Data and musings on Halloween costumes for girls
I was in a coffee shop downtown trying to get some writing done as the vendors started setting up for the big weekly farmers market on the street outside. In honor of Halloween some downtown businesses, including the coffee shop I was writing in, were giving out candy to trick-or-treating children on farmers market night, so once that started there was a steady stream of small children in costume. After watching for a while I started to get curious about exactly how prevalent princess costumes were among the girls, so I started writing down the costumes for all the girls who came in for maybe an hour and a half.
Obviously these data are not representative of the country or even my little city, just the location I happened to be. I counted only children, not older teens or adults (those who looked under 13 or so), who were presenting as female (not including children in hoods and masks or other costumes that made gender impossible to guess). I didn't ask the kids or parents what they were supposed to be, so there was a certain amount of guesswork in figuring out what to call the costumes. Here are some figures from the results.
Total girls: 92
Princesses (both identifiable Disney princess characters and fancy princess-style dresses): 38 (41.3% of total).
Most popular costume: Elsa from Frozen by a mile, 14 girls (15.2% of all the girls)
Superheroines: 10 (10.8%). Includes four each of Wonder Woman and Supergirl, one Batgirl, and one Captain America in a tutu.
Animals: 5
Specific characters other than princesses and superheros: 4
Cultural/Historical: 8
Offensive cultural appropriation (a subcategory of cultural/historical): 2 white girls dressed as Native Americans (note that the parents are the ones who should know better here). The only Day of the Dead facepainting I saw was on people who appeared to be Latina.
Mythical/Supernatural: 12
Occupations: 5 (2 pirates, one each of astronaut, boxer, and police officer)
Objects: 5
Quirky dress/Unidentifiable: 5
My personal favorite costumes: Wednesday Addams (on a wee toddler), an Astronaut, the TARDIS, the aforementioned Captain America in a tutu.
There is nothing wrong with liking princesses. However, I do think there is a problem in the messages our culture is sending little girls when over 41% of them are being dressed as or choosing to be princesses, far more than any other category of costumes. There are so many other things to want to be beyond the princess attributes of beautiful and kinda spunky, yet that is overwhelmingly the narrative pushed on little girls.
I do find it interesting and perhaps encouraging that the overwhelmingly most popular princess right now, Elsa, has no romance plotline. She may wear beautiful dresses and live in a castle, but it occurs to me that her story is almost more like a superhero story than the stories of many of the other Disney girls. Elsa's story is about feeling different and isolated, trying to hide a true identity behind a public persona, finding one's power, screwing up monumentally with that power, and finally taking responsibility and finding acceptance as the unique, powerful person she is. In contrast, her sister Anna, who is made out to be the audience POV character most of the movie and has romantic plotlines in addition to her sisterly love plotline, is much less popular. I saw four girls as Anna, but they were all in the company of an Elsa. Either only girls with a sister (or perhaps certain close friends) identify as Anna, or nobody wants to be Anna and they only get persuaded to be her as part of a set after losing the argument about who can be Elsa.
I don't really know where I'm going with this, except that I hope that in 2018 a massive surge of Captain Marvels makes Princess Sparklefists the princess of choice. Little girls deserve to fly.
Obviously these data are not representative of the country or even my little city, just the location I happened to be. I counted only children, not older teens or adults (those who looked under 13 or so), who were presenting as female (not including children in hoods and masks or other costumes that made gender impossible to guess). I didn't ask the kids or parents what they were supposed to be, so there was a certain amount of guesswork in figuring out what to call the costumes. Here are some figures from the results.
Total girls: 92
Princesses (both identifiable Disney princess characters and fancy princess-style dresses): 38 (41.3% of total).
Most popular costume: Elsa from Frozen by a mile, 14 girls (15.2% of all the girls)
Superheroines: 10 (10.8%). Includes four each of Wonder Woman and Supergirl, one Batgirl, and one Captain America in a tutu.
Animals: 5
Specific characters other than princesses and superheros: 4
Cultural/Historical: 8
Offensive cultural appropriation (a subcategory of cultural/historical): 2 white girls dressed as Native Americans (note that the parents are the ones who should know better here). The only Day of the Dead facepainting I saw was on people who appeared to be Latina.
Mythical/Supernatural: 12
Occupations: 5 (2 pirates, one each of astronaut, boxer, and police officer)
Objects: 5
Quirky dress/Unidentifiable: 5
My personal favorite costumes: Wednesday Addams (on a wee toddler), an Astronaut, the TARDIS, the aforementioned Captain America in a tutu.
There is nothing wrong with liking princesses. However, I do think there is a problem in the messages our culture is sending little girls when over 41% of them are being dressed as or choosing to be princesses, far more than any other category of costumes. There are so many other things to want to be beyond the princess attributes of beautiful and kinda spunky, yet that is overwhelmingly the narrative pushed on little girls.
I do find it interesting and perhaps encouraging that the overwhelmingly most popular princess right now, Elsa, has no romance plotline. She may wear beautiful dresses and live in a castle, but it occurs to me that her story is almost more like a superhero story than the stories of many of the other Disney girls. Elsa's story is about feeling different and isolated, trying to hide a true identity behind a public persona, finding one's power, screwing up monumentally with that power, and finally taking responsibility and finding acceptance as the unique, powerful person she is. In contrast, her sister Anna, who is made out to be the audience POV character most of the movie and has romantic plotlines in addition to her sisterly love plotline, is much less popular. I saw four girls as Anna, but they were all in the company of an Elsa. Either only girls with a sister (or perhaps certain close friends) identify as Anna, or nobody wants to be Anna and they only get persuaded to be her as part of a set after losing the argument about who can be Elsa.
I don't really know where I'm going with this, except that I hope that in 2018 a massive surge of Captain Marvels makes Princess Sparklefists the princess of choice. Little girls deserve to fly.