Halloween and the Future of Women

As young women and college aged girls go into the political workforce, I feel a sense of anxiety about how we’ll inevitably be chastised as our youth is plastered across social media. This particular blog post is written after Halloween, after overhearing a conversation on GW’s campus. Young women and femmes are constantly criticized for what we wear, how we look, and how we’re perceived. In the political world (and particularly in DC), there are stringent expectations on how women should look and act. For women of color and transgender women, these expectations are particularly limiting and distressing. Women and femmes will be criticized much more heavily than cis men for wearing revealing clothing.

GenZ is the first generation to have our entire youth digitized and published on social media. This also means that for women, what we choose to wear on a night out will be immortalized via platforms such as Snapchat or Instagram. No matter how revealing, the political workforce has a responsibility to not chastise or disqualify women from positions of leadership on the sole basis of how revealing the clothes we choose to wear are.

In January 2019, a video of Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez dancing in college went viral as political opponents tried to discredit and invalidate her ability to lead. The video simply showed her dancing to 1980’s music as part of a trend. Users took to Twitter to bash her and call her derogatory comments. This sexism, if left unaddressed, will only fester as more women run for office. On any given night out, there are dozens of future women leaders dancing and having fun. Doing so should not disqualify them from being taken seriously.

Young women will run for office having revealing outfits immortalized on the internet. It’s inevitable. As politics moves along with the changing tide, I don’t want to see those outfits used against them or see anyone disqualified because they chose something more revealing on a night out. We owe it to leaders of all ages and genders.

Written by: Arielle Geismar