OPINON: Sexologist Michelle Hope explores the history of Halloween celebrations and the role of sexuality behind the tradition of wearing seductive costumes
As a self-identified intersectional hood feminist, I love the freedom that Halloween offers to express oneself in the campiest and sluttiest of outfits.
This phenomenon has always intrigued me, and as a sexologist, I am perfectly pro-Halloween and all its campy, cleavage-wielding scantily clad costumes. I often wonder, however, why society pressures female-identified people to dress as scantily clad as possible.
When did Halloween go from haunting to hedonistic?
To better understand this evolutionary occurrence, I took a deep dive into the history of Halloween and its spooky annals. The origins of Halloween are rooted in the pagan practices of the ancient Celtic holiday, Samhain.
This day signified the time in which celebrants would welcome in the harvest while honoring the beginning of “the dark half of the year” and the night in which the veil between the physical world and the spirit world breaks down, allowing the opposing worlds to collide and fostering an opportunity for interaction between humans and dwellers of the Otherworld.
America, however, would not see the onset of Halloween traditions until the middle of the 19th century. Thus, while annual autumn festivities were familiar, it was the Irish fleeing the Potato Famine that would bring us the Halloween tradition of trick or treat and costumes we know today that would further fuel the popularity of Halloween celebrations nationally.
Then in 1907, a Pittsburgh paper reported the masquerading of girls as tomboys on Halloween. At this time, individuals experienced persecution through an arrest for cross-dressing, and homosexuality was a crime. However, by 1912, there was such a prevalence of cross-dressing in Pittsburgh that the police declared that they would no longer stop any cross-dressers during the holiday.
Source: Are sexy Halloween costumes empowering or problematic?
