Halloween is fun for a lot of reasons: Candy! Parties! Scary movies about serial killers murdering teenagers who make questionable life choices! Personally, my favorite part of Halloween has always been the costumes. When I was little, my grandmother used to make them for me and I loved feeling like I was the only person who was ever going to wear them (except just kidding, there were at least three other Belles in my class that year but none of them had custom-made ball gowns, so jokeâs on them). I think Iâm a little too old for my grandma to keep making my Halloween costumes (sorry, Ayi; itâs not you, itâs me), so I recently decided to go online and check out costume websites in order to gather ideas. After browsing through a few pages, I realized that row after row of the womenâs costumes seemed⊠tiny. And tight. And a little ridiculous. Why were my only costume options either Firehouse Hottie or Naughty Nurse? Where did the clever, original costumes go?
You thought I was joking about the homemade Halloween costumes? I painted with all of the colors of the wind.
Looking through some other sites, I couldnât help feeling like the costumes were either revealing ones that left little to the imagination and ultra-conservative costumes that covered the models from head to toe. Even the âfunnyâ costumes were either tight microdresses with well-known brands printed on them (also, what is funny about dressing up as Coca-Cola?) or shapeless bags over a black long sleeve and leggings, which are clearly not meant for use in Puerto Rico because you would probably pass out from heat stroke within four minutes of getting out of the car. Halloween at our age means parties and musical events, which equals crowded venues and alcohol, which equals sweating. I donât plan on dying of dehydration and I hope, dear readers, you donât either, so it seems like the only âlogicalâ choice is to dress up as a Sexy Skeleton or the other flimsy choices that dominate the costume aisles. Because thatâs the other problem: not only are they the logical choice in terms of being weatherproof, but theyâre also the only ones moderately priced and readily available to us.
 Dressing smartly (and economically) for our tropical climate and for the occasion doesnât necessarily imply having all your goodies out, though. Between the massive amounts of cleavage and the barely-there bottom halves, the vast majority of these costumes are not only hypersexualizing the women wearing them but are doing so unnecessarily. A Cutie Cop or a Red Hot Devil are unavoidable, but since when is Sexy Mean Kitty a thing? Canât we dress up as aliens, crayons, or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles without having to add the sex appeal factor? Why do I need to wear a costume that requires a SWAT team and emotional support to get in and out of?
Thereâs a famous line in the movie Mean Girls that addresses this phenomenon: âIn the regular world, Halloween is when children dress up in costumes and beg for candy. In Girl World, Halloween is the one night a year when a girl can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it.â As striking as this observation seems at first, that canât be the only thing it boils down to. Wearing a sexy costume doesnât make a girl a slut, a skank, or any of those judgmental adjectives that come out of peopleâs mouths nowadays when a woman is comfortable with her body and her sexuality. In other words, the problem isnât wanting to look good on Halloween because itâs perfectly acceptable to want to look good year round. My problem is with the fact that these are our go-to options for looking good, because a Halloween where being attractive automatically implies wearing a costume described as âhotâ, âprovocativeâ, or âseductiveâ and not âwittyâ, âsmartâ, or âwell-thought outâ is scary, indeed.Â
*Photo Courtesy:
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