(UPDATE November 1, 2011: Make that “almost 5 million page views.” When I checked our server stats last night, we’d racked up almost 4.8 million page views in the past week.)
Happy Halloween, everybody!
When we launched this site last year, we garnered a lot of attention—links in the Washington Post and several high-profile feminist blogs.
But that was nothing compared to this year. This year we’ve gone viral. Our little website has received 4.5 million page views just in the past week. We’ve been on the front page of newspapers, talked about on radio, and covered in national magazines. We even had to do an emergency server upgrade to cope with the traffic.
Thanks to all of you for helping us Take Back Halloween. Be sure to bookmark us for next year so you’ll have plenty of time to get your costume together. We’re thinking of doing some contests and giveaways next year, too, for people who send in pictures of themselves wearing one of our costume designs.
Follow our Twitter feed to keep up with news all through the year: Follow @TakeHalloween
You can also follow me on Twitter for stuff from the Real History Project, which sponsors this site: Follow @SuzanneScoggins
Have a wonderful Halloween!
Tomorrow is Halloween, and if you don’t already have your costume together, you’re probably freaking. Relax! We’re here with some de-freaking advice on how you can pull together a last-minute outfit:
If you have a sheet:
Come on, everybody has a sheet. As long as you have a sheet that doesn’t have Hello Kitty or something on it, you can go as Sappho, or pretty much any other woman from the Classical Greek or Hellenistic era.
A really great last-minute costume is Themistoclea. The only thing you need in addition to a sheet is a bowl. You don’t have to do a wreath on your head, but if you want to, just cut some leaves off a branch of something in your yard. If you want to drape something over your head while you’re staring into your bowl of water, a shawl or a sheer curtain panel will do.
Demeter is another possibility. Do you have some silk flowers or fake fruit in your house? Or how about real fruit? Or Halloween candy? Put it in a basket and carry it with you. You’re Demeter.
If you have a sheet plus a few costume accessories:
You can go as Athena. Athena is just a sheet plus fake armor: helmet, shield, spear.
Boudicca is just a couple of sheets plus a crown and armor. The sheets don’t have to be plaid.
Or Zenobia: all you need to add to your sheet is a crown and some fake chains.
You could also go as Persephone. A black sheet is ideal, but you could also do red or white. Skip the veil, or use a sheer curtain panel. Use some props from the costume store to enhance the death factor: a skull bouquet, that sort of thing.
If you have a long black skirt, plus a costume accessory or two:
Pick up a pair of pince-nez spectacles and go as Emma Goldman.
Grab a Gibson Girl hat and go as Lise Meitner.
Braid your hair, put flowers on your head, wrap a shawl around your shoulders, and voilà: you’re Frida Kahlo.
Or channel Lizzie Borden: just carry an axe with you (preferably a bloody one) and tell everybody you didn’t do it.
If you have a churidar kameez plus a few costume accessories:
Razia Sultan is just a churidar kameez plus a helmet and a “sultan” turban.
For Tomyris, you just need a forward-facing pointed cap and maybe a sword. A plastic skull is a bonus.
If you have a formal gown:
Check out our Glamour Grrls category. If you have a black strapless, go as Rita Hayworth; a white gown, Jean Harlow; etc.
I just did a pre-recorded interview with the very nice producer for Q, the daily arts & culture show on CBC Radio One. Unfortunately, I was so sleepy that I’m really not sure what I said. Probably gibberish.
Check the Q website for showtimes and podcasts so you can listen to me make a complete fool of myself while sucking down coffee to try to wake up.
I know that most of you reading this are amazingly cool and awesome. But you may have friends who, um, aren’t. Maybe you have a white friend who thinks dressing up in blackface or yellowface is hilarious and completely appropriate for Halloween? I hope not. But if you do, shoot ’em this link.
The campaign is called “We’re a culture, not a costume,” and it was created by students at Ohio University. The posters are great:
I personally find it almost mind-boggling that anybody in this day and age would think blackface was appropriate. Did these people grow up in alien space pods or something?
