October 28th: Tricked for Treats

My mother spent most of my childhood complaining about the fact that there was no school on Martin Luther King Jr. Day or Columbus Day or, my personal favorite, Casimir Pulaski Day. She used to say that it was ridiculous for us to spend those days “celebrating” these great men outside of school when we could be learning about them in school.

You see, holidays meant to commemorate special times and people should come with education. All too often, though, we skip right over explaining why we have the celebration, and move right on to the pomp and circumstance (I still have no idea who Casimir Pulaski really was, although I do love getting the extra sleep in March).

Well, it’s that time of year again! That time where there is equal clamor by those desperately searching for the Halloween costume that will get the most attention, and those telling cautionary tales of the potential dangers of picking an offensive character to represent.

The level of competition for Halloween costumes has grown ever more fierce, with people desperate to come up with something that will catch everyone’s eye. This year, the Jameis Winston couples costume (one dressed as the Florida State football player, another dressed as crab legs) is a clever one. Ebola is an easy stab at news-based costumes. Of course, you can always go with the tried and true, adding “sexy” before either a profession or animal to get an easy (if not trashy) way of getting attention without putting in any extra effort.

While some are looking for the perfect get-up, others are adding their voice of reason to the conversation. Costumes have grown ever more offensive as feeble attempts at comedy drive the public toward caricatures of racial groups or other potentially insulting options. E! Online offered us their 18 costumes to stay away from, including Ray Rice, a Malaysian Airlines Passenger, and Michael Brown. (Thank you, E!, for putting this in your “News” section…)

My personal favorite is the fear associated with cultural appropriation on Halloween. Dressing up as a rapper or Indian princess are devastating examples of racial intolerance in the form of frivolous costumes.  We can do irreparable harm to these cultures if we are unaware of the potential negative ramifications of belittling their identities with goofy dressing up and abuse of meaningful symbolism.

The problem is, that is exactly what Halloween is all about.

Halloween is the most famous example of cultural appropriation in American history (with maybe the exception being Christmas being on December 25th, although that’s a different blog post). You see, Halloween originates in a Celtic tradition, meant to commemorate the new year, which they believed to take place on November 1st. On October 31st, according to the Celts, the membrane between the world of the living and the world of the dead was particularly thin, allowing for prophecy and sacrifice to please their deities. For a full history of the holiday, see History.com’s detailed description.

Even the tradition of trick-or-treating has roots in the relationship between the living world and spirit world. Poor children went from door to door, asking for treats in exchange for prayers for the souls of a homeowner's dead relatives. Not exactly the same thing as a snack-sized Snickers bar.

Every year, we go out of our way to look for costumes, buy candy, and celebrate the holiday. Yet we have no real idea what we’re recognizing. This was the religious practice for an entire culture, their version of New Years Eve. It is the equivalent to turning Easter into a cave exploration holiday.

So while we are up-in-arms over what costumes some decide to wear, we all need to remember that, no matter how you decide to dress up, there is cultural appropriation going on.

October 20th: The Eye Test

Turn on the TV right now. Pick a channel, any channel. It will only take a few minutes to get to a commercial break. What you see might surprise you.

American society has been working to better the way women are treated. Campaigns for higher awareness for the income gap have been doing a very good job of trying to bring awareness to the issues of gender-based discrimination in the workplace. Feminism has taken to blogging and columning, with an almost constant critique and analysis of every possible situation, from media to politics.

She's about to sell a cheeseburger, I promise.

But now we’re watching TV, and the commercial break has just begun. Maybe you’ll see the newest Miller Lite ad. You know which one I’m talking about; the one where Miller Lite takes credit for inventing subliminal advertising, while flashing images naked women rolling around in hops. Not that one? Maybe you’ll see the Hardee’s commercial where a woman sitting on an airplane in a cleavage dominated dress asks the man sitting next to her if he wants to joining the Mile High club (who would guess that means a sandwich?)

These are just two of a long list of commercials that use sexuality to sell a product. We are seeing a lot of progress in what is being said by the American public. The problem is waiting for the shift in the way Americans think.

My favorite barometer for the way Americans think is in our consumer culture. Advertising agents, you see, don’t really care about racism or sexism. They don’t care about fairness or morals. They don’t care who has the power, really. All they care about is whether it will make people spend their money.

You see, American advertising will adopt feminism as soon as it becomes financially responsible to do so. They will chase the financial bottom line, and do what the market dictates is necessary to get people’s money. Right now, as much as we think we’re making good progress, we still allow products to use sexy women to sell products, because we continue to buy them.

Products that target men are continuing to use sexualized imagery to get their audience's attention, and they won’t stop until we stop giving them the attention.

Women can also be part of the problem. In fact, one of the best examples is Cosmopolitan Magazine. Have you ever read the cover of a Cosmo? Sex tips dominate, as well as ways to get attention through the use of sexuality and beauty products. Is that a problem? Maybe not. But it doesn’t match the language being shared by most of the feminist blogging community about looking for value in a woman’s identity beyond her physical attributes.

Here’s where it gets tricky. Cosmo also does a lot of empowering of women. Women can read Cosmo and feel better about themselves, feel like they’re not alone, and read about strong, confident women who are highly successful. That is incredibly important and positive. The scary part, though, is that it is foraging a deep relationship between sexuality and a woman’s identity. A strong woman must be sexy, must have good sex, must have a man who she knows how to please. Those are very dangerous things to be linking in the minds of women who are trying to come up with an understanding of their identity.

There is a constant struggle to find ways to make the world a better place for women. We know we’re not there yet, and that there is plenty of work left to do. We do, though, need to be far more conscious of what we do with our eyes and our money, because it can have a huge impact on how the cultural landscape shifts.

I hate when people blame the media for things. I think the public and the media feed one another. There is a balancing act. The media tells the public what to believe, while the public tells media producers, through their spending habits, what they want to see. We now have the chance to choose what we want the media to say, as long as we’re being thoughtful of what we’re being told to think.