Stop Halloween shaming, share the sexy costume love

By PEYTON SPIVEY

As Tina Fey’s legendary 2004 classic “Mean Girls” put it, “Halloween is the one night a year when a girl can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it.”

The costume stores agree; they advertise and sell tight, short and skimpy parodies of mens’ costumes. For college students, Halloween is now a major source of slut-shame, body-shame and peer pressure.

The problem is not that women should not be wearing the sexy nurse outfit, or that they should feel bad for doing it. The problem is that men are not also “dress[ing] like total slut[s].” Men often get to sit back in their “Top Gun” jumpsuit and watch the thigh highs walk around.

The “Mean Girls” quote should read “Halloween is the one night a year when all women are expected to dress like a total slut, but it is not a free pass, and society will make you feel bad about it anyway.”

Halloween, its outlet for creativity and all the candy that goes on sale the day after is awesome. But the idea that whatever a woman chooses to wear on one night of the year is a judgment of her character for the other 364 nights is not awesome.

Everybody is dressed up like someone else, and if a girl wants to show a little more skin than she usually does, that is her prerogative and no one else’s. So try not to condemn Sexy Alice in Wonderland, because she probably looks awesome. In fact, women should encourage the men of Mary Washington to level the playing field this year and sexualize themselves the way their female friends are. There are multiple costume ideas out there for men, like the 2008 Olympic team or the cast of Magic Mike. Let us also challenge the student body to refrain from judgment and tell those Sexy Taco Bell sauce packets to keep doing what they want. Everybody looks sexy on Oct. 31, no matter what they wear.