Emily Heller

Can I be anti-slut shaming and anti-sexy Halloween costumes too? I think so. A lot of smart, awesome, feminist-y people have been defending sexy Halloween and I get that. Calling women sluts for doing one thing while calling them ugly for doing anything else isn’t fair, isn’t cool, and isn’t right. And I’m not here to do that. I’m here to say: you have another option!

Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE to dress up and look sexy.

Photo credit: Mindy Tucker. Teeth credit: Party City, USA

But just… not on Halloween.

Halloween has always been my favorite holiday, as the kid of an art teacher and as a slobby girl. At its best, it celebrates the 5 C’s: creativity, cleverness, craftiness, collaboration, and candy. If you wanna get heady about it, the potential of the holiday for a liberated experience is HUGE. You can dress as any gender! You can disguise yourself in any way you want! You don’t have to look hot or professional or clean or girly or boy-y or trendy or any other way you’ve been told to look all year if you don’t want to! The whole country gets to play dress-up! I LOVE IT I LOVE IT I LOVE IT SO MUCH! 

But it’s getting harder and harder to find people who think of that when they think of Halloween.

Now I don’t think there’s anything wrong with wanting to look sexy. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with doing it on Halloween, especially if you don’t get to safely dress that way the rest of the year. But I think store-bought sexy costumes are missing the point of what I wish was just a CREATIVITY holiday and instead making it yet another day for women to feel bad about their bodies, competitive with each other, and also impractically cold on the last day of October.

Best case scenario: you figure something out that both makes you feel great about your body and expresses your creativity & skill. Did you put together that Poison Ivy costume or that Nicki Minaj costume yourself? That’s awesome! But that’s just not what I see when I see another goddamn sexy nurse. It’s not disgraceful. It’s just BORING.

I GET IT. Everyone is doing it and it’s fun to make out with people on Halloween and it’s a lot easier to do that when you’re dressed as Tinkerbell than when you’re dressed as the dad from Frasier or Einstein or Wayne or any other off-putting but awesomely executed Halloween costume I’ve worn as an adult. Can I stand in opposition to a trend while maintaining that the people participating in it are not bad people, not at fault? I realize how patronizing this sounds, and it probably is, but: I just think you’re missing out on an opportunity to not worry about your looks for one day, and that makes me sad.

I don’t think it’s slutty. I just think it’s lame. Is that okay?

Then again, I basically never get laid so maybe don’t take my word for it.

Whatever your thoughts on the issue, let’s keep our sights on the REAL enemy here: white people dressed up as “Rastas.”

Thanks for reading! I love you! Here are some fun times I’ve had with home made costumes throughout the years:

2011 - Wayne & Garth with my best friend (photo by Charles Lavoie)

Turanga Leela, 2010

Einstein, 2004

Cute-ass clowns, 1991