As for the geisha stuff, somebody (a non-Japanese American) asked me the other day what the problem with that was. I tried to explain that goofy “geisha girl” costumes, like the one in that poster, perpetuate the fetishization and marginalization of Asian women as some exotic sexualized “other.” Not sure the message got through.
Follow @SuzanneScoggins
Follow @TakeHalloween
We knew we wanted to get one more Halloween costume up this year, and originally we were thinking of going with Rosalind Franklin or the goddess Freya (assuming we could find a replacement source for one of the Freya costume items we were having trouble with). But a funny thing happened in the past few weeks. We started getting a bunch of email queries about people like Emma Goldman. We also started seeing a lot of searches for things like “women anarchists” and “women protesters in history” and “famous female radicals.” Is this part of the whole #OccupyWallStreet zeitgeist? We’re not sure, but it’s definitely a new trend. So we decided to move our Emma Goldman costume to the top of our To Do list (we have a long, long To Do list, with more names than you can shake a Leg Avenue bag at).
And now here she is: Emma Goldman. “Red Emma” herself. It’s a simple costume, with the most important ingredient being a pair of pince-nez spectacles. You can probably score those at any costume shop.
If you don’t already have a long black skirt or dress, you need to shop now. Ladies Emporium has an October 24th cutoff (yikes) for their Gibson Girl skirt and black blouse. We’re not sure if Wild West Mercantile has a shipping cutoff for their black full-length skirt or blouses. The black high-button boots are from the 1 Stop Costume Shop, which offers expedited shipping.
The hat is a soft corduroy thing, which we’ve dressed up with a red paisley scarf and a cockade. Hopefully you can find those items in your local stores, assuming they’re not already in your closet.
We also included some extra credit ideas: cigars (don’t smoke!), cherry blintzes, and revolutionary pamphlets. Check out the Emma Goldman costume page for the full story.
Reader Paola Eisner writes:
Hey! I heard about your site through reddit. In light of traffic spikes (yay Halloween :) would you like to start a blog post that would allow viewers to post additional ideas for powerful/interesting women? Your images are fantastic, and a few of them make me think of a few more to add! I’m sure I can’t be the only one :)
Excellent idea!
We’re constantly running a To Do list of costumes on the drawing board, and we are always excited to hear new ideas. We also like to know who people are most interested in seeing. We bumped Ada Lovelace to the top of our To Do list this year because so many people expressed interest, and we’re doing the same with Emma Goldman (costume in the works right now).
So, what other costumes would you like to see on Take Back Halloween?
P.S. We have super-caching turned on to help cope with the huge traffic to the server, so you may not see your comment right away.
Welcome, new people! We are having another massive traffic spike right now, so you may have trouble seeing all the images on our pages. You may have trouble seeing the pages, period! Sorry about that—just refresh the page if you need to. We’re here.
(This post is part of the 2011 Love Your Body Day Blog Carnival.)
An actual Sexy Pilgrim costume. This is not a joke. You would think it's a joke, but it's not.
Thanks to the good folks at NOW, October 19 has been designated Love Your Body Day. The way things are going with Halloween, I think October 31 should be called Patriarchy Day. It’s reached the point that unless you’re a size 2 lingerie model, you’re out of luck when it comes to costumes.
Sure, if you want to wear a microskirt and push-up bra and thigh-highs, then the world is your oyster. You have so much to choose from! Sexy Nurse or Sexy Witch or Sexy Cop or Sexy Parking Attendant or, I kid you not, Sexy Pilgrim. I haven’t seen a Sexy Abe Lincoln costume yet, but I’m sure it’s in the works somewhere. Microskirt, push-up bra, thigh-highs, plus a beard and a stovepipe hat. What’s sexier than the Gettysburg Address? So freaking hot.
