supposed to be cheerful, and covered in snow, and opening presents, and getting drunk because our parents ridicule us over family dinners, and watching 24 hour marathons of Bob Clark's other film.  We're not supposed to be hacked off one by one.  Throwing the audience completely out of their comfort zone only added to horror the audience would sit through.  This "fish out of water" concept helped pave the way for other slasher staples.  Putting gruesome occurrences in seemingly happy environments (babysitting, summer camps, school dances etc. etc.) became the most demanded situations for slasher films, and Black Christmas is what started it all. 

The most obvious of the slasher staple, is the female power shot.  While Halloween and Nightmare on Elm Street may have brought us the "final girls", Black Christmas is gushing with feminist overtones.  The film takes place in a sorority house and exposes the status struggle between sorority sisters.  Each of the characters represent a different type of woman in the 1970's and the film showcases these women that were often seen as rebellious during their time.  Olivia Hussey's portrayal of Jessica followed the VERY controversial topic of having an abortion.  Showing a woman making such a strong decision based on what was right for her body was almost unheard of at the time. The undertones of Jessica's abortion along with religious subtexts dealing with abortion vs. immaculate conception could take an entire novel's worth of analysis, but make sure the next time you watch the film, you look out for it.  Okay, okay.  Moving on.  Margot Kidder's Barbie, is the overtly sexual party girl that represented the women of the 1970's that were finally liberating themselves sexually and taking control of their sex life.  Women were actually enjoying sex and enjoying it for themselves, rather than for male satisfaction only.  Barbie was essentially one of the first "party girls" and she was one of the first female characters to be proud of her sexuality and paved the way for the horror archetype.  Clare, the "powerslut" to say the least, was the first one to admit about her sexual conquests and also the first one to bite the dust.  Thus ushering in the "sluts die first" rule that horror films have taken such a liking to.  To contrast, Andrea Martin's Phyllis was the innocent intellectual who inspired much of the characteristics of the modern "final girl".  Female archetypes in horror films are almost as prevalent as the racial archetypes and Black Christmas was one of the first films to blatantly expose them.  

This is definitely a must-see for any horror fan, and is (in my opinion) the grandmother of the slasher subgenre.  While it may get complaints for being a tad bit predictable (sans the twist ending), the film is only predictable because we've seen the format copied so many times before.  This film is the root of the basis for a good percentage of the modern horror films that we know and cherish today. Instead of sitting through 24 hours of Bob Clark's most famed Christmas film, take a trip down memory lane and dig deep into the foundations of what makes a quality horror film. 

...and if this isn't enough to convince you, John Saxon is in it. You're welcome.