The online student news source of Lovejoy High School

The Red Ledger

The online student news source of Lovejoy High School

The Red Ledger

The online student news source of Lovejoy High School

The Red Ledger

From trick-or-treat to show and tell

In elementary school, Halloween was about one thing: candy. The more candy you accumulated in one night, the more successful your Halloween was. It was a time when king-size candy bars were worth their weight in gold and kids would cringe at the sight of anything remotely healthy. This mindset nearly holds true with today’s high school kids, with the addition of one factor: girls dress like floosies.

It is unclear at what age this transition happens for some girls. There must be a point in their lives when they stop dressing as Cinderella and Tinker Bell, and start dressing as “sexy” <insert occupation here>. And why do they do this? Perhaps for the guys or perhaps as an excuse to dress/act more promiscuously than is deemed socially acceptable? Whatever the answer is, it doesn’t change the baffling circumstances surrounding the practice of dressing like a streetwalker on Halloween.

With respect to girls, it may seem a bit strange that they choose to dress like hussies on Halloween, let alone at all. For the most part, girls tend to (rightfully) demand respect and shun sexist behavior from boys. But how can one think of certain girls in a higher respect if they out rightly contradict their apparent beliefs? It seems impossible to take a girl seriously who speaks negatively of womanizing and then chooses to dress up in her best attempt at eye candy.

This wanton trend, it seems, will only increase in severity as time goes on. With the already prominent belief that girls’ Halloween costumes are intended to be overtly revealing, coupled with reality shows like “Toddlers & Tiaras” that (creepily) seem to sexualize young children, it seems as though the target audience for “sexy” Halloween costumes will only get younger.

This newfound trend also affects the parents of young children. The age at which girls may start to dress like “ladies of the evening” is entirely up to parents (to a certain extent), which is both relieving and worrying at the same time. In some cases, placing responsibility like this upon a parent may result in the solution to the problem. On the other hand, however, it could possibly allow girls to start dressing as strumpets at even younger ages due to parents who are indifferent about their children’s decisions. This may present problems for certain parents who try to give their kids the ideal Halloween experience, as an explanation might be needed if Winnie the Pooh runs into a sexy nurse.

Some may argue that revealing Halloween costumes aren’t any more or less revealing than wearing bikinis at the beach. There are grounds to this argument, as bikinis seem to be actually more revealing than most Halloween costumes. The answer to this argument is merely a matter of opinion. Since girls have the right to dress however they choose, it not a matter of right and wrong, but rather a matter of one’s own moral standpoints.

You can have whatever opinion you would like regarding girls on Halloween, but that opinion doesn’t entitle you to determine what other people wear (or do not wear) on Halloween. You simply must hope that girls that dress like temptresses understand the affect they have on the parents of little kids, and on the general opinion of teenage girls in general.

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  • AnonymousApr 23, 2012 at 3:57 pm

    This is a well written article that points out many of the flaws in how we are regarding youth these days, but I do have a point to pick at: I do agree that it is quite sad when young girls dress promiscuously to conform or to dehumanize themselves as a sexual object, and with most of what is said here, but to call “promiscuous” degrading is inherently sexist because just because someone is dressed revealingly does not mean they are presenting themselves as unequal. But since being promiscuous tends to seem like the only option, it does usually stem more from negative societal effects than some sort of freedom-of-what-I-wear sort of thing.

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