It’s the season of ghouls, zombies, and vampires and princesses, bunnies, and witches. Perhaps there is no other time in the year in which “doing gender” is so visibly emphasized: masculinity is exaggerated into bearded, saw-wielding lumberjacks and phallic objects galore; femininity is projected as over-sexed nurses, wayward police officers, and sassy school teacher. And while these constructions of gender are problematic in that they portray women as objects of desire and men as dominant, Halloween is a window into the collective imagination of how a society values gender.
West and Zimmerman (2013/[1987]) provide a framework for understanding the sociological construction of gender. Being female or male does not make a woman or a man; no, women and men, femininity and masculinity are formed via interaction. In these interactions, we provide subtle and sometimes not so subtle queues about our gender. Along these lines,
A Drag Queen in a Performance of “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.”
females can do masculinity, and males can do femininity. Think of a female police officer; she often walks with a masculine gait and speaks in a monotone and direct style that conveys her power over the situation. In this capacity, she is doing masculinity.
But, perhaps one of the most telling examples of how gender is constructed is the drag queen: males who construct
womanhood in their appearance by tucking their penis and using objects and clothes to create the appearance of breasts. Drag queen’s overt feminine behavior further convinces bystanders that they are indeed a feminine woman—despite their boyish hips, deep voice, or square jaw. Such a performance clearly shows us that femininity has little to with genitals.
In fact, sociologists have often pointed to drag queens, naming them as the greatest examples of “queering” gender to date. In this sense, it’s important to distinguish drag queens from transgendered or transsexual individuals. Drag queens are males who appear as women and do femininity. Queens do not wish to have their penis remove or breasts surgically implanted; many value the ability to alternate between man/woman and masculine/feminine. On the other hand, trans* folk are those who feel that their biological make-up does not align with their sex category or gender. These individuals often—but not always—seek to fully become the sex/gender opposite of their puerperal assigned sex (sex assigned at birth). Trans* folk do not wish to alternate between male/female, man/woman, or masculine/feminine, but live on one side of that binary. Queering gender means to undo that binary. Males who are biologically male, but present like women and act effeminately blur the lines between the sexes/genders. In a sense, they are neither men, nor women while in drag; straight men have reported that they felt sexually aroused around drag queens, which further demonstrates that gender is not the clean and neat picture that we may have thought.
And so we arrive at All Hallows Eve. If you turn on your TV or venture to a downtown, you’ll
Women’s Halloween costumes emphasize erotic desire and availability.
likely see women dressed scantily in mock nurse uniforms and men dressed as Superman or
Men’s Halloween costumes are less often about erotic themes, and instead focus on dominance and other features of manhood.
a football player. Each of these costumes are not only deeply gendered, they also emphasize what we as a society value in gender: women as sexy, desirable, and available and men as powerful, strong, and dominant. Similarly, drag queens emphasize femininity. Unfortunately, these ideas and manifestations of gender are not bound to a holiday, but expand into wage differentials, domestic and sexual
violence, and a world of discrimination that women regularly confront. As much fun as it is to overplay gender on Halloween, this holiday allows us to see why young girls come to see their most valuable attribute as their body and why young boys learn that power and
dominance are at the root of what it means to a man.
For this week of special Halloween tweeting, think of ways in which this holiday is gendered. Post one tweet that exemplifies manhood and Halloween and another that exemplifies womanhood and Halloween. In your caption, give a specific reason about how this person/object belongs to the sex category they are portraying (man/woman). In your reply tweets, comment about how the photo reifies gender (reproduces gender) stereotypes or how it attempts to “queer” or remove sex category/gender from the binary.
The Official Sociology Blog of Michael J. Staley 