Backers of our Kickstarter project will get to vote on which new costumes we do for 2013. This series of posts is designed to briefly introduce the many notable women and legendary figures we’ll be considering.
Baba Yaga is the legendary witch of Slavic folklore, especially Russian fairy tales. She lives on the edge of the forest in a hut that stands and moves on chicken legs. Baba Yaga herself fills the hut from end to end, stretched out on her stove with her nose growing into the ceiling. She travels through the air in a mortar, pushing herself along with a pestle and sweeping away her tracks with a broom. She also likes to eat people.
Is Baba Yaga just a witch, or the debased form of an earlier Slavic goddess? Nobody knows for sure, but it’s interesting to speculate. She certainly is very powerful, and some of the details in the fairy tales suggest deity-like attributes. She’s also not entirely evil; sometimes she can be downright helpful. This has led many scholars to see her as the remnant of a pre-Christian goddess with both benign and malevolent aspects. Whatever the case, Baba Yaga is one of the most delightfully weird and intriguing figures in European mythology.
Think we should add a Baba Yaga costume to Take Back Halloween? Make sure you join our Kickstarter project so you can vote!
Sojourner Truth (1797-1883) was one of America’s greatest heroines. Born into slavery in New York, she became a powerful voice for abolition and women’s rights. Her most famous speech—“Ain’t I A Woman?”—was delivered at the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention in 1851. For the next 30 years she remained a key participant in the national debate over abolition, voting rights, and women’s equality.
For the costume, here are the pieces we suggest, from left to right:
1. Penelope dress from Recollections. This is made to order in a black and white calico that reads as gray.
2. White bonnet. This particular one (style 2) looks pretty similar to the sun bonnet Sojourner wore. You could also do a white head wrap.
3. Victorian lace-up boots.
4. White neckerchief. The old Quaker kerchief lives on as chef’s wear! It’s just a rectangle of crisp linen, about 30 x 40 inches, so if you have some old sheets or pillowcases lying around, you can make one yourself. Wrap it around your neck and cross the ends over in front, then secure it with a safety pin.
5. White shawl with fringe. This is a beautiful shawl and the price is great.
6. Rectangular eyeglasses. These wire frame spectacles are a reasonably good match for the ones Sojourner wore.
Backers of our Kickstarter project will get to vote on which new costumes we do for 2013. This series of posts is designed to briefly introduce the many notable women and legendary figures we’ll be considering.
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was a brilliant essayist and poet whose husband was the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. While stationed with him in Constantinople, Lady Montagu made friends with Turkish women and learned about their practice of smallpox inoculation: the deliberate grafting of a small amount of smallpox virus onto a healthy person’s skin to induce immunity to the disease. The technique was widespread in the Ottoman Empire, and in fact was well known in China, India, and parts of Africa. When Lady Montagu returned home she embarked on a campaign to introduce smallpox inoculation in Britain. Despite some setbacks she was ultimately successful, and by the mid-18th century inoculation was an accepted part of British medicine. (Edward Jenner, a country doctor who practiced Montagu’s method of inoculation, subsequently developed vaccination as a safer alternative. Jenner used cowpox virus—vaccination is from the Latin vacca for cow—to induce immunity to smallpox, which worked because the two diseases produce similar antibodies.)
In addition to being a major pioneer of public health, Lady Montagu was a feminist and a fashion innovator. The two things went together in her mind, and on both counts she felt that Turkish women were far better off than their European sisters. She did much to introduce Ottoman dress to western Europe, and numerous portraits show her decked out in the glorious yet comfortable fashions of Constantinople.
Think we should add a Lady Montagu costume to Take Back Halloween? Make sure you join our Kickstarter project so you can vote!
Backers of our Kickstarter project will get to vote on which new costumes we do for 2013. This series of posts is designed to briefly introduce the many notable women and legendary figures we’ll be considering.
Movie star by day, genius inventor by night: it sounds unbelievable. But it’s true. Hedy Lamarr was an extremely intelligent woman with the mind of an engineer. Being a movie star bored her; what she really wanted to do was invent things. She set aside a room of her house as her workshop, with a drafting table and shelves of books on electrical engineering. Her great idea in World War II was what she dubbed “frequency hopping,” which involved switching the frequencies in radio transmissions to prevent jamming. Hedy’s plan was to develop this into a radio guidance system for Allied torpedoes, one that would be impervious to Nazi interference. She mentioned the idea to composer George Antheil, who proposed using a player piano-like roll of paper to synchronize the frequency hopping. Hedy and George patented their invention and offered it to the Navy, but Washington balked. Fifteen years later, though, the idea was taken up by engineers at Sylvania, who replaced the piano rolls with electronics. Frequency hopping became the basis for secure military communications systems, and was used on the ships that blockaded Cuba in 1962. And now, of course, it’s the technology that underlies cellphones, WiFi, Bluetooth, and GPS.
Hedy never made a dime off her patent, but she did receive the Pioneer Award from the Electronic Frontier Foundation in 1997.
Think we should add a Hedy Lamarr costume to Take Back Halloween? Make sure you join our Kickstarter project so you can vote!
