Unhappy Halloween

With fall come crystal blue skies, football games, apple orchards, pumpkin patches and arguably the best holiday of the year: Labor Day.\nJust kidding -- it's Halloween!\nThis Halloween, I am wearing to festivities some very stereotypical "mom jeans" (read: the top of my pants end at my breasts), a very large and unflattering T-shirt my father was given for donating blood and some stark white high-top tennis shoes I found in my mother's closet. With a wicker belt and thick, hair-sprayed bangs, I plan to make many a friend laugh with my ridiculous and very wonderful costume.\nI might be an anomaly among college women, however, when it comes to my outfit -- mostly because I'll be wearing one.\nIn "Mean Girls" (one of the most provocative and meaningful media texts of our time ... sort of), Lindsey Lohan's character explains that Halloween costume politics are vastly different for young adults than for children -- especially women. \nLittle girls -- appropriately -- wear full-body bunny costumes or dress as Minnie Mouse with adorable big ruffly skirts and painted noses. Meanwhile, college women resemble their favorite exotic dancer (whom they might claim is a "'50s pin-up girl" -- making it more respectable?) or, as we see in Mean Girls, don a headband with animal ears and a string for underpants, calling it a kitten or some other baby animal.\nStill, I don't think there is anything intrinsically "bad" about (un)dressing so scantily in public -- I just like to make fun of it a whole lot. \nI do think it's important for women who choose such noncostumes to consider their motives. \nIf it is because knocking men off their feet by unabashedly baring your body is something that appeals to you and is essential for your self-esteem, well, I'm sure you're not the only one.\nIt's really not a woman's fault that sparking male interest is essential for her well-being. From early on, little girls are trained to "desire to be desired" by movies and television shows depicting heterosexual romance. \nIf this is the reason you're wearing pasties and a lace thong to a party, please keep in mind that you're only reinforcing the idea -- so loved and continually generated by the popular culture -- that a woman's body is an object to be gazed at. \nYou're reinforcing the idea that women are primarily sex objects.\nNow, this is not to say that anyone should be permitted to use your outfit as an invitation for sexual assault. You have the right to wear whatever the hell you want without being violated.\nYou also have the right to contribute to changing constraining and negative ideas about femininity and womanhood by avoiding stripper-esque costumes.\nIs it unfair that I'm asking only women to regulate their costumes? Yes. Is the binary system of gender that dominates our culture also unfair? Yes.\nSo let's all wear clothes on Halloween together!\nOh, and I'll trade you my Snickers for your 3 Musketeers.