November 22, 2010 • 16 mins
In comic books, females are often portrayed as victims and sex symbols and tend to play second fiddle to male characters. In this episode, Molly and Cristen set the stage for a discussion of female superheroes and the gender dynamics of comic book art.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stop? Mom never told you?
From House Towards dot com, Hello and welcome to the podcast.
This is Molly and I'm Kristin Kristen. We are doing
(00:20):
a two part series on female superheroes, which has been
a long requested topic. But but the first part is
going to talk more specifically about how women are portrayed
in superhero comic books. And we have to thank our
listener Alex for for this angle because after the Halloween
Costume podcast, Alex noticed that all of the female superhero
(00:43):
costumes that he was finding on the internet, we're all
male costumes, which is the words sassy put in front,
so you could be like a sassy Batman, sassy Superman.
He was like, this is crazy because there are female superheroes,
um and you know I Rebecca was like, yeah, there there,
we need to some spotlight on female superheroes. And he said,
why don't you start by talking about the women in
(01:05):
refrigerators problem? Yes, and women in Refrigerators refers to a
Green Lantern comic book storyline from in which the Green
Lanterns girlfriend gets strangled and is later discovered inside a refrigerator. Right,
and so this comic book writer Gail Simone starts a
(01:27):
website called Women in Refrigerators. She makes a list of
the women who die these kinds of gruesome, unnecessarily violent deaths,
and uh published Drum's website and it kind of set
the comic book world of fire if you will, boom pal.
She she launched that that punch into the gut of
(01:49):
the comic book world. Yeah, people started sort of dog
piling on this list, and pretty soon they had an
enormous list of characters. Few women character female characters specifically
left and right, who yes to die these grewesome kinds
of death. And we'll get into this more later. But
even when super female superheroes super heroines if you will,
(02:10):
are are injured, it takes them longer to recover. They
have a harder time um wielding their superpowers. I mean,
it is not there is not gender parity and comic books.
It's a scary world world out there for the female. Now.
The main criticism that people would lodge back at gayl
Simone is, hey, the male characters died too, Like in
(02:32):
a comic book violence happens. It's unrealistic to assume that
a woman is never going to die. And Gayl Simon said, no,
I realized that. I mean, death happens in comic books.
But when you look at the way that the men
diversus the way that the the women die, it's it's again,
it's not equal. You know, a male hero when he
dies gets to go down fighting. He has, you know,
this really long fight scene where looks like he's going
(02:53):
to prevail, he might even come back to life later on.
And the female superheroes just don't get that. They're usually
you know, shot in the back, or you know, they
just don't get a chance to fight, or in some
ways the death is their fault. Let's take, for example,
the case of Stephanie Brown, who served as a Robin
(03:14):
figure in a few episodes of Batman, and she was
Robin's girlfriend for many years, and eventually when Robin resigns,
she becomes sort of the Batman assistant role um. Then
in two thousand and four, a supervillain named the Black
mask Uh uses a power drill to extensively torture her
to death. And this really got a lot of people
(03:36):
up in arms because every other Robin gets sort of
a tribute in the bat Cave. Uh, and then and
and Stephanie didn't get that. The artist who was associated
with this said essentially that Stephanie Brown deserved her torture
and death because she had failed to obey Batman's orders
to stay out of the fight with Black Mask. At
one point, he was at a convention, said he didn't
(03:58):
really even consider her a Robin fig gear. She was
more just, you know, a character who came and went.
And there were a lot of just misguided remarks. I
don't think that the men who are saying them maybe
meant them in this way, but that Stephanie inspired this
website girl Wonder dot org uh, women and men who
were interested in getting her that full hero tribute and
status that she deserved. And the creators and the writer
(04:20):
should come back and say, oh, Stephanie's death was a
big deal because it had impact on the lives of heroes.
That is only going to, you know, inspire Batman to
fight harder and longer to bring her to justice. And
one woman wrote that that's really upset and because it
says that Stephanie herself wasn't a hero, that it was
she was just you know, aiding a hero in terms
of finding his quest. And I think that's a kind
(04:41):
of pretty common criticism of these super girls super women,
that they are just inspiration or hindrance to the superheroes
and not necessarily heroes themselves. Yeah, and comic book fans
really take this portrayal, these portrayals of females in comics
very sear viously. For instance, the mission statement of Girl
(05:03):
Wonder dot Org is Batman and other superhero stories are
the modern ages fables and if we don't stop the
spread of this rout now, they will be a reb
irrevocably corrupted by it. Stephanie Brown is a symbol of
the need for change, and we are going to see
that that change begins. And then just to give you
um a few names and more of the Stephanie's out there.
