It’s October which means that it’s yet again time to shop for Halloween costumes for the kids. Given my daughter just turned 14, it’s highly likely this is the last time she’ll be ‘trick-or-treating’. My son, age 10, was easy to shop for. “Mom I want to be an army soldier with a gun! And I want my face painted!”. It’s a good fit for his personality and it was not too painful on my pocketbook.
My teenage daughter was another story all together. Maybe I’m getting old, or maybe it’s because I am the Mom of a teenage girl, but it seems that all of the female costumes are way too provocative. We walked into three different Halloween stores over the weekend to shop for costumes and it was the same story in all three: Costumes were divided in essentially three sections: Kids, men and women. Although my daughter is only 14, she is 5’ 10” and wears a size 5. She’s tall, beautiful, athletic, and smart (I’m her Mom and legally required to brag!). But I bring this up because she has not fit into the “kids” Halloween costumes since the 5th grade.
What was rather disturbing was the selection of the Halloween costumes available for my daughter. All of them – Yes, ALL of them were down right sleazy. I’m pretty sure prostitutes dress more conservatively than what’s available in the women’s section at the Halloween store. Here are a few names of the costumes for sale: Sexy Witch, Sexy Bat Girl, Fantasy Baseball Gal, and my all-time favorite: Sexy Zombie. Really? Who finds zombies sexy? By the way that costume consisted of hot pants and a torn up, very tight, very low cut dress, all for $59.99. I’m pretty sure I have an old dress she can cut up for zero cents, and she can skip the hot pants.
Most of the costumes had the same layout: Extremely short skirts (or in some cases you bypass the skirt and go for the super tight, super short shorts), extremely low cut tops, 6 “ heels, and fishnet stockings. Put a little makeup and do up your hair and you have what they call a Halloween costume. Most parents would never let their daughter wear anything that short, or that low cut on any regular day. So why is it suddenly acceptable to allow our kids to dress like this on Halloween? It’s not. Go over to the men’s section and there is not one single costume titled, “Sexy…”. Why? Are men not sexy? Or maybe it’s just acceptable that only women be allowed to dress like whores on Halloween. Thankfully my daughter was blessed with intelligence as well as looks and simply stated, “Mom, I’m not dressing like a slut for Halloween”. In the end, she decided on being a mobster girl, but thankfully, not the sexy one.