There was a time when I would walk the aisles of Halloween costumes and make cranky faces. "That skirt is so short!" and "Why did they need to add glitter to that?" and "Way to dumb down a perfectly good idea for a costume, morons" are all things that passed through my mind.
And then last year Alexis asked to be Elvis.
Alexis' obsession with Elvis had already been going strong for over a year when she came up with the idea to honor the icon while begging strangers for candy. I thought it was a GENIUS idea, so I quickly pulled out my phone and began searching the internet for costumes.
Each one I showed to Alexis was met with the same response, "That's a boy costume. I want a girl costume."
If you've been around these parts for a while, you already know this, but I am not a card carrying member of the "girl stuff" club. I hate glitter and pink. I think having more than two pairs of shoes is pointless. I'm not interested in fashion or makeup. Heck, I've never in my life had a manicure nor do I want to. Boys can play with dolls and girls can play with trucks because toys don't discriminate based on what you're hiding in your underwear.
That said, the world does at times discriminate based on what you're hiding in your underwear. I recently had a conversation with a friend where we both concluded that if you don't come across something sexist at least once a week, it's because you have your eyes closed and are covering your ears with your hands. Sexism is alive and well, my friends.
While I'm walking around beating my "girls rule and deserve better" drum, Alexis beats her own drum. The difference is that while she says girls rule and deserve better, she thinks girl power is best expressed while wearing cute shoes and throwing glitter.
Alexis likes things that she considers feminine. Period.
And that's why I spent a few hours last year sneakily "girling up" an Elvis costume. I had to find one that I hadn't already shown to Alexis. Then I had to hide the packaging. Finally, I spent time in front of a sewing machine making the waist a little more fitted and the legs a little more snug. If it hadn't worked, if Alexis hadn't decided that the more fitted and "cuter" version was acceptable as a girl costume, I would have made Elvis' trademark Flame jumpsuit into a dress. I had the fabric and was fully prepared to do it.
So while you're crying about how the boy version of a firefighter costume is fantastic but the girl version needs to lose the short skirt, I'm over here thinking that there is room for both versions. There are little girls who want to be firefighters, but they want to be cute while they do it because, well, they're little girls who happen to like short skirts.
Maybe the problem isn't that the girl and boy versions of costumes are so different; maybe the problem is that they're labeled "girl" and "boy" in the first place. Perhaps if we put all of the police officer costumes together, whether they're realistic or sparkly, and just let kids pick which version they like without first checking their parts, maybe this whole thing would be a heck of a lot simpler.
