It's the day after Halloween, and I am 11 years old. I have already finished my bucket of candy from the night before, and I already know what I want to dress up as for the next year. A pirate, duh. So I got to work, cutting up old jeans and distressing them to look muddy, getting a silk blouse from my chorus concert and making it look like it was all bloody and pirate-esque. When I was a kid, I was all about being realistic, so by the end of this long process, my pirate costume was pretty kickass.
But then something tragic happened. By the time Halloween rolled around I was 12 years old, it obviously wasn't cute or cool or popular to dress like a dirty character from several centuries ago. I forgot all of the effort I put into my awesome pirate outfit and chucked it to the back of my closet in hot pursuit of a costume from Halloween Express (from the tween section, of course). I don't remember what I ended up walking around the neighborhood in that night, but I know it was something extremely girly and cliche.
So let's talk about Halloween costumes. Have you tried one on this year? I can personally attest that I tried on dozens before giving up and just buying a shirt from Target that had a "Mean Girls" quote on it, and resolved to just wear that and go as Karen, as "a mouse, duh." All costumes sold at the Halloween stores advertised as "dresses" are more like shirts with half of a tutu sewed on the bottom. I was especially disappointed in the Dorothy costume I tried on, because even the full skirt wasn't long enough for me to reasonably wear without feeling like I couldn't walk out of the house. I, for one, do not get how anyone could be comfortable going out in something like that, much less dancing. There is a "sexy" everything in those stores, and last year I even saw an advertisement for a "sexy" ebola HazMat costume (let's hope that was a social critique).
Why does everything have to be sexy or cute or girly on Halloween? When did this holiday become a day where, in the words of Cady Heron, "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"? By the way, that sentence we've all heard before is full of crap. I will judge any girl I see dressed as a slutty ladybug anywhere in public. I'd probably judge you in a slutty bumblebee costume too, but that's just me.
This year, us girls should rip a page out of Cady Heron's book and come up with something creative and *gasp* maybe even scary to wear to whatever party, bar crawl or date function we plan to attend this year. Let's ditch the Halloween gender norms and at least go for a cute Pinterest costume instead of a 24-inch cloth "dress" that costs $50.
