When we Dukies were younger, once a year we got to dress up as a princess or a super hero and parade around our neighborhoods collecting candy from nearby houses. We would spend hours in Party City picking out the perfect costume, or our moms would spend days sewing the ones that we couldn't find in a store. And of course, we all had a running list in our heads of the houses with the neighbors that gave the best candy and the ones to steer clear of because their residents handed out apples or pretzels or toothbrushes.
As a kid, Halloween was the one time of year when we could step out of our insecure little selves and into the garb of our heroes.
For female college students, Halloween is still a time when we can relieve ourselves of our timidities and pretend we are other people. But the disguises we adorn for this one night of the year are far different than those we wore as children, although they probably require about the same total area of material.
In the words of Cady Heron in Mean Girls, "Halloween is the one night a year when girls can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it."
The reason no other girls can say anything about it? Because they're in slutty "costumes," too.
I distinctly remember telling a boy from my freshman dorm that I, along with four other girls from the hall, was going to Franklin Street dressed as a Disney princess. His immediate response was, "Slutty Disney princesses, I hope."
This trend is not just one that is occurring on college campuses. It extends to the majority of those women over the trick-or-treating age who dress up for Halloween. An Oct. 19 New York Times article by Stephanie Rosenbloom cites reasons, collected from interviews with women and other research, for the increased overt sexuality of women's Halloween costumes. Her reasons include "escaping the workday, ho-hum dress code," showing off the confidence a woman has in her body and desiring to look attractive when at a party or bar.
There is a serious problem that results from this trend: When you dress like a slut, you are perceived as a slut, even if it is Halloween and everyone else is doing it.
A male friend of mine confirmed this assumption for me. I asked him if a girl dressing like a whore on Halloween was expected to "put out."
He stated simply, "She better."
I'm not saying that it's necessary to cover yourself from head to toe when you head to Shooters or Franklin Street next Tuesday. But I do think that every girl who steps out of her dorm room in a revealing outfit needs to realize that she might very well be perceived as "available" to some degree by any man that she encounters.
It is not right for women to be hypocritical by claiming that guys view us solely as pieces of meat when we purposely decorate ourselves as such. As my dad used to tell me, "If it walks like a duck, looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it probably is a duck." In the same way, if we dress in a manner that makes us look like whores, we are going to be viewed as whores. And it's hard to fault guys for seeing us as sexpots when we are wearing little more than push-up bras and spandex.
Rosenbloom also cites Deborah Tolman, the director of the Center for Research on Gender and Sexuality at San Francisco State University, as stating, "It is possible some women are using Halloween as a 'safe space,' a time to play with sexuality."
The fact is, however, that Halloween is not an isolated "space" at all. Indeed, Fright Night is indicative of a bigger problem.
No matter the day of the year, even without an alternate identity, many women don less-than-wholesome garb every time they go out. And without a "costume" excuse, they can be labeled whores.
Just as we do on Halloween, many female Dukies dress every weekend in ways that essentially ask guys to stare. If you have words written across the seat of your pants, the odds are pretty high that a guy is going to stare at your butt long enough to read them. And if more skin on your breasts is exposed than is covered, a guy's wandering eyes will most likely rest on your chest for more than a few seconds.
It is one thing-and as I noted, not necessarily a good thing-to step out of our comfort zones of J.Crew cardigans and pearls on Halloween and another to consistently demean ourselves by posing as sluts and pieces of meat whenever we go out. Because, just like when we were kids and eating too much candy on Oct. 31 inevitably resulted in stomachaches, too many nights of half-naked Shooters excursions is sure to turn us into the girls that other girls do have the right to call sluts.
Sarah Hostetter is a Trinity sophomore. Her column runs every other Thursday.
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