"Is Your Dog’s Halloween Costume Sexist?” asked the headline of a Washington Post piece—not a satire, not even a bit of Style section fluff, but an article in the Business section by Abha Bhattarai:
Young girls may be discarding their princess wands for superhero capes this Halloween, but not so in the canine world. The glass ceiling appears to be firmly in place at PetSmart, where career costumes labeled “male” include firefighter and police officer, while female dogs can choose between a pink cowgirl costume and pink loofah.
It also complains that “female” dog costumes are more expensive than “male” ones:
At Party City, Supergirl and Wonder Woman doggie costumes were priced 30 percent higher than Superman costumes ($16.99 versus $12.99). Batgirl costumes, meanwhile, were selling for $19.99, a 33 percent premium on Batman’s $14.99 price tag.
Pet owner Scott Lawrie told the Post, “It seems silly on the surface, but this is part of a larger message we’re sending, that there are certain jobs for men, and certain jobs for women.” Lawrie co-hosts a podcast, ‘She will not be ignored,’ about gender issues. “The career options for women — and dogs — need to go beyond pink loofahs and pink cowgirls.”
Lawrie said he noticed a pattern as he was perusing the costumes at his local PetSmart – that career-related costumes were often explicitly marked “male” and “female.” Lawrie even tried to make sense of the seemingly sexist costumes, “I thought surely there was some reason behind this: maybe the pets needed to relieve themselves a certain way, or something like that…But all of the costumes are identical.”
For the record, Lawrie plans to dress his doggie pair -- Harry and Brody -- as 1980 feminist cop duo Cagney and Lacey. (Transgender costuming?) The dogs already have wigs, but Lawrie says he’s waiting for PetSmart to remove its labeling before he makes his purchase. “Even if it’s just on principle, this is important,” he said. “I’m waiting until they fix it.”
So just to review: The world is on fire, there are Halloween costumes for dogs, and a supposedly serious newspaper is finding it a grave matter of injustice that PetSmart is gendering the doggie costumes.
