This Year, I’m Dressing My Kids Up As Sluts For Halloween

Get Ready for Halloween, sluts!

It’s almost Halloween! A time of seasonal celebration, and cultural traditions that are fun for the entire family. Like making delicious caramel apples to commemorate the autumn harvest. Hanging spooky cobwebs and gauzy ghosts in our front yards, in remembrance of the spirit world. Carving ghoulish faces into the giant squash on our front stoops, just like the superstitious Irish pagans of yesteryear. And don’t forget the best holiday ritual of all: Dressing up like hookers!

That’s right, ladies. The costume makers have spoken. Unless you’re planning on wearing a homemade costume—and going either as a man, a can of soda, or a piece of furniture—you’re going to look like a slut again this Halloween.

Speaking as a middle-aged mother with small children, I couldn’t be happier. For the last few holidays, I’ve tried dressing up in practical, comfortable costumes. You know, the kind of homely clothes that you can wear trick-or-treating. Last year, for example, I went as a clown. I made my husband go as my sidekick clown. Although we looked very authentic—and impressed several children at a local party with our synchronized juggling—my husband wasn’t happy about it. Because clowns, despite their good-natured façade, are fifty shades of creepy. More importantly, they are zero shades of sexy. In the end, the best thing we got out of those baggy pants, polka-dot bow ties, and curly wigs was free birth control. We were so good-natured looking, we could barely look at each other.

And really, gals: Is the purpose of Halloween to make yourself appear physically grotesque to your significant others? Of course not. That’s what Thanksgiving is for. The purpose of Halloween is to turn yourself into a vampish male fantasy. I wish I’d learned this lesson earlier. I remember one Halloween back in college, when my roommate and I invented our own crafty costumes. We wore white sweat suits with black spots, and signs on our backs that read “Home or Bust.” We were Cows Coming Home. We got a lot of compliments for this neat idea. We found ourselves rather clever and amusing. But guess what? No cows got laid that night. In fairness, that was probably not all about the costumes. My roommate and I lived in a trailer park. The walls were made of tin, and we shared a bedroom. Were we dressed up like fat itinerant farm animals? Yes, we were. But that trailer park wasn’t doing us any favors either.

If I could do it all over again, I’d ditch the smart girl costume and go for the dumb schoolgirl one. Because nothing says “Halloween is a creepy male sex fantasy” better than a grown woman dressed in a see-through white shirt, a plaid Catholic schoolgirl skirt, and thigh-high argyle socks. Where was that costume back in the eighties when I really needed it? Oh yeah, I was wearing it. At Catholic school.

Today, Halloween is on steroids. ED steroids. Almost every costume manufactured for women—adorable family pet, food item, fun video game character—looks like some version of an escort service. Want to go as a cupcake? That’ll be a blue corset top with a pink tutu. A kitty cat? Black strapless tank dress and thigh-high, the-cat-in-the-hat-is-a-hooker tights. Snow white? Short yellow skirt with—you guessed it—thigh-highs. Bavarian barmaid? Pink tutu, choker necklace, and plump limps. This year, I was fixing to go out as a Trappist Monk. So I’m thinking I might just make one, by getting a long brown hooded cape and cutting it off at the ass. Come to think of it, I may have spoken too soon about that soda can costume too. You can actually purchase a Coke Micro Mini that comes down to right about your lady parts. It looks nothing like a can of soda. But, who cares?

The best thing about costumes today is that they finally put the porn industry in charge of Halloween. If you want to look like a seductive nurse—or an alluring, half-clothed prison inmate—just style yourself after the porn stars who model the costumes. The key to most of the looks, I’ve noticed, is half pursed lips. Also, a puerile expression and vacant lifeless eyes. Thank you, porn star costume models, for showing us how you can look like a sex kitten, even when you’re supposed to be a Trojan Warrior.

Also, quick question: who put the pedophiles in charge of designing children’s costumes? Because they’re doing an awesome job. I mean, it’s fine for parents to dress toddlers in those bulky, wooly costumes, like a Magical Unicorn or a Loveable Lion, or even Grouchy the Green Turtle. But the animal kingdom is for babies, people. Once a girl has hit four or five-years-old, she is no longer interested in looking like a cuddly little animal. Gross.