(05:24):
You know, from the Women in Refrigerators lists that we
mentioned earlier, they're more than ninety female characters, including Awkwad Girl,
Hawk Woman, Alasta, Girl, Nova, Lady Flash, at least two
different supergirls and listeners. If you don't remember any of
those characters, it's probably because a lot of them just
never came back to life or regain their powers. They
(05:45):
just fade, fade into refrigerator land and die, whereas like
like you said, the men can come back to life.
The men will learn how to use their powers more. Um,
they talked about this one back girl who was paralyzed,
and everyone else who been paralyzed eventually comes back, this
this one never did. And uh, some of the writers themselves,
(06:05):
her female talk about the kind of sexism that exists
in that world where one you know, male came to
this female writer and said, we need, we need a
rape to happen, We need, we need something really bad
to happen to a woman because that's going to spur
our hero on and what this Watchdot group Girl Wonder
wants to do is to prevent that and to show
kids of both genders that the girl doesn't have to
(06:25):
be the victim or just the sidekick, that the girl
can be the hero who has equal powers on her own.
So why don't we throw out a few numbers of
how well women are represented in comic books. Obviously, comic
book readership excuse mail. So it does make sense that
there are more male superheroes. But there was a study
that we found analyzing women's representations in comic books, and
(06:51):
the author found that women comprise an average oft of
characters overall, and women are main characters in comic books
sixty six percent of the time that they appear. So obviously,
comic book heroes much more likely to be male than female,
and the female heroes that do exist, this study found
(07:11):
are likely to have gigantic breasts, um be wearing skimpy clothing.
And uh. They also talk about something called the porn face,
which is that every time a woman is drawn, she's
got this really, you know, it's a face. It looks
like she's having sex, not necessarily fighting crime. Now, as
you said, Kristen, comic book readership, excuse mail. Uh, and
(07:33):
sometimes you only hear about these women who are reading
comics when when you're talking about something like women in
refrigerators or the death of a female character. And so
people are wondering, you know, if this is, if this
is entertainment for boys, do we really need to make
it as as equal as some of these these women
wanted to be. Shouldn't this just be something that's escapist
for little boys learning about fantasy and um, and you know,
(07:56):
when you think about it, when you think about playing
when you're little, it is more likely that the boys
are playing superheroes and the girls are playing something like Princess.
I mean, what the question then becomes is do you know,
obviously we don't want to teach boys some lesson that
girls are always victims, but do you have to have
this equality that some of the groups want. And there's
(08:17):
a pretty interesting uh study by the American Psychological Association.
They found that seeing these over hyped images masculinity that
the superheroes present can actually be quite damaging to these
little boys. And these psychologists indeed found that boys do
seem better adjusted when they resist those macho images that
(08:37):
are presented in comic books and other types of popular
media specifically aimed at that demographic. And they found that
when those boys could resist being tough and emotionally unavailable
and attached from their friends as they age into adolescence,
they reported more um psycholog better psychological health than the
(08:59):
other ones. And those characteristics, you know, detached from friends,
aloof it's it's like Batman. And so they're saying that
the only images of masculine that these little boys are
presented with are these very um aloof masculinities that show
women as victims. Going back to the study that evaluated
the different women's portrayals and comic books, you know, the
women are often shown is not having real jobs, or
(09:21):
if they have jobs, there in pink collar jobs, or
they're not in full control of their powers. They need
someone to teach them how to use their powers, whereas
the male superheroes usually come to the world fully formed,
ready to beat up bad guys, and if they experience
any conflict with it, that's, you know, it's a side plot,
it's not the main plot. Now, I do think we
have to take that psychological study with a little bit
(09:43):
of a grain of salt, because it does remind me
of our discussion on how Disney princesses affect young girls
ideas of what it means to be a woman and
to be feminine in our role in society. And while yes,
I do think that these um kind of fantasy media
images that kid um grow up with have an impact,
(10:04):
but it's one one, only one piece of the puzzle.
