A Halloween Rant: My worst day of the year.
I hate Halloween. Don't get me wrong, I think cute costumes are awesome and I think Trick-Or-Treating can be a fun community activity. But since I've become a high school teacher, I've started dreading this day.
Vampires and zombies don't scare me. I don't like fake blood everywhere, but other than just looking tacky, it doesn't really bother me.
But you know what does? When teenagers and children dress up like pimps and whores. Now that frightens me. Sex trafficking is a gigantic problem in the United States and all over the world. Pimps, Madams, and anyone else who profits from the sexual exploitation of women, men, and children are, as far as I'm concerned about the lowest human beings on the planet. It doesn't get much more disgusting than that. And yet my high schoolers are dressed today as pimps and whores. Lovely. In my eyes, dressing as a pimp is akin to dressing as a child molestor.
I see them dressed this way, and I KNOW they are not thinking about the little children in Cambodia who are sold into slavery at the age of 8 and forced to have sex with 5-10 adult men a day. I KNOW they are not thinking about the young teenagers who get trapped into prostitution in the United States whose Pimps not only trap them into prostitution, but beat them up if they don't see clients, and charge them exorbitant rates for rent and food and make them pay off their "debt" to them by seeing more clients.
I know they are not thinking of this, because, hey, they're teenagers...they don't think about stuff. But shouldn't some adult in their life say, "No, you can't dress up as a whore for Halloween. We don't want to glorify sex slavery or exploitation?"
I lit into one kid today with a big purple pimp hat who thought he was really cool. It may have been mean to give him a hard time about it, after all, he was already at school dressed that way and not everyone is as socially concerned as I am. But still...why do we think pimps are cool? What kind of society glorifies that kind of filth?
Don't even get me started on the stripper costumes... You can be a slutty nurse, a slutty school girl, a slutty witch, a slutty candy corn, a slutty pin up girl, a slutty Alice in Wonderland... and all the costumes look like something from a strip club. That's what my sweet little high school girls are wearing, with their breasts and their legs hanging out everywhere. I just want to throw a towel over them and give them some real clothes to wear. Aren't we supposed to be protecting our children from being treated like sex objects? And yet we dress them like whores and strippers?
Just a few more hours and then I can go home and blank it all out.
Vampires and zombies don't scare me. I don't like fake blood everywhere, but other than just looking tacky, it doesn't really bother me.
But you know what does? When teenagers and children dress up like pimps and whores. Now that frightens me. Sex trafficking is a gigantic problem in the United States and all over the world. Pimps, Madams, and anyone else who profits from the sexual exploitation of women, men, and children are, as far as I'm concerned about the lowest human beings on the planet. It doesn't get much more disgusting than that. And yet my high schoolers are dressed today as pimps and whores. Lovely. In my eyes, dressing as a pimp is akin to dressing as a child molestor.
I see them dressed this way, and I KNOW they are not thinking about the little children in Cambodia who are sold into slavery at the age of 8 and forced to have sex with 5-10 adult men a day. I KNOW they are not thinking about the young teenagers who get trapped into prostitution in the United States whose Pimps not only trap them into prostitution, but beat them up if they don't see clients, and charge them exorbitant rates for rent and food and make them pay off their "debt" to them by seeing more clients.
I know they are not thinking of this, because, hey, they're teenagers...they don't think about stuff. But shouldn't some adult in their life say, "No, you can't dress up as a whore for Halloween. We don't want to glorify sex slavery or exploitation?"
I lit into one kid today with a big purple pimp hat who thought he was really cool. It may have been mean to give him a hard time about it, after all, he was already at school dressed that way and not everyone is as socially concerned as I am. But still...why do we think pimps are cool? What kind of society glorifies that kind of filth?
Don't even get me started on the stripper costumes... You can be a slutty nurse, a slutty school girl, a slutty witch, a slutty candy corn, a slutty pin up girl, a slutty Alice in Wonderland... and all the costumes look like something from a strip club. That's what my sweet little high school girls are wearing, with their breasts and their legs hanging out everywhere. I just want to throw a towel over them and give them some real clothes to wear. Aren't we supposed to be protecting our children from being treated like sex objects? And yet we dress them like whores and strippers?
Just a few more hours and then I can go home and blank it all out.
wow Sandy you say it straight . It is much more than just bad taste it is glorifying cruelty and the worst things in the world. I do not think your students are too young to be thinking about those things .
ReplyDeleteACtually that was me mamasita but it just signed in under you.
ReplyDeleteI was thinking the same thing today. I wanted to show the Invisible Children video or something similar. I'll be prepared for it next year ;)
ReplyDeleteIt is upsetting. They are so ridiculously, ignorantly naive to the world around them. A lot of my clients glorify the gangster lifestyle. I have many words about this that I cannot share with them.
ReplyDelete