Oct 19, 2006

Clearly, there's a market for them

Slutty Halloween costumes.
The trend is so pervasive it has been written about by college students in campus newspapers, and Carlos Mencia, the comedian, jokes that Halloween should now be called Dress-Like-a-Whore Day.

But the abundance of risqué costumes that will be shrink-wrapped around legions of women come Oct. 31 prompts a larger question: Why have so many girls grown up to trade in Wonder Woman costumes for little more than Wonderbras?

“Decades after the second wave of the women’s movement, you would expect more of a gender-neutral range of costumes,” said Adie Nelson, the author of “The Pink Dragon Is Female: Halloween Costumes and Gender Markers,” an analysis of 469 children’s costumes and how they reinforce traditional gender messages that was published in The Psychology of Women Quarterly in 2000.

I'm tired of modern-day Halloween. It seems like in the past decade or so, adults have hijacked the holiday that was supposed to be for and about kids. I seldom get trick-or-treaters these days because everyone's too scared that the candy will be laced with strychnine. So the kids stay home and the adults come to work dressed like idiots.

Bah humbug!

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