But you still can't deny the fact that when you
get into comic books, and especially superhero comic books. What
we're talking about specifically in the episode, women fall into
one of two camps. The good Girls are the bad girls,
and and they all kind of have the same measurements,
(10:27):
like you said, like they all have long hair and
impossible curves and generally wear skimpy clothes. But yeah, they
they either become fen Fotels or they're sassy. Yes. As
one writer put it, the difference between the good Girls
and the Bad Girls is whether you've got spunk or
whether you're mad as hell. And the good Girls have
spunk and the bad girls are mad, and good girl
(10:51):
art goes back to World War Two. At the same time,
You've got a lot of pin up traditional photos like that,
lots of cheesecake photos, and the good Girls are very
much in that model. Their adventure adventurous is their heroine
sidekicks or girls who just naturally fall into and escape
from trouble. So some examples of some old school Good
Girls superheroes include Sheina, Queen of the Jungle, senor Rita Rio,
(11:16):
Queen of Spies, Flamingo, the Gypsy Gal, Flying Jenny, and
sky Girl, and then Mist of the Moon and Phantom
Lady and Lady Look So as you can tell. I mean,
they're they're kind of these kitchy little heroes, but we
don't see those anymore. They're this, uh, this starkly found
that's comparing good girl art to bad girl art talks
about how now, starting in the nineties, we have bad
(11:39):
girl art, which is girls who you know, are they're
still in the superhero role as those go girls superheroes
that Kristen named are, but they tend to wear less clothes,
more espexually provocative clothes, and have, like I said, more
of an attitude. They're more from the dark side. Yeah,
and their dark side generally comes from a history of
a use. So again, you know, it's hard to find
(12:02):
a woman in these comics who hasn't been beaten up,
killed violently, or just drawn with nothing on, or you know,
who serves as a hindrance for the superheroes. So that's
sort of the argument of the first part of the
podcast is if you're reading a comic book, just any
comic book at all, with a superhero in it, what
are you going to see when you look at these women?
(12:22):
You're gonna see victims and uh. In the next part
of the podcast, we're going to talk about what women
have taken on that hero role and how they've done it.
And we're going to talk about one very important comic
book hero who we have not mentioned at all in
part one, but who has very interesting history, and that
is Surprise Wonder Woman. So the first episode, like we said,
(12:46):
is to get you grounded in this This woman is
victims role. That the women are refrigerators site kind of
proclaimed and which some comic book writers have come back
and said, you know, this changed the way I wrote comics.
Um looking for our ways to fit women into comic books.
And I think in the next episode we'll take a
look at how well that's worked out. So in the meantime,
(13:07):
why don't we read a couple of emails from listeners.
I have two really quick ones about the Halloween Costume podcast.
First up from Aaron, she writes, I'm not a sci
fi geek, but my next costumes, Starbuck from Battlestar Galactica
and Kaylie from Firefly, are both fairly easy, not slutty,
(13:28):
and strong, excellent characters. And then I have one from Jazz,
who writes, I wanted to let you know that a
little boy costumes aren't so great either. As a mom
of two little boys, I really hate the foam muscles
and body shapes that are built into little boys costumes.
I feel it promotes a concept of an unattainable body type,
much like the often criticized sexy girls costumes. Even toddler
(13:49):
costumes from my two year old have fake muscles build
into them. And she sent us a link of some
of the costumes available and they are there. Musley, All right, well,
I've got one more Halloween email here, and this is
from Katie, who was sending us a report from her
second grade classes fall party where all the kids came
(14:09):
dressed up in costumes. Because we talked a lot about
that um study Molly that looked at how Halloween costumes
are marketed and designed differently for boys and girls. So
Katie says, I found it interesting that many costumes aimed
at boys are really a little more than fancy one
piece pajamas and perhaps a mask. Feminine costumes tend to
(14:30):
be much more elaborate, with sleeves long enough to make
writing or eating lunch difficult, long skirts, wigs, veils, hats,
et cetera. The parents of my students were careful to
counter anything revealing and their daughter's costumes with pants and
shirts underneath. A necessity is it's getting cold here. One
of my little girls had a v neck dress on
as part of her vampire costume, and as they were
(14:51):
leaving my room to participate in activity, she commented to
me that she felt very nervous because it came down
to here. I didn't find the neckline revealing at all,
but I thought it was very interesting that she was
uncomfortable enough to express it. I hope my report from
the midst of Halloween in second grade gives you more
insight into kids costumes. So thank you Katie for writing in,
(15:13):
and as always, you can write too to Mom's Stuff
at how stuff works dot com. You can also check
out our Facebook page and like us over there. It
is Stuff I've Never Told You on Facebook pretty self explanatory.
