Sexploits

Halloween may not be about trick-or-treating at our age, but there do seem to be some tricks left over.

Every year when I go shopping for a Halloween costume, I undergo psychological trauma.  The funny girl in me wants to paint a box and go as a washing machine, but the insecure social butterfly recognizes society's cues to dress as…well, a slut.

Sure, there's variety.  I could be a slutty vampire, or a slutty baseball player.  The slutty options are endless! 

Those options all get together and team up against me to wear down my resistance.  It's 243 slutty costumes to 3 boring, overdone costumes, and I've got to go with the numbers.

It's actually really scary, though.  While handing out candy last year, I saw tween-aged girls prancing around in costumes fairly similar to my salacious choices.  I'm going to a kegger after this, but where are they headed?

As an experiment, while looking for my costume this year I browsed the girl and tween/teen sections as well.  Thankfully, toddlers are still dressing conservatively, but girls older than that don't seem to be.  A teen/tween costume I found called "Blood Lust Vampire" featured little more than a petticoat and a black bustier. 

My mother—no, correction, my father—would have killed me if I had dressed like that as a middle school girl.  My mother would have had to nod in the background.  However, that's who these costumes are aimed at and sized for: the middle school set.

I get it; Halloween is about fun and parties, and having one day of the year where you can dress like all the evil voices in your head want you to.  I love it, but it may have gotten just a little out of hand. 

Grown women dress like sluts on Halloween because any other day of the year, they would get catty remarks and gross men hitting on them.  It's the one day where women can flaunt what they've got as hard as they want.  Here's the thing, though: middle school girls should not have anything to flaunt.  It should be locked away safely in training bras, or real bras for the more advanced among them.

It's time for parents to step in and say, "Let's make you a nice washing machine costume.  Or a non-slutty Alice in Wonderland."  Otherwise, young girls will be sending sexual cues far too early in life, even if it is just one night of fun.