Halloween used to be about being scary, dressing up and going trick-or-treating. If you were lucky, you’d go to a Halloween party at school. As the novelty of Halloween wore off, so did the cuteness and scariness. Yet something changed over the years. As we aged, we changed the cute, scary outfits for sexy outfits to go out in. We exchanged the Halloween parties with games and trick-or-treating for house parties and clubs.
When you search for Halloween outfits now on TikTok, the search is filled with ‘niche’ or ‘sexy’ costumes, ones aimed at exposing you. Amusingly, this is the case specifically for women. A woman dresses as a sexy nurse or a sexy nun, belittling female-led professions. This unfortunate reality isn’t shared by men, who can wear anything for Halloween without the same confining expectations.
In turn, our Holiday evolved into something different for young women. Halloween became sexualised when we grew up, and we chose alcohol to pair with it. Around holidays like this, we can look the part, but we must choose to be safe. The combination of pressures to drink on Halloween, mixed with the outfits women are assigned to wear by the expectations of our gender, leads to a dangerous mix, reducing our safety to a skimpy costume.
When you arrive at costume shops, the feminine costumes are designed to be revealing. It is a conscious choice to have an unsexy costume, to steer away from the general pressures of Halloween. As girls, we grow up with this expectation evident, particularly for young ladies in university. Halloween for young ladies became about sexual appeal, much akin to other aspects of the female experience. Sexy was no longer a choice but an expectation.
Halloween stopped being cute or scary when we grew up and began caring about the look and the drink rather than the holiday. It became sexy when we added alcohol and expectations to the mix. So, to take back Halloween, wear what you want, and don’t buy into the pressures that don’t serve us.