Then you can also follow us on Twitter. We are
at mom Stuff Podcasts, and then finally you can check
(15:34):
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(15:54):
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you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray. It's ready,
are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stop? Mom never told you?
From House Towards dot com, Hello and welcome to the podcast.
This is Molly and I'm Kristin Kristen. We are doing
(00:20):
a two part series on female superheroes, which has been
a long requested topic. But but the first part is
going to talk more specifically about how women are portrayed
in superhero comic books. And we have to thank our
listener Alex for for this angle because after the Halloween
Costume podcast, Alex noticed that all of the female superhero
(00:43):
costumes that he was finding on the internet, we're all
male costumes, which is the words sassy put in front,
so you could be like a sassy Batman, sassy Superman.
He was like, this is crazy because there are female superheroes,
um and you know I Rebecca was like, yeah, there there,
we need to some spotlight on female superheroes. And he said,
why don't you start by talking about the women in
(01:05):
refrigerators problem? Yes, and women in Refrigerators refers to a
Green Lantern comic book storyline from in which the Green
Lanterns girlfriend gets strangled and is later discovered inside a refrigerator. Right,
and so this comic book writer Gail Simone starts a
(01:27):
website called Women in Refrigerators. She makes a list of
the women who die these kinds of gruesome, unnecessarily violent deaths,
and uh published Drum's website and it kind of set
the comic book world of fire if you will, boom pal.
She she launched that that punch into the gut of
(01:49):
the comic book world. Yeah, people started sort of dog
piling on this list, and pretty soon they had an
enormous list of characters. Few women character female characters specifically
left and right, who yes to die these grewesome kinds
of death. And we'll get into this more later. But
even when super female superheroes super heroines if you will,
(02:10):
are are injured, it takes them longer to recover. They
have a harder time um wielding their superpowers. I mean,
it is not there is not gender parity and comic books.
It's a scary world world out there for the female. Now.
The main criticism that people would lodge back at gayl
Simone is, hey, the male characters died too, Like in
(02:32):
a comic book violence happens. It's unrealistic to assume that
a woman is never going to die. And Gayl Simon said, no,
I realized that. I mean, death happens in comic books.
But when you look at the way that the men
diversus the way that the the women die, it's it's again,
it's not equal. You know, a male hero when he
dies gets to go down fighting. He has, you know,
this really long fight scene where looks like he's going
(02:53):
to prevail, he might even come back to life later on.
And the female superheroes just don't get that. They're usually
you know, shot in the back, or you know, they
just don't get a chance to fight, or in some
ways the death is their fault. Let's take, for example,
the case of Stephanie Brown, who served as a Robin
(03:14):
figure in a few episodes of Batman, and she was
Robin's girlfriend for many years, and eventually when Robin resigns,
she becomes sort of the Batman assistant role um. Then
in two thousand and four, a supervillain named the Black
mask Uh uses a power drill to extensively torture her
to death. And this really got a lot of people
(03:36):
up in arms because every other Robin gets sort of
a tribute in the bat Cave. Uh, and then and
and Stephanie didn't get that. The artist who was associated
with this said essentially that Stephanie Brown deserved her torture
and death because she had failed to obey Batman's orders
to stay out of the fight with Black Mask. At
one point, he was at a convention, said he didn't
(03:58):
really even consider her a Robin fig gear. She was
more just, you know, a character who came and went.
And there were a lot of just misguided remarks. I
don't think that the men who are saying them maybe
meant them in this way, but that Stephanie inspired this
website girl Wonder dot org uh, women and men who
were interested in getting her that full hero tribute and
status that she deserved. And the creators and the writer
(04:20):
should come back and say, oh, Stephanie's death was a
big deal because it had impact on the lives of heroes.
That is only going to, you know, inspire Batman to
fight harder and longer to bring her to justice. And
one woman wrote that that's really upset and because it
says that Stephanie herself wasn't a hero, that it was
she was just you know, aiding a hero in terms
of finding his quest. And I think that's a kind
(04:41):
of pretty common criticism of these super girls super women,
that they are just inspiration or hindrance to the superheroes
and not necessarily heroes themselves. Yeah, and comic book fans
really take this portrayal, these portrayals of females in comics
very sear viously. For instance, the mission statement of Girl
(05:03):
Wonder dot Org is Batman and other superhero stories are
the modern ages fables and if we don't stop the
spread of this rout now, they will be a reb
irrevocably corrupted by it. Stephanie Brown is a symbol of
the need for change, and we are going to see
that that change begins. And then just to give you
um a few names and more of the Stephanie's out there.
