The Politically Correct Halloween Costume

Last night I had a party in which Halloween costumes were optional. You could either dress up, come as you are, or come as you are and wear a nametag with the costume/disguise you would have donned if you had been so inclined to dress up.

Among the abstract disguises were Fred Thompson, Spider Woman, and Regret (my personal favorite of the night). Among the actual costumes were people in crazy wigs, the 5th Bee Gee brother (who knew there were even 4???), Bloody Mary (the cocktail), and then me, a 50's Housewife.

It dawns on me that perhaps going as a 50's Housewife is not the most politically correct thing to do. After all, women in the 50's who stayed at home weren't, in many cases, given other options--and it isn't as if all of them were miserable robots who slaved away in a domestic arena without agency or access to pleasure, or the ability to have independent thoughts and actions. And yet, as I parodied a 50's housewife, those qualities were the ones I played up, acting as the consummate host to my guests.

I suppose you could say I'm overthinking it--it's not as if I went dressed as a Chinese coolie, a geisha, or a dragonlady--all actual costumes I had seen at one time or another at parties I've attended. And yet, it does strike me as judgmental to say that a 50's housewife can be a source of parody. Or is it that women have achieved to a degree unprecedented since that time that we can look back on that era and say thank goodness we have choices--that women who stay at home can choose to do so without social restrictions that tell them otherwise.

Of course, that's just my circle of friends, who really knows what is going on in the rest of America outside my ivory tower.