{journal twelve}

I'm protesting Halloween this year by not dressing up.  Actually, I just forgot to get a costume.  But still. I'm tired of feeling like I have to dress like a tramp every Hallow's Eve.

It is nice not having to worry if my butt is going to be hanging out of the strips of material I called a costume last year while I'm walking down 6th Street.  Because I will admit, I have worn my fair share of barely there Halloween costumes for the sake of fitting in at Halloween parties (even though the whole time I was pulling down my skirt and pulling up my shirt).  I'm just not a show-half-your-body sort of gal.

Why is it that on Halloween, girls/women have the option to either be ugly, or slutty?

ugly: 

or slutty:

or scary slutty:

Yet men have the option to be cool looking doctors, astronauts, lumberjacks, famous athletes, you know it.  If a woman was to go to a costume party dressed up as a lumberjack, people would probably laugh at her.  Unless it was a sexy lumberjack.

Here are some costumes that are sexed up, and really, really shouldn't be:

"sexy Nemo" -- what?

"sexy Ninja Turtle"

this one was advertised as "sexy small child"...wrong on many levels

Halloween is for dressing up and having fun.  If you want to be slutty, or risque this Halloween, I say go for it.  I just don't like it that that if a woman is going to dress up and have fun for Halloween, she has to show half of her body in order to be accepted.  

I think this is telling of our society as well.  In every day life (not Halloween), women that reveal more skin, cleavage, butt are more likely to receive more attention it seems.  Think about high school, it's the cheerleaders in the short skirts that are the popular ones, but the girls in art or the girls in choir.  Throughout our society, 'less is more' when it comes to how much clothing you're wearing vs. how much attention you will be receiving.  Halloween isn't any different.

P.S. a friend of mine just posted a picture of herself in her Halloween costume.  She was an astronaut ... a sexy astronaut (see above mention of cool guy costumes).