(05:24):
You know, from the Women in Refrigerators lists that we
mentioned earlier, they're more than ninety female characters, including Awkwad Girl,
Hawk Woman, Alasta, Girl, Nova, Lady Flash, at least two
different supergirls and listeners. If you don't remember any of
those characters, it's probably because a lot of them just
never came back to life or regain their powers. They
(05:45):
just fade, fade into refrigerator land and die, whereas like
like you said, the men can come back to life.
The men will learn how to use their powers more. Um,
they talked about this one back girl who was paralyzed,
and everyone else who been paralyzed eventually comes back, this
this one never did. And uh, some of the writers themselves,
(06:05):
her female talk about the kind of sexism that exists
in that world where one you know, male came to
this female writer and said, we need, we need a
rape to happen, We need, we need something really bad
to happen to a woman because that's going to spur
our hero on and what this Watchdot group Girl Wonder
wants to do is to prevent that and to show
kids of both genders that the girl doesn't have to
(06:25):
be the victim or just the sidekick, that the girl
can be the hero who has equal powers on her own.
So why don't we throw out a few numbers of
how well women are represented in comic books. Obviously, comic
book readership excuse mail. So it does make sense that
there are more male superheroes. But there was a study
that we found analyzing women's representations in comic books, and
(06:51):
the author found that women comprise an average oft of
characters overall, and women are main characters in comic books
sixty six percent of the time that they appear. So obviously,
comic book heroes much more likely to be male than female,
and the female heroes that do exist, this study found
(07:11):
are likely to have gigantic breasts, um be wearing skimpy clothing.
And uh. They also talk about something called the porn face,
which is that every time a woman is drawn, she's
got this really, you know, it's a face. It looks
like she's having sex, not necessarily fighting crime. Now, as
you said, Kristen, comic book readership, excuse mail. Uh, and
(07:33):
sometimes you only hear about these women who are reading
comics when when you're talking about something like women in
refrigerators or the death of a female character. And so
people are wondering, you know, if this is, if this
is entertainment for boys, do we really need to make
it as as equal as some of these these women
wanted to be. Shouldn't this just be something that's escapist
for little boys learning about fantasy and um, and you know,
(07:56):
when you think about it, when you think about playing
when you're little, it is more likely that the boys
are playing superheroes and the girls are playing something like Princess.
I mean, what the question then becomes is do you know,
obviously we don't want to teach boys some lesson that
girls are always victims, but do you have to have
this equality that some of the groups want. And there's
(08:17):
a pretty interesting uh study by the American Psychological Association.
They found that seeing these over hyped images masculinity that
the superheroes present can actually be quite damaging to these
little boys. And these psychologists indeed found that boys do
seem better adjusted when they resist those macho images that
(08:37):
are presented in comic books and other types of popular
media specifically aimed at that demographic. And they found that
when those boys could resist being tough and emotionally unavailable
and attached from their friends as they age into adolescence,
they reported more um psycholog better psychological health than the
(08:59):
other ones. And those characteristics, you know, detached from friends,
aloof it's it's like Batman. And so they're saying that
the only images of masculine that these little boys are
presented with are these very um aloof masculinities that show
women as victims. Going back to the study that evaluated
the different women's portrayals and comic books, you know, the
women are often shown is not having real jobs, or
(09:21):
if they have jobs, there in pink collar jobs, or
they're not in full control of their powers. They need
someone to teach them how to use their powers, whereas
the male superheroes usually come to the world fully formed,
ready to beat up bad guys, and if they experience
any conflict with it, that's, you know, it's a side plot,
it's not the main plot. Now, I do think we
have to take that psychological study with a little bit
(09:43):
of a grain of salt, because it does remind me
of our discussion on how Disney princesses affect young girls
ideas of what it means to be a woman and
to be feminine in our role in society. And while yes,
I do think that these um kind of fantasy media
images that kid um grow up with have an impact,
(10:04):
but it's one one, only one piece of the puzzle.
