Everyone knows the classic line from Mean Girls about Halloween, “Halloween is the one night a year when a girl can dress up like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it.”
This seems to be the norm around a college campus. We take normal occupations, such as nurses and firefighters and make them provocative.
For years, our mothers make our costumes, or if we buy them, we have to get them past dad, but then we come to college and it’s free reign. There are no parents to “OK” the costume, no price tag on the expense. We are at liberty to buy whatever we want, to dress up however we want, but being a college student does seem to put some limits on that.
Take a cat costume, for example; in general all you need is a black pair of leggings, a black shirt, some pink ears, some drawn on whiskers, and you’ve got yourself a cat.
Sophomore communications major Carly Brundige is thinking about going with the classic cat look, but instead of the leggings is going to sport a black velvet dress she has hanging in her closet, which brings us back to the limits.
“I’m a college student,” says sophomore broadcasting major Ericka Pratt. “I can’t pay for things like that.”
Pratt is going as a schoolgirl because she already had the skirt. She intends to borrow a tie from her friend and bought a shirt at a local thrift store.
“It was great, the whole thing cost me like $5,” Pratt says.
If you don’t have the accessories you need, do like Pratt, and borrow from a friend.
Junior public relations major Bari Chavis is dressing up as a crazy cat lady, borrowing a cat sweater from her friend.
The key is finding costumes, Chavis says. She agrees with Pratt that people are limited in terms of finances, but believes that they are also lazy.
Chavis, however, is only dressing up as a crazy cat lady one of the nights. That’s right, collegiettes™, Halloween is not just one night in college.
“Everyone tries to out-do each other in college,” says junior public relations major Amanda Burgio. “It’s a contest, without being considered a contest.”
It also has to do with pictures.
“No one wants to be seen in the same thing,” Chavis says.
Burgio is dressing up as an elf with a group of her friends, while they have a male friend play Santa.
Burgio isn’t sure exactly what the costume will look like, but believes that whether the dress is on the provocative side or not, it’s excused.
Not everyone, however, feels this way.
“It’s common that girls dress like sluts on Halloween,” junior meteorology Ryan Farrell said. “Even if the girl isn’t usually slutty, she feels that it is okay to dress like a slut on Halloween, so therefore all girls have a portion inside of them that wants to dress like that for guys, and this is their excuse.”
Farrell isn’t the only one who feels this way, either.
“They like getting attention from guys,” sophomore journalism major Aimee Hirsch said. “It’s like an excuse to dress like that,” she says in regards to Halloween.
The idea to dress up provocatively isn’t necessarily on every woman’s mind, however. It all depends on what a woman feels comfortable in. Whatever a woman dresses up as, she has to own it. It’s just like anything else you wear.