Look how far we've come

As a kid, I hated dressing up on Halloween.

I never like to be told what to do, and I think the idea that we HAD to dress up on Halloween always bothered me. Especially as a kid when not admitting you didn’t want to dress up would have made you almost as popular as you would have been if you had asked for more homework.

Some of my dislike with dressing up on Halloween stemmed from my dislike of dressing up like a girl, whether it was for school pictures, for holidays, and—worst of all—for tea parties. I completely loathed being forced to wear a dress and jewelry and makeup—YUK!—when I was young. To me, there was nothing worse. And to express my disgust, I even went so far as to wear jeans under the plaid Pilgrim dress my mother made my sister and I wear one Thanksgiving.

Then a funny thing happened . . .

. . . I grew up.

And I fell in love with dressing up.

Dresses, heels, make-up? Love them. And I’ve got the overstuffed closet to prove them.

But I always wonder, if I love it so much now, why did I hate dressing up so much when I was a kid?

Like I said, I think part of it was a control issue. I always hated doing things I was told I HAD to do or HAD to want to do.

But another part of it was about gender. I didn’t want to wear dresses because that would make me a girl, and when I was growing up, it was still acceptable to teach kids that boys were smarter, boys were faster, boys were better. So, of course, I was the quintessential tomboy—wanting to be as boyish as I could.

I suppose that changed when I grew up and realized how ridiculous it was to think boys are better than girls. And, thankfully, around the same time I learned to like my body a little bit (it would be years before I would fully accept it), making me want to wear more feminine attire.

Since then I’ve been all in favor of wearing clothes that make you feel womanly and even hot.

But what I still don’t get is the desire to dress like a prostitute on Halloween. Sure, I like to look and feel sexy, but I respect myself too much to wear a skirt that barely covers my southern hemisphere or a neckline that plunges to my equator.

But I must be the only one who feels that way because everywhere I looked on Sunday night, I saw young women—even girls!—dressed in “slutty” costumes. As another blogger pointed out, the female trick-or-treaters were dominated by sexy schoolgirls, dirty nurses, “Captain Booty Pirates,” "Sexy Scotty" (pictured above), and the “Playboy Touchdown Team.”

Huh?

When did Halloween turn into a parade of tarts-in-training?

Yes, I grew up in an era of boy power, but I’m not sure I like the other side of the coin—girls empowering themselves to fulfill male fantasies—and I worry that growing up this way will make our young girls even more obsessed with body image thany they were.

Kind of makes me want to be a tomboy again.

THAT GUY by guest blogger Maciena Justice

Jerry the “boy-man”* walks into the classroom in washed-out jeans with holes in the knees. He is wearing a blazer over his t-shirt, his hair is styled with gel, and he sports aviator sunglasses.

The message he wants to send is that he controls the world. And if his look didn't say it, his pompous tone makes it clear he thinks he is above it all.

Women swoon over him, adding to the air bubble that is his inflated ego. He walks with his shoulders squared, oozing an air of supremacy.

He enters class late, expects extensions on his work, and acts as if he is entitled to all these treats just because he is breathing.

His smile, as he knows, can make a girl’s breath hitch, and he uses this knowledge every chance he gets.

He’s that guy.

And Jerry is proud of being that guy. He likes what it gets him.

But Jerry made a crucial mistake one day—he opened his mouth and his vile, uneducated views flooded out of his lips: “I’m never dating a woman who’s past her prime,” he said. “Varicose veins are enough to keep me away. I won't ever date a woman over forty.”

A classroom is not the place to share your feelings on dating. Nor is a class with fifteen women the place to attack women’s bodies.

But Jerry has balls. He doesn’t care. He said what he said and has the detached nonchalance to back it up.

After a few of us lose our shit with him, the instructor gets us back on track, and Jerry seems unscathed.

But when he is old and grey, I hope he realizes that appearance isn’t everything. I hope he learns that imperfection is, in its own way, kind of perfect.

* Names have been changed.

The shoe on the other foot

199 pounds

This weekend Dave and I went to see Mother and Child, a gut-wrenching film about the adoption process told from the point of view of three different woman played by Annette Benning, Kerry Washington, and Naomi Watts in her best role ever. (Samuel L. Jackson also delivers an amazing and refreshingly subtle performance.)

It's a very good film, and I recommend it to everyone even though it just misses the mark a few times.

What's interesting about this movie from a body issues perspective is the character played by Jimmy Smits—Paco—who is a love interest for Annette Benning's character, Karen.

When Karen meets Paco, she describes him to her mother as "heavyset." Call me crazy, but it's not the first thing I would say to describe Jimmy Smits (pictured below looking smoking hot on a press junket for the film).

(Then again, the woman is married to Warren Beatty in real life, so maybe she picked up some of his attitude.)

When Paco and Karen go out for coffee, he orders apple pie as well, explaining, "I can never resist apple pie" with a smile that would melt the ice caps. Every woman in the theatre was swooning, but not Karen. She says, "Well, maybe you should."

Despite this auspicious start, the two end up together, and when Karen meets his daughter, the two women discuss the fact that he needs to lose weight—right in front of him!

As all of this was happening, I kept thinking, what the f***?!

Jimmy Smits is heavyset?

Jimmy Smits needs to turn down the apple pie?

What kind of parallel universe are we living in???!

I have yet to discuss this in detail on my blog, but most of us know that live in a world where male actors are ALWAYS bigger than their female co-stars. The recent romantic comedy Couples Retreat offered the best evidence of this I've ever seen when the four couples stripped down to their bathing suits. At that moment, four women stood on one side in perfect, movie-star shape while, on the other side, four out-of-shape men sheepishly revealed their bulging middles.

And let's not forget the plethora of television shows that have featured bigger men with tiny little women . . . King of Queens, Still Standing, According to Jim, Frasier, Seinfeld, and ironically NYPD Blue. The list goes on and on.

In our society, men are allowed to be overweight—either a little overweight or a lot overweight—but woman are not.

If a woman is the slightest bit curvy, she needs to go on a diet. If a man has a little extra weight around his middle, he's normal.

So when I saw Paco getting so much flak over a slightly larger middle, I couldn't help but laugh. Finally, the shoe was on the other foot. Finally, a man knows what it's like to be under such tight scrutiny.

There's only one tiny little problem—all of this happened only in the movies. This means that, for now, all of us women will have to dream of a time when men are held the same standards we are in real life.