But you still can't deny the fact that when you
get into comic books, and especially superhero comic books. What
we're talking about specifically in the episode, women fall into
one of two camps. The good Girls are the bad girls,
and and they all kind of have the same measurements,
(10:27):
like you said, like they all have long hair and
impossible curves and generally wear skimpy clothes. But yeah, they
they either become fen Fotels or they're sassy. Yes. As
one writer put it, the difference between the good Girls
and the Bad Girls is whether you've got spunk or
whether you're mad as hell. And the good Girls have
spunk and the bad girls are mad, and good girl
(10:51):
art goes back to World War Two. At the same time,
You've got a lot of pin up traditional photos like that,
lots of cheesecake photos, and the good Girls are very
much in that model. Their adventure adventurous is their heroine
sidekicks or girls who just naturally fall into and escape
from trouble. So some examples of some old school Good
Girls superheroes include Sheina, Queen of the Jungle, senor Rita Rio,
(11:16):
Queen of Spies, Flamingo, the Gypsy Gal, Flying Jenny, and
sky Girl, and then Mist of the Moon and Phantom
Lady and Lady Look So as you can tell. I mean,
they're they're kind of these kitchy little heroes, but we
don't see those anymore. They're this, uh, this starkly found
that's comparing good girl art to bad girl art talks
about how now, starting in the nineties, we have bad
(11:39):
girl art, which is girls who you know, are they're
still in the superhero role as those go girls superheroes
that Kristen named are, but they tend to wear less clothes,
more espexually provocative clothes, and have, like I said, more
of an attitude. They're more from the dark side. Yeah,
and their dark side generally comes from a history of
a use. So again, you know, it's hard to find
(12:02):
a woman in these comics who hasn't been beaten up,
killed violently, or just drawn with nothing on, or you know,
who serves as a hindrance for the superheroes. So that's
sort of the argument of the first part of the
podcast is if you're reading a comic book, just any
comic book at all, with a superhero in it, what
are you going to see when you look at these women?
(12:22):
You're gonna see victims and uh. In the next part
of the podcast, we're going to talk about what women
have taken on that hero role and how they've done it.
And we're going to talk about one very important comic
book hero who we have not mentioned at all in
part one, but who has very interesting history, and that
is Surprise Wonder Woman. So the first episode, like we said,
(12:46):
is to get you grounded in this This woman is
victims role. That the women are refrigerators site kind of
proclaimed and which some comic book writers have come back
and said, you know, this changed the way I wrote comics.
Um looking for our ways to fit women into comic books.
And I think in the next episode we'll take a
look at how well that's worked out. So in the meantime,
(13:07):
why don't we read a couple of emails from listeners.
I have two really quick ones about the Halloween Costume podcast.
First up from Aaron, she writes, I'm not a sci
fi geek, but my next costumes, Starbuck from Battlestar Galactica
and Kaylie from Firefly, are both fairly easy, not slutty,
(13:28):
and strong, excellent characters. And then I have one from Jazz,
who writes, I wanted to let you know that a
little boy costumes aren't so great either. As a mom
of two little boys, I really hate the foam muscles
and body shapes that are built into little boys costumes.
I feel it promotes a concept of an unattainable body type,
much like the often criticized sexy girls costumes. Even toddler
(13:49):
costumes from my two year old have fake muscles build
into them. And she sent us a link of some
of the costumes available and they are there. Musley, All right, well,
I've got one more Halloween email here, and this is
from Katie, who was sending us a report from her
second grade classes fall party where all the kids came
(14:09):
dressed up in costumes. Because we talked a lot about
that um study Molly that looked at how Halloween costumes
are marketed and designed differently for boys and girls. So
Katie says, I found it interesting that many costumes aimed
at boys are really a little more than fancy one
piece pajamas and perhaps a mask. Feminine costumes tend to
(14:30):
be much more elaborate, with sleeves long enough to make
writing or eating lunch difficult, long skirts, wigs, veils, hats,
et cetera. The parents of my students were careful to
counter anything revealing and their daughter's costumes with pants and
shirts underneath. A necessity is it's getting cold here. One
of my little girls had a v neck dress on
as part of her vampire costume, and as they were
(14:51):
leaving my room to participate in activity, she commented to
me that she felt very nervous because it came down
to here. I didn't find the neckline revealing at all,
but I thought it was very interesting that she was
uncomfortable enough to express it. I hope my report from
the midst of Halloween in second grade gives you more
insight into kids costumes. So thank you Katie for writing in,
(15:13):
and as always, you can write too to Mom's Stuff
at how stuff works dot com. You can also check
out our Facebook page and like us over there. It
is Stuff I've Never Told You on Facebook pretty self explanatory.
Then you can also follow us on Twitter. We are
at mom Stuff Podcasts, and then finally you can check
(15:34):
out what we're doing during the week on our blog
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