Halloween: too much, too soon for our sexy pumpkin fed toddlers
I DON’T know how British people celebrate Halloween—with understated elegance and a solemn appreciation for tradition, no doubt—but future archaeologists will conclude American Halloween was a giant fertility festival, which is why everybody wears the skimpiest costumes they can even though, in most of North America, the last night of October is waaaaay too cold for that.
Discount retailer Walmart is even selling what it calls “naughty” costumes for toddlers this year. In context, “naughty” obviously doesn’t mean “refuses to eat vegetables,” “dropped her bedroom slippers in the fishtank” or other age-appropriate misbehaviours; it’s synonymous with sheer, skimpy and sexually scintillating, which is fine to market to adults and various older teenagers, but … three-year-olds, dude.
I don’t mean to sound like a Victorian here; it’s just that, having worked as an exotic dancer to put myself through school, I firmly believe anything profitable for me to wear at age 18 has no business appearing on a preschooler.
For less sexy costume options, the popular reality-TV show Duck Dynasty, about a family that got rich selling duck-hunting supplies, has inspired this season’s most popular Halloween costumes. Which wouldn’t be a problem except that wearing a Duck Dynasty T-shirt is all it takes to get an American kid sent home from school as a potentially scary threat, these days. The scariest trick-or-treaters this year will be the ones dressed up like duck hunters.
For Halloween last year, my fellow Americans spent $370 million on costumes for their pets, even though forcing animals to dress like Yoda or Boba Fett is guaranteed to make them hate you. (Not a hypothetical; this year, Lucasfilm teemed with a pet-supplies company to sell Star Wars outfits for dogs. Seriously, dog owners: don’t stick prosthetic Yoda ears over the dog’s real ones.)
Even worse, this Halloween crap has infested the stores here since August; Halloween proper’s still over a month away, yet Halloween season here in America is barely half-over.
And, finally, let us not forget the annual infestation of pumpkin-flavored everything in the American food and beverage supply. Pumpkin-spiced coffee. Pumpkin vodka. Pumpkin beer. Pumpkin everything in the donut shops.
Granted, the pumpkin invasion has more to do with autumn in general than Halloween in particular, but with undeniably Halloween-themed Jack O’Lanterns everywhere the pumpkins deserve no slack.
Posted: 26th, September 2013 | In: Reviews, The Consumer Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
