Purim Costumes and the Commodification of Gender.

In the study on which this article is based, I examined, from a gendered perspective, the Purim costumes market in Israel, to see what I might learn from a comparison between costumes aimed at boys and those aimed at girls. I conducted a visual and textual analysis of 60 Purim costumes for girls and boys, as presented on retail websites and found that Purim costumes offered on these popular Israeli websites present such clearly demarcated gender differentiations that I can claim that they play a part in the commodification of gender. The alleged choice of costumes is in fact strategically governed by marketing practices that mobilize the media culture targeted at children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]