Backers of our Kickstarter project will get to vote on which new costumes we do for 2013. This series of posts is designed to briefly introduce the many notable women and legendary figures we’ll be considering.
Before James Hargreaves, Richard Arkwright, and Eli Whitney, there was Huang Daopo. This Chinese peasant woman, who lived some 500 years before the Industrial Revolution in the West, almost single-handedly revolutionized the textile industry in the East. Huang introduced a whole raft of new technologies to mechanize the production of cotton: a two-roller cotton gin, an improved fluffing bow, and a three-spool, pedal-driven cotton-spinning machine. It was the most advanced cotton technology in the world. Huang’s innovations transformed textile production in China and laid the foundations for the entire East Asian cotton industry.
“Granny Huang” is still the subject of a popular nursery rhyme in Shanghai, and her life has been dramatized in operas, ballads, and TV movies. A memorial hall dedicated to her in Shanghai has fascinating exhibits, with replicas of the machinery she introduced.
Think we should add a Huang Daopo costume to Take Back Halloween? Make sure you join our Kickstarter project so you can vote!
Backers of our Kickstarter project will get to vote on which new costumes we do for 2013. This series of posts is designed to briefly introduce the many notable women and legendary figures we’ll be considering.
You’ve heard of Amelia Earhart, but do you know about Bessie Coleman? She was the world’s first black female pilot. The child of sharecroppers in Texas, she overcame incredible odds (poverty, racism, sexism) to pursue her dream of flying. PBS has a good biographical sketch:
It was soldiers returning from World War I with wild tales of flying exploits who first interested Coleman in aviation. She was also spurred on by her brother, who taunted her with claims that French women were superior to African American women because they could fly. In fact, very few American women of any race had pilot’s licenses in 1918. Those who did were predominantly white and wealthy. Every flying school that Coleman approached refused to admit her because she was both black and a woman. On the advice of Robert Abbott, the owner of the “Chicago Defender” and one of the first African American millionaires, Coleman decided to learn to fly in France.
Coleman learned French at a Berlitz school in the Chicago loop, withdrew the savings she had accumulated from her work as a manicurist and the manager of a chili parlor, and with the additional financial support of Abbott and another African American entrepreneur, she set off for Paris from New York on November 20, 1920. It took Coleman seven months to learn how to fly. The only non-Caucasian student in her class, she was taught in a 27-foot biplane that was known to fail frequently, sometimes in the air. During her training Coleman witnessed a fellow student die in a plane crash, which she described as a “terrible shock” to her nerves. But the accident didn’t deter her: In June 1921, the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale awarded her an international pilot’s license.
When Coleman returned to the U.S. in September 1921, scores of reporters turned out to meet her. The “Air Service News” noted that Coleman had become “a full-fledged aviatrix, the first of her race.” …
Over the next five years Coleman performed at countless air shows. The first took place on September 3, 1922, in Garden City, Long Island. The “Chicago Defender” publicized the event saying the “wonderful little woman” Bessie Coleman would do “heart thrilling stunts.” According to a reporter from Kansas, as many as 3,000 people, including local dignitaries, attended the event. Over the following years, Coleman used her position of prominence to encourage other African Americans to fly. She also made a point of refusing to perform at locations that wouldn’t admit members of her race.
Tragically, Bessie Coleman was killed in a flying accident in 1926. Her legacy lives on, though, and has inspired generations of women and girls. When astronaut Mae Jemison made history as the first black woman in space, she was carrying a photograph of Bessie Coleman with her.
Think we should add a Bessie Coleman costume to Take Back Halloween? Make sure you join our Kickstarter project so you can vote!
It’s a Kickstarter tradition: if your project meets its original goal with time to spare, then you set an informal stretch goal. Yesterday our Kickstarter project met its original goal of $4,500 (YAY!) with six days to spare. So, a stretch goal is in order. Our choice for the stretch is pretty obvious, since I said in the video that “the more money we raise, the more costumes we can add.” So we’re bumping up our unofficial target from $4,500 to $4,800, which will enable us to add 16 new costumes instead of 15.
New Goal = $4,800 = 16 new costume designs
And remember, backers will get to vote on exactly which costumes do. We have a spreadsheet a mile long of suggestions and requests—everybody from Baba Yaga to Catherine the Great, from Annie Oakley to Zsa Zsa Gabor. All it takes is a $5 pledge and you’ll be enrolled as a voter.
(For the worrywarts: Note that Kickstarter stretch goals really are completely informal. Our project is considered officially successful at $4,500, and if we don’t make the stretch goal, it’s okay.)
The scene at Take Back Halloween headquarters.
WE MADE IT! Thanks to all our wonderful backers, our Kickstarter is 100% funded! And still with 6 days to go!
We’re so overwhelmed with happiness and gratitude right now, we’re just burbling incoherently. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
As soon as we can pull ourselves together we’ll see about a stretch goal so a few more people can join the party in this last week. We’ll also start posting details about the “Costume Candidates for 2013” — that’s the list of suggested costumes all our backers will be voting on for next year.
So verklempt. Thank you forever.
We had so many terrific entries to our 2012 costume contest that it was hard to choose. But choose we must, and so the winner is: Abigail Kluska as Freyja. Congratulations, Abby!
Abigail Kluska as Freyja, the chief goddess of the Norse pantheon.
Doesn’t she look wonderful?
Abby was inspired by our Freyja costume design, and she did an absolutely fantastic job with it.
Here are the individual photos of Abby in her costume, looking very much like a Norse goddess:
Beautiful!
Thank you, everyone, for entering our contest. We were blown away by all the gorgeous, creative costumes that people sent in, and we really wanted to award a whole bunch of prizes. We’ll have a contest again next year, and we’ll probably do different categories so more people have a chance to win.
Speaking of next year, our Kickstarter campaign is heading into the final stretch. Please contribute whatever you can so we can have a wonderful 2013 season. And remember, all it takes is $5 and you’ll get a chance to vote on next year’s additions to our line of costume designs!
Joan of Arc (1412-1431) was one of the most brilliant generals in history. She was probably the only brilliant general in history to be burned at the stake for, essentially, refusing to wear women’s clothes. And she is definitely the only brilliant general in history whose military genius has been dismissed by generations of scholars as the ravings of a lunatic.
A Joan of Arc costume is easy, albeit rather expensive: just buy a suit of armor. Joan had a suit of plate armor custom made for her, and as you can see from the above illustrations, that’s how she’s invariably depicted. (That’s Ingrid Bergman in the middle, by the way.) We give you a link below to a store that has a plate armor costume in stock and can ship for Halloween. The pieces we suggest, from left to right:
1. Costume suit of armor. This is one-size-fits-all, but the dimensions look fairly generous. (They seem to think it’s for men. Hah.) The costume includes everything in the picture except the sword. Also available here; their prices are higher, but their description is worth reading since it’s more detailed.
2. Optional gauntlets. The costume suit of armor includes coverage all the way down to your wrists, so this is only if you really want your hands to be covered.
3. Sword. This one is 41 inches long, so it’s big enough not to look like a kid’s toy.
One other thing: The white banner Joan is carrying in all those illustrations is her battle standard, which she had made to her own specifications. If you want a replica, you’ll have to make it yourself: this page has details on the banner’s design. You could make it out of a white sheet or even a roll of white paper, and attach it to a wooden pole (even just a painter’s extension pole). But this is entirely optional, of course.
Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) is quite possibly the most celebrated female artist in history. The elements of her personal style have become iconic: long skirt, Mexican blouse, rebozo, flowers on her head. (Unibrow and faint moustache, too, but it’s up to you whether you want to include that.) For the costume, we decided to use the colors she’s wearing in the famous photo that’s at the center of our montage.
The pieces we suggest, from left to right:
1. Full-length tiered skirt in black.
2. Hand-embroidered blouse from Mexico.
3. Black or red rebozo.
4. Large silk flower hair clips. Get about three of these for the top of your head. The store also has tons of these in other sizes, styles, and colors. If your hair is long enough to braid, the video below will show you what to do.
5. Gold seed bead necklace. An inexpensive substitute for the knotted chain Frida wore.
6. Frida Kahlo-inspired earrings. These were purchased off eBay. They have little hands: a nice echo of the famous earrings Pablo Picasso gave Frida (and that she’s wearing in the bottom right photo of our montage).
Makeup: Frida wore bright lipstick and accentuated her eyebrows. She also had a nice little moustache. Your call.
How to do your hair like Frida Kahlo: Justina Blakeney of Compai Design Studio uploaded this fantastic tutorial to YouTube, showing how to braid a scarf into your hair, Frida style. It’s from her book 99 Ways to Cut, Sew, Tie, and Rock your Scarf.
The big day is finally here, though in several states battered by Hurricane Sandy, the celebrations are on hold. Lots of communities are putting off Halloween until this Saturday, while New Jersey has officially postponed the holiday until Monday. On the other hand, many New Yorkers have decided to just have Halloween tonight anyway, which is awesome. Who needs electricity when you have chocolate?
For everybody outside the apocalypse zone, it’s business as usual. And if you’re still trying to decide what to wear, check out our ever-popular Last-minute costume suggestions. Also check out our Bedsheet costumes, a list of all the costumes you can make with a bedsheet.
As for us, the Halloween season is still in full swing. We have two big things going that will keep us in Halloween mode until Thanksgiving:
- Our Kickstarter has three more weeks to run. We have until Thanksgiving Day to meet our goal of $4,500. We’re already 40% of the way there, but we need your help to bring this puppy home. And the more money we raise, the more costumes we can add. So if you like what we do and want us to do more of it, please pitch in!
- Our Halloween costume contest is open for submissions until Friday, November 9. Thanks to a very kind sponsor, we’re able to offer a very cool prize for best costume: a $50 Amazon gift card! Perfect for Christmas shopping or just loading up on books or anything you like. We’ll announce the winner the week of November 12.
Happy Halloween!
P.S. The cheerful Halloween picture at the top of the post is from the How-To Geek Halloween 2012 Wallpaper Collection [Bonus Edition].