I know this because when I was a kid, we made our own costumes. One year I wanted to be a scarecrow, so my mom gave me a bunch of my dad’s clothes, tied the cuffs with white string, and stuffed the shirt with hay. It was so lame. I looked exactly like a scarecrow. Not a sexy scarecrow or a sweetheart scarecrow. Just a true-to-life, fucking scarecrow. Nobody wants to look at a little girl in that shit.

Girls today are much better off. Now, you can get your preschooler a pretty panda costume, with a black tutu and black leg warmers. If you’re not sure how much makeup she should wear—or whether she should be clutching her crotch—just refer to model on the front of the bag. You may also note some sexy animal children are placed in seductive, backward-glancing poses. I get that. Actual pandas are hideously ugly. They’re pear-shaped, and they have big round faces. Young girls are supposed to look hot.

Another great option is the Red Hot devil girl, which I found in the store. Costumes start at size 4. Your pre-K daughter can pull on those tight red shimmer pants, slip on the bare midriff halter top, and stick that pointy tail right on her back side. In my opinion, this is a perfect choice, especially for teenage girls who might be too shy to call up the predators directly. And isn’t it high time that child predators stopped hiding on the Internet? Now they can finally interact with little kids, using enticing candy treats, right at their own front doors.

If those choices aren’t quite right for your little princess, there are plenty of alternatives on the shelves. Consider, for example, the Cheeky Cherokee—it’s sexist and a little bit racist too! For girls who prefer to be sexually objectified as inanimate objects, rather than oppressed ethnic figures, there’s the Tickle Me Pink Crayon dress. Younger girls might prefer the Purrry Kitty costume—a short leopard-print dress with a frilly skirt and arm cuffs. Or, if your daughter wants a warmer version of a—umm—kitten, she might consider the Playful Kitty, which has a much more practical, black furry body suit. According to the picture on the packaging, Playful Kitties stand around just like real kitties do: with one hip thrust out, the other leg bent open, and their hands on their tail.

On a similar topic, when did Halloween get so fucking creepy for girls AND boys? Friends of mine tell me if their boys don’t want to be a Power Ranger or a Ninja, they can buy a really monstrous-looking zombie mask. I don’t know when the costume market started catering to devil worshippers and Hell’s Angels, but the devil costumes they make now for kids look like the actual incarnation of evil, and the ghosts look like real dead people.

Last year, a friend of mine let her sixth-grade daughter go to a haunted house on the outskirts of town. It was so scary that one of the girl’s friends peed her pants. I don’t mean that figuratively, like “that haunted house was so fun I almost peed my pants.” I mean she got so scared that she urinated on herself and had to go home. It turned out that a grown man had come running at them with a chainsaw.

Which is obviously way more nightmarish—in a cool way—than Halloween used to be. When I was in sixth grade, my Catholic school had a big Halloween party. Our teacher, Mrs. Phelps, dressed up like a witch. Then she made a “witches brew” with root beer and dry ice. It was spooky. Later, my parents took us to a haunted house at the YMCA. Some people had glow-in-the-dark costumes. Then we walked down a hallway and stuck our hands in bowls of human guts. Just kidding, the guts were made of Jell-O. Still, I got scared and went home.

Now that Halloween is like a Slasher film and a porn flick all rolled into one, I think grown men may need to step up their game. I mean, seriously people. The Men’s Career Costume section looks like a dated version of the Village People. And the rest of the men’s section is just one predictable penis joke after another. Which was a refreshing theme to stumble across, given that I was with my children. Who had questions. “What are Baseball Nuts?” “What’s A Pussy Magnet?” “Why does he want to Spank That Monkey?”

But the best one was the guy in the green camouflage pants, whose orange vest said “Beaver Hunter.” Wow. Now that is some clever stuff. I don’t know about other women, but if I was single this Halloween—and all dressed up like a Greco-Roman streetwalker—I would definitely try to hook up with that guy. In fact, maybe I’ll even get one of those vests for my husband, and then find something for myself to wear as his sidekick. Anyone seen a Sexy Beaver costume?