Like everything else in life, the Halloween season isn’t complete without loads of opinions. People love to make up their own rules and expect everyone else to follow them. So here’s my Halloween hot take: the most feminist thing you can do on October 31st is mind your own business.
Every October, women are offered a choice. Wear a sexy costume to appease men, or wear a modest one to appease men. Apparently, those are the only options. Either way, the outfit is about, you guessed it, men.
The Annual Halloween Contradiction
The problem is visible before you reach the checkout. In stores and online, the men’s version of a character is a full outfit that tries to be as accurate as possible, while the women’s version has about half the fabric and “sexy” tacked onto the name. Sexy nurse, sexy cop, the list goes on. Then the same culture that built the costume aisle criticizes women for shopping in it.
The aisle makes sexy the default; the culture judges anyone who buys it, and the only alternative is to cover up. Every choice begs the same question: how will men see her? It’s entirely reasonable to ask why most costumes marketed to women are so sexualized. Judging the women who wear them is not. A woman showing skin in her Halloween costume isn’t setting feminism back. Policing what she wears is.
The criticism belongs on the industry, the marketing, and the culture that treats a woman’s sex appeal as her value, not on the woman holding the hanger.
Why Is Everything Sexy?
The costume aisle didn’t invent this idea. Society has spent years training girls to be decorative, so of course the aisle assumed they’d want to be decorative in a witch hat too. Women are praised for being looked at, judged for how they’re looked at, and taught to check their reflection through everyone else’s eyes. By the time she reaches the aisle, the options have been picked, and the taste has been trained. She buys what’s there, and everyone shames her for it.
The pressure is worth questioning, but whether she felt it or not, her costume still isn’t a verdict on her character or respectability.
Presentation Is Not Permission
This is where the conversation tends to go from progressive to regressive. Someone points out that the options are limited, and in the rush to defend women from the costume aisle, people land on a different insult. They assume any woman in a revealing costume must have been manipulated into it, and that this is the only reason she deserves respect.
That isn’t defending her. It’s no more respectful than objectifying her. It assumes she wasn’t smart enough to see the manipulation, or strong enough to see past it and choose her own outfit. She can know exactly what the aisle is doing and still pick the costume because she likes it. The pressure exists, but at its most basic level, this is still a choice, and it deserves the same respect you’d give the frat guy in a prisoner costume.
Her right to that respect shouldn’t depend on being a victim of society. It should depend on the fact that she is human. A costume isn’t consent, and it isn’t an invitation to your attention. Why should a woman have to make herself less visible to avoid being treated as available? Responsibility for unwanted advances belongs to the person making them, whether she’s dressed as a ghost in a bedsheet or a show-stopping vampire.
Feeling Sexy and Being Sexualized Are Not the Same
These two experiences constantly get lumped together, but they aren’t the same. Being sexualized is something done to you. Feeling sexy is something that happens within you. The glimpse in the mirror, the rush of walking into a room dressed exactly how you imagined: that’s the point, not men gawking.
It’s the one night a costume is supposed to be a performance or a character, not a statement about who she is. So who gets to decide what empowerment looks like? If the answer is anyone other than the woman wearing the outfit, we’ve just swapped one set of rules for another. The costume aisle tells women to be sexy, the critics tell them not to be, and both are still telling her what to do with her own body.
The Answer Isn’t Another Rulebook
The answer to restrictive gender expectations can’t be more restrictive gender expectations. Freedom isn’t swapping one set of rules for another. It’s getting to decide for herself.
Maybe she dressed for herself. Maybe she dressed for someone else. Maybe she wants every head in the room to turn. Who cares? She doesn’t owe anyone her reasons, and respect shouldn’t be something she has to earn with a good explanation, which is exactly why Halloween is such a gift.
Halloween, especially in college, hands us a rare chance to be as ridiculous, over-the-top, or daring as we want, when so many other moments in life won’t. So the next time you see a sexy cat, a sexy Shrek, or a full-coverage inflatable T-rex, remember that the only question that matters is whether she’s having fun. My Halloween hot take? That’s what makes the holiday so special. So this October 31st, worry about your outfit, not hers.