by Julia Bluhm

My mother made me costumes
Made from colorful cloth and itchy Velcro,
Of mostly ballerina-princesses,
And fairies dressed in rainbow.

After that phase passed, I wasn’t stopping.
I got my first taste of online shopping.
I was too “grown-up” for mom’s designs,
But what I wanted was still hard to find.

All the zombies they sold had fishnet tights,

And the witches I saw just didn’t seem right.
I just wanted to be Hermione Granger,
But a lot of the costumes I saw seemed a lot stranger.

Halloween is a day where you find something new to be,
But all I found was a huge lack of variety.
For the girls who don’t want to be Monster High
The selection is sadly and disappointingly dry.

I was Helen Keller one Halloween…
That’s not something you’ll find in the magazine.
I could have been this panda, or this little Snow White.
But in Maine in the fall? Not fun! I’d get frostbite.

Pirates are scary, unless you’re a girl.
Why wear a skirt? And it’s too short to twirl!
And although 20% of the military is women…
The only girl costume I could find, strangely, was this one!

When did Halloween become a sexualized fashion show?
If we’re not “Devil Demonica”, where can we go?

 

Fed up with sexualized Halloween costumes? Talk back! We’re giving You’ve Been SPARKed! a spooky new spin this season, and we want you to join us: grab your markers, your post-its, and your cameras, hit the Halloween stores, and make shoppers think! Send your pics to sparkteam@sparksummit.com or post them on our Facebook page, and we’ll add them to our action album. And stay tuned for next week, when we’ll be showing off our favorite DIY costume ideas! –SPARK