Next PC-banned Halloween costumes: Pimps & Hos

[hoosier]

(Now that a month has passed, and there have been no reports of GLOs with "black face" problems, let's send our congratulations to the undergrads who got the message and saved us from another round of nasty publicity. Unfortunately, it looks like two other common Halloween costumes are now on the "NO" list by the PC people.)

Fri, Oct. 29, 2004


Pimp costumes, popular for Halloween, remain controversial

BY RON HARRIS
St. Louis Post-Dispatch


(KRT) - Pimp – (pimp) n. One who provides means and opportunities for unlawful sexual intercourse; a panderer, v. to act as a pimp or pander; to pander, to scrounge off; to take advantage of.

_Oxford English Dictionary

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ST. LOUIS - As the nation's Halloween revelers head into this weekend of festivities, they can expect to see lots of pimps, or at least people pretending to be pimps.

Dressed in colorful, often garish costumes will be teenage pimps, adult pimps, female pimps, even children dressed up as pimps, thanks to a Los Angeles-based firm that for the past two years has been selling thousands of the outfits.

Some may come knocking on your door with the traditional, "Trick or Treat." If not, you will certainly be able to find hundreds, maybe even thousands at the dozens of "Pimp and Hooker" balls that will be taking place around the country this weekend, like the four in the Baltimore area, the fourth annual "Pimp and Ho' Halloween Bash" in Chicago, the 7th Annual "Pimp and Prostitute" Ball in Houston, or the ones in Detroit or Las Vegas.

Pimping, to the dismay of some, has become a part of popular culture - from rapper Nelly's energy drink Pimp Juice, which has sold more than 4 million units worldwide, to the hit MTV television series "Pimp My Ride" to a Web site that sells "Pimp and Ho" costumes for children. Pimping has changed from a word that once described a profession that even hard-core criminals considered near the bottom of their occupational ladder to something hip.

"I wouldn't say it's a positive thing," said Kimberly Osorio, editor of Vibe, the nation's leading music and culture magazine for young adults. "The word is always going to be defined as what it has been, however, there are ways that you can use the word positively, and that's what hip hop has done over the years.

The cultural embrace of the term crosses lines of color, class and age.

It includes advertising executives, accountants, nurses, truck drivers and others from suburban Baltimore who for the past four years have gathered twice annually for their Pimp and Hooker Ball at Padonia Station in Timonium, Md.

It includes a plethora of music artists - from white rocker Kid Rock to black rapper 50 Cent - whose songs extol the virtues of being a pimp.

It includes "Pimp My Bride," a headline on the CBS News Web site for a column about marriage reality shows and the new Japanese PIMP wristwatch at a Japanese novelty store, TokyoFlash. It includes Web sites, like phatpimpclothing.com and pimphats.com, where people can buy pimp and whore garb. In white suburbia, prostitute theme parties have become the rage in private homes.

The trend includes Judith Southard, a makeup artist and esthetician at Lemon Spalon in upscale Central West End in St. Louis

"The No. 1 makeup look that I'm doing for Halloween this year is of prostitutes," Southard said.

Not everyone is happy about this heightened interest in pimps. Nelly has had to defend the name he chose for his energy drink, particularly when some black organizations threatened to boycott it.

"In hip-hop, we take words that are negative and turn them into a positive," Nelly said in an interview with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch last month. "These are words kids hear every day in the neighborhoods, so let's turn them into positives. I got a little son who's 5 years old. He'll come in and I'll ask how he did on the coloring test, and he'll say, `I pimped it, man, I got an A.' It's not derogative."

Jonathan Weeks designed the Pimp and Ho Costumes for Brands On Sale, a Los Angeles based-company that sells costumes, appliances, jewelry and a wide variety of other items primarily on the Internet. He and his company have taken heat for coming up with the outfits.

"Anyone who sells this crap to children or lets them wear it should be shot in the face," wrote Chris after reviewing the product on the Internet

"I AM VERY ANGRY," wrote Hashim.

"I hate it enough when it's frat boys and sorority girls, but children ..." wrote Anne. "What awful parents."

Weeks says he made the costumes in response to customer demand.

"A lot of people were searching for them on the Internet," he said.

The company sells about 2,500 children's pimp and ho outfits annually, and the numbers are growing, he said. Additionally, it sells tens of thousands of pimp and ho costumes for adults each year, he said.

"We just give the people what they want," Weeks said. "We're not in the business of exploiting children. This is just a costume."

But law enforcement officials and social workers, particularly those whose job it is to arrest real pimps and in many cases actually rescue women and girls from prostitution, find it appalling.

"I don't think any of this is funny at all," said Lois Lee, president and founder of Children of the Night, a non-profit organization based in Van Nuys, Calif., that rescues children from prostitution. "What these guys do is not funny at all. There's nothing hip or funny about torturing children, and that's what they do."

Sgt. Joe Delia of the Maryland Heights, Mo., police department was involved in one of the largest prostitution-pimp cases in the nation's history.

"There was a whole family, three generations and all of them pimps," he said. "We identified 53 girls who worked for them, 32 of them were under the age of 18."

Delia said he too is irked by playful references to pimps and prostitutes

"A pimp-prostitute relationship is that of a slave master and a slaver, it's modern day slavery," he said. "They beat these girls horrendously, they lock them up. One girl was making $2,000 a night. She had to call her pimp to spend $2 for a happy meal at McDonald's.

"When I hear of these pimps and whores balls, I think it's just ignorance. They don't understand the issue here. Would people find it offensive if they were having slavery parties? Because it's the same thing."

Not so, says Brad Altman, a concert and event promoter who expects 1,000 people at his Pimp and Ho Halloween bash Saturday in downtown Chicago. Attending will be pornography stars Seymour Butts and Shane, and Showtime will be filming the party for its television series "Family Business."

"I do understand the relationship between a real pimp and a real prostitute, and that's not a joking matter, but on the other hand, this is a Halloween theme party," Altman, 43, said. "There's no harm intended. It's a reason to come dressed up. I would agree if this was offensive, if people were coming to this party and slapping their girlfriends and wives around. This party is not to objectify women."

Garrett Duncan, associate professor in the college of arts and sciences at Washington University, said in part the fascination with pimps among whites is a continuation of a history of appropriating various aspect of African-American culture by the larger society.

"It's like Al Jolson," said Duncan, who teaches a class in culture, language and the education of black students and youth. "This is another form of black face in the sense that you are appropriating the aspects of a culture and going out and making a profit on it. Yet you have contempt and disdain for the very culture - the so-called pimp culture - that you take it from.

"It's like a double-edged sword," he said. "On one hand you have people celebrating and making it into an art form, but on the other hand it's used to characterize black culture and contribute to the notion that black people in general are inferior."

Duncan said there is some truth to what Nelly says about African-American culture turning a negative into a positive.

"It's a process called semantic inversion, taking a term and giving it its opposite meaning," he said. "Like "bad" meaning "good," or even "You go girl."

But Duncan said that's not necessarily a good thing.

"I'm not saying we should accept it," he said. "... When you're talking about pimps, pimps have wreaked havoc in black communities, whether you're talking about the women they exploit or their negative consequence to the black community. There's nothing positive about a pimp."