When it comes to describing Halloween costumes, the word that is used the most often is slutty. Mean Girls gave us the line that describes the modern Halloween experience: “Halloween is the one day a year when a girl can dress up like a total slut and no other girls can say anything else about it.” And yet other girls — and other people in general — do have something to say about it.
To start, to call a female a slut implies a judgment about her lifestyle that no one has any right to make. To call her costume a slutty Halloween costume implies that she’s wearing it just so someone will have sex with her. Even if that is the reason why she is wearing a particular costume, that doesn’t give anyone the right to make a judgment, let alone a judgment made entirely on aesthetics. And yet slutty has become something of a catch-all term to describe female Halloween costumes.
Halloween is by its nature a little ridiculous. It’s the one day of the year that you can bang on someone’s door and demand they provide you with candy. (And if I was able to make myself look like I was under fifteen, I would be out there doing that myself.) Halloween is a ridiculous event, and Halloween costumes are ridiculous as a result. Costumes should not be taken literally. They would be appreciated for what they are: costumes. They do not necessarily offer any indication of who the person under the costume really is, or how they are living their life.
As I said in the post I wrote a few weeks ago, She’s Trying Too Hard, we should have the right to wear what we want every day. The same should go on Halloween. A woman has the right to cover and expose as much of her body as she feels comfortable with. She should not be forced to wear any more or less than she wants, external factors such as time and place aside. (Don’t wear thigh highs to a funeral, don’t wear a mini dress to a preschool.) Halloween costumes should be available to meet all wants and needs. It’s wrong to make Twerkin’ Teddy the only costume available, just as it is wrong not to offer costumes of that type.
Often our discomfort with someone’s costume stems from the discomfort we would feel if we were wearing it. We project our insecurities onto someone else, and pass an often harsh judgment based on this insecurity. As Jenna Marbles once said, if a girl wears a skimpy costume and looks super cute, don’t be critical of her just because you wouldn’t feel comfortable dressing that way. And even if she doesn’t look good in her sexy zebra costume, that’s not your problem, so it’s not your place to judge. As Jenna said, “No one’s hatin’ on you for being a toothbrush.”
So next time we start to judge a Halloween costume, we need to stop ourselves. Everyone is entitled to make their own choices when it comes to what they wear, on Halloween and every day. And if you really feel the need to judge a costume, judge it based on creativity, not on coverage. When it comes down to it, I would be thoroughly impressed by anyone who could pull off a sexy coffee mug costume. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a robot unicorn costume to change into.
Song of the Day: Halloween Parade by Lou Reed, the legend we’ve so recently lost
