On Halloween, Richard and I went to a Skrillex show in our neighborhood. We put on some light-up costumes and headed into the loud, laser-filled former Ford factory event space and straight into… just… a sea of undergrads. I hope. I hope they weren’t high schoolers. It was an 18 and over show so we were expecting the worst, but oy.
It’s been many, many years since I’ve been around such a lot of young people on Halloween, and in my happy adult bubble I had started to think that all those overplayed news bits and blog posts about ZOMG SEXY COSTUMES were not only lazy, but highly exaggerated. Does anyone really wear those kind of costumes anymore?
The answer is abso-fucking-lutely they do. I saw so many “fairies” and “unicorns” and “pirates” wearing only underwear, or the tiniest booty shorts, or a swimsuit, or–well just in one case–a half-unzipped onesie with some tape on the nips.
To be fair, there were a good handful of shirtless dudes too, and maybe a couple of people with actual costumes as well. Props to those actually-becostumed folks.
I wasn’t super into it. So I spent a lot of the four hours waiting for the headliner (FOUR HOURS of openers, Skrillex? I’m 30 now, you can’t pull shit like that on me anymore) trying hard not to scream, “SLUT! SLUT! SLUT!” Because feminism. We’re not supposed to slut-shame, we’re not supposed to judge ladies for wearing next to nothing, we’re supposed to shout “WOMANPOWER” when we see a girl wearing a black see-through unitard, cat ears and those weird furry legwarmers. I think.
But COME ON. Has anyone here ever even seen a cat? Cats don’t have fetlocks. You’re thinking of a Clydesdale.
While I didn’t love seeing so many buttcheeks, I’d like to think my main problem with (either gender’s) sexy take on Halloween costumes is that it’s just plain lazy. Halloween should be for the creative ones, the artistic and crafty ones, the dark and creepy ones. The weirdos. Hot people get 364 days a year to rule, just LET US HAVE THIS.
People should congratulate the guy who made his own Lego mini fig head and has a cardboard Piece of Resistance stuck to his back. They should talk about the woman who had full-on face paint to match her hand-sewn Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas outfit. Not about She Who Succeeded in Wearing the Least Cloth. Boo. Who cares.
For reference: This is what a cat costume should look like. I was going less for sexy and more for startlingly accurate. I think we went to my grandpa’s house that night and I just sat on his stoop when he opened the door and meowed. I was pleased that he was actually confused for a minute.
And…ok. Yes. All that skin made me squirmy. I wanted to gently suggest to Mother Theresa that she put on a t-shirt or something, or ask that sexy SWAT lady why her costume was a tiny, open-sided minidress with thigh-high vinyl boots while her male counterpart was wearing an accuratish pant and button down outfit complete with bullet-proof vest. And I was this close to telling the 50th hot Native American-costumed person that IF HIS/HER EXTREMELY INAPPROPRIATE PAINTED BARE CHEST brushes me one more time I will CUT them.
But then I thought, insensitive racism aside, why is all this semi-nekkidness bothering me so much? I wanted to tell those young ladies to have a little self-respect, but clearly none of those sexy dinosaurs were short on self-confidence. (Short on arm length, maybe. T-Rex Trying to pull on fishnets.) They were young, happy, surrounded by friends and blissfully unafraid.
I’m the one who had the problem, probably because I’m jealous and a little sad that I never had the confidence to pull off that sexy pizza costume I’ve always secretly been eyeing.
And so in the future I will try not to judge. I will try to think you’re wearing that because it pleases you, and not because society told you that’s what you should wear, and not because you’re trying to gain attention. You’re wearing it because you feel great in it, and isn’t that why most of us wear most of the things we wear in public?
So you go, sexy cat. Flaunt your bad self and fuck them haters. Make a lot of noise, as if an animal in pain, shake your pelvis and roll about on the floor. Haters who try to pick you up when rolling better recognize that you may grab at their arm or even bite.
I mean, according to WebMD*, that is just how a sexy cat do.
*Why does WebMD have an article about cats in heat? I dunno. This is the real, thought-provoking question I leave you with.
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