It's that time of year again, the frightful season when I have to race to get the Halloween flyers out of the Sunday paper before my children get an eyeful of scantily clad women and girls dressed in costumes that both sicken and scare me. I don't remember the Red Riding Hood of my youth wearing thigh-high stockings and a low-cut mini dress. Even the Brothers Grimm would have had a tough time making this character seem innocent and naive.
My 4-year-old daughter took The Party Warehouse flyer from the table and started to flip through the children's costumes to the adult get-ups. I snatched it from her hand, saying, "That's inappropriate for children." What's wrong with this picture, with our world, when the Halloween flyer is inappropriate for kids? And it is.
If you don't have children or haven't seen one of these flyers, let me tell you, Halloween ain't what it used to be, folks. Children's costumes, specifically girls' costumes, have been hypersexualized to a point of disgrace. If you are foolish enough to allow your fourth-grader to dress up as a French maid, I don't have much sympathy for you. But, if your daughter wants to be Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz or some other sweet little princess-like character, beware. Many of these costumes have been trimmed down and tarted up to the point that Dorothy no longer looks fit for the yellow brick road. Today's tiny Dorothys look ready for only one road -- 42nd Street in the pre-Giuliani days.
The dresses are micro-minis. The tights have been transformed into thigh-high fishnets. Usually the midriffs are bare and the necklines are plunging. And we wonder why our kids are so sexually advanced. Gee, I can't imagine where they'd get an overly sexualized view of themselves.
The dresses are micro-minis. The tights have been transformed into thigh-high fishnets. Usually the midriffs are bare and the necklines are plunging. And we wonder why our kids are so sexually advanced. Gee, I can't imagine where they'd get an overly sexualized view of themselves.
My preschooler doesn't understand what's wrong with these costumes, which makes it that much worse. To her, the girls and women look pretty in lacy dresses and high heels. She's too little to realize that these outfits are more appropriate for turning tricks than trick or treating.
Just this afternoon I unknowingly took the girls into a costume shop at our local mall thinking we might find a traditional witch costume for my preschooler or Native American garb my 9-year-old daughter, who wants to be Kateri Tekakwitha or Sacagawea. We had wandered between a few racks of clothes before I realized there weren't any children's costumes. I don't think I would have been any more embarrassed had I taken them into a sex shop. It was that inappropriate. I quickly shepherded them out of the store and directly into Build a Bear -- anything to make them forget what they had just seen.
Take one look at the adult-size costumes advertised in flyers or on display in stores, and you'll see where today's pre-teen pop-tart Dorothy might end up tomorrow. I don't think we're in Kansas anymore. If you are a woman and you want to buy a costume that does not look like it should come with a pole, then you're pretty much limited to the nun costume, which in some ways is just