This, people, is why Love Your Body Day even exists. Men don’t need a “Love Your Body” day because they’re not being bombarded from birth with a constant stream of messages telling them that: a) their degree of hotness is the only thing that matters about them, and b) said hotness comes in exactly one form (size 2, voluptuous, white).
Don’t get me wrong: I have no problem with sexiness. Women should have the freedom to dress however they want, and if any woman wants to go sexy for Halloween, good for her. What I have a problem with is when sexiness stops being a choice and starts becoming a requirement.
A post I saw on a college website a couple of years ago illustrates the point. A young woman had come up with a fabulous, creative idea for a historical costume, but she was too embarrassed to wear it. At her school, the only acceptable costume was the kind that comes in a Leg Avenue bag. It was Go Sexy or Go Home.
Some fun.
For me, it feels like patriarchy has invaded my favorite holiday. Halloween used to be wide open: costumes were all over the place, the more elaborate the better. Now everybody’s supposed to conform to the rigidly prescribed Sexy Female uniform.
That’s why we started Take Back Halloween. It’s a labor of love, our little attempt to break out of the uniform, to offer women costume ideas that span history and culture. You can go as a volcano or an Egyptian pharaoh or a 17th century Mexican nun or a 20th century nuclear physicist. Or a queen. Or an axe murderer. Or a movie star (which is actually a pretty sexy costume, in a very old school Hollywood way). Why not? Women don’t all come in the same shape and size, and neither should Halloween costumes.
Love your body, love your Halloween costume.
Follow @SuzanneScoggins
Follow @TakeHalloween
Posted in response to NOW’s Love Your Body Day Blog Carnival. Follow #lybd on Twitter.
Hey everybody — if you’re seeing this, congratulations! We’re enjoying a massive traffic spike right now, and so you may have to refresh some pages to see all the images.
Anna May Wong (1905-1961) was Hollywood’s first Chinese American movie star. In fact, for several decades she was Hollywood’s only Chinese American movie star, such was the pervasive racism of the era. The studios preferred Caucasians in “yellowface” over Asian actors, and strict rules prohibited on-screen romance between whites and non-whites. Most of the movies with Chinese characters were incredibly ridiculous anyway: endless Dragon Lady stereotypes and opium dens and Fu Manchu stuff. When Hollywood finally set out to make a serious film about China—Pearl Buck’s The Good Earth—Anna May campaigned hard for the lead. She lost the part to an Austrian.
Nevertheless, Anna May Wong somehow rose above it all to become an international star. She was glamorous, beautiful, and utterly magnetic on the screen. She was a fashion icon too, introducing the new Shanghai-style cheongsam (also known as a qi pao) to Western audiences. In her fashion shoots at the height of her popularity in the late 1920s and 30s, she often chose to be photographed in cheongsams. The pieces we suggest, from left to right:
1. Long red cheongsam. This dress is ankle-length; they also have other styles and colors.
2. Golden yellow silk fan.
3. Retro 20s flapper shoe in red satin. The perfect style for a 20s or 30s era outfit.
4. Red and gold crystal chandelier earrings. Anna May wore gorgeous Art Deco earrings. These red and gold crystal earrings are inexpensive but totally fabulous.
5. Faux pearl necklace, 60 inches long. She also wore long strands of pearls, knotted flapper-style.
6. Wig with bangs. Anna May introduced the smooth bangs look, which became her signature style. The rest of her hair was long, and she usually wore it up in a bun or chignon at the back of her neck. If your own hair isn’t the right length for that, you can try an inexpensive wig like this. The bangs are fine; just gather the rest of it into a bun.
Audiovisual aid: Here’s Anna May Wong in the 1937 Technicolor short Hollywood Party. This may be the only color film of her from the pre-war period. The movie itself is pretty dreadful, but at least we get to see Anna May modeling a couple of the cheongsams she’d picked up in China:
Here’s the press release we sent out earlier this week:
Feminists Take On Halloween
October 4, 2011 — You won’t find costumes for Ada Lovelace or Hatshepsut in the Halloween stores this fall.
But you will find them—or at least instructions for them—at a website called “Take Back Halloween.” Launched in 2010, the site is now in its second year of encouraging women to deck themselves out as queens, goddesses, and history-makers.
Thinking of dressing up as Jezebel, the notorious queen of ancient Israel? Or perhaps Nzinga, the great 17th century leader of Angola? Take Back Halloween has the costume plans, complete with illustrations and buying guides.
“This is not your typical Halloween costume thing,” says Suzanne Scoggins of the Real History Project, which sponsors the site. “We’re pushing back against the rule that women have to dress up as sex kittens. That shouldn’t be the only option for Halloween, much less a requirement. We’re trying to reclaim some space for a different vision of the holiday, where women can use Halloween to explore history and celebrate their heritage.”
The costumes range across world cultures. Demeter, the Greek goddess of agriculture, rubs shoulders with Asase Yaa, the Asante earth mother. The legendary Queen of Sheba is joined by the equally legendary Himiko of Japan. The designs span the ages as well: Mexico is represented by the 11th century warrior queen Lady Six Monkey as well as the 19th century Empress Carlota.
“Our site is geared towards Americans, but Americans are an extremely diverse lot,” says Scoggins. “Our users include Mexican Americans, Asian Americans, Arab Americans, every kind of American. We have goddess people and history enthusiasts. So when we talk about heritage, we’re really talking about the whole world.”
But the emphasis is clearly on fun, and the costumes aren’t intended to be authentic historical reconstructions. All of the designs rely on easily obtained store-bought items, combined and sometimes modified in novel ways. The Ada Lovelace costume, for example, involves a satin chemise, a “king robe” from a costume store, a bridal tiara, and a gold stretch belt. None of the costumes require sewing.
Take Back Halloween is sponsored by the Real History Project, a non-profit organization devoted to cultivating a grassroots, pop culture approach to women’s history.
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PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 4, 2011 — You won’t find costumes for Ada Lovelace or Hatshepsut in the Halloween stores this fall.
But you will find them—or at least instructions for them—at a website called “Take Back Halloween.” Launched in 2010, the site is now in its second year of encouraging women to deck themselves out as queens, goddesses, and history-makers.
Thinking of dressing up as Jezebel, the notorious queen of ancient Israel? Or perhaps Nzinga, the great 17th century leader of Angola? Take Back Halloween has the costume plans, complete with illustrations and buying guides.
“This is not your typical Halloween costume thing,” says Suzanne Scoggins of the Real History Project, which sponsors the site. “We’re pushing back against the rule that women have to dress up as sex kittens. That shouldn’t be the only option for Halloween, much less a requirement. We’re trying to reclaim some space for a different vision of the holiday, where women can use Halloween to explore history and celebrate their heritage.”
The costumes range across world cultures. Demeter, the Greek goddess of agriculture, rubs shoulders with Asase Yaa, the Asante earth mother. The legendary Queen of Sheba is joined by the equally legendary Himiko of Japan. The designs span the ages as well: Mexico is represented by the 11th century warrior queen Lady Six Monkey as well as the 19th century Empress Carlota.
“Our site is geared towards Americans, but Americans are an extremely diverse lot,” says Scoggins. “Our users include Mexican Americans, Asian Americans, Arab Americans, every kind of American. We have goddess people and history enthusiasts. So when we talk about heritage, we’re really talking about the whole world.”
But the emphasis is clearly on fun, and the costumes aren’t intended to be authentic historical reconstructions. All of the designs rely on easily obtained store-bought items, combined and sometimes modified in novel ways. The Ada Lovelace costume, for example, involves a satin chemise, a “king robe” from a costume store, a bridal tiara, and a gold stretch belt. None of the costumes require sewing.
Take Back Halloween is sponsored by the Real History Project, a non-profit organization devoted to cultivating a grassroots, pop culture approach to women’s history.
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