Observations from Whore-o-Ween

From the early days when all I cared about was the costume and the candy to early adolescence where I would pray that all my romantic fantansies culled from popular songs like "I Swear" would come true that night- Halloween has always been magical. And my dad's street in the ole AL is one of the best streets hands down for Halloween fun. Every house has an interactive theme. My house often involves massive candelabras dripping wax and my dad sitting dead still on the front porch with an ax in his lap and candy at his feet. Across the street from us the neighbors set up the entire basement as a maze made out of cardboard boxes. There are no lights, random slides and ladders and lots of corners where you could only hope that the most popular boy in 8th grade would suddenly profess his undying love for you and whisk you away- only to pass by the dark corner to see him making out with the most popular girl or worse, the girl you feel you are obviously better than, and a small child crying for their mother to come in and get them. But I digress.

Even in my most hormone charged days girls still wore normal costumes. This was the mid to late 90's. The sauciest anyone got was like a 1980's miniskirt. We were witches with big black cloaks, disco queens with heinous pants, even the "sexy" cat completely covered head to toe, the "saucy" devil fully clothed with an inviting little tail. So when did Halloween become the excuse for everyone to go out and whore it up? Are we really that self-esteem deprived as women that we need to pull all our energy into skanking it up to make the boys want to take us to the dark corner?

And while I have no problem with the girl who wants to show some skin (who doesn't every once in a while) I think all this whoring of costumes has made Halloween less fun. Now girls that put some creativity and some ingenuity into their costumes look like complete dorks when they show up as, I don't know, something with antlers, when all their female counterparts are sexy bees (which there were a lot of this year), sexy maids, sexy stewardesses, and the ubiquitous sexy cat. And while I know that I can't fully stop this trend ( I admit to being a rollerskating disco girl with short shorts!) I can only hope that we can somehow instill in small girls everywhere some better self-esteem than we ourselves were obviously given so that when they grow up they can have a fun and creative Halloween like it was meant to be, instead of desperately needing to be the sexiest one at the party. More on my hatred of Bratz to come.