'I want to be a bloody dentist for Halloween — why are the 'girl' costumes always cute?'

Halloween highlights how boring and unimaginative dividing clothes into 'boys' and 'girls' is, writes 10-year-old Alice Griffin 

10-year-old Alice Griffin in her 'boys' clothes.

Every time I need new clothes, I have to go to the boys’ section. This weekend, my mother took me to Penneys in Blanchardstown and we spent €60 on kids’ clothes. Every item was purchased from the boys’ section.

I like video games and Minecraft and Marvel and movies and books and music. None of that creative stuff is in the girls’ section. The girls’ clothes are all pink and colourful and K-Pop Demon Hunters (which, by the way, is so last year!).

The boys’ section is so much fun. It's so much more what I like. It's more creative and interesting, and they really put more care into it. Do they think girls can't do anything creative? Can't play video games? Don’t watch good movies? Don’t like Spider-Man?

Here’s what we bought from the boys’ section in Penneys:

• A PlayStation jacket ;
• A Mandalorian sweatshirt;
• A Spider-Man hoodie;
• A Snoopy sweatshirt. 

Examples of girls clothes we’ve seen in the same store:

• A tee-shirt full of pink phones; 
• A shirt with different types of ribbons on it; 
• A shirt with 'cute' bears on it 
• A top that said “too cosy to care”. I like to be cosy, but I still care!

I think I should have the right to wear whatever I want. It shouldn’t be divided into ‘girls’ or ‘boys’. It makes me feel like I have to change. And that I can’t be a girl. But I am a girl. I just like different things.

Girls and boys know what they like. But grown-ups are deciding that only boys can like Spider-Man and Minecraft. And they’re saying that all girls are the same. We aren’t!

I would like to have a kids’ section that is not divided into boys and girls, or to have more fun choices for girls. The promotional pictures in the shop could show girls wearing these clothes. Why not?

Halloween is coming and I’m excited for it. I want to dress up as a ‘bloody dentist’! But when we search for girls’ costumes, the girls’ outfits are nearly always cute instead of scary.

Where do these ideas of different clothes for girls and boys come from? When we were in Penneys, a woman was shopping for a baby boy. She picked up a baby onesie — white with cute pumpkins on it — then put it down, saying: "Oh no, I think that one’s for girls."

Last weekend, my mother took me to the cinema to see Sense and Sensibility. Two hundred years ago, women wore long dresses and could not own property. On the bus home from Blanchardstown, we talked about women in history who had to fight for the right to work, to vote, to get an education.

It’s 2026, but people are still deciding what girls should wear and how they should dress.

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I hope that this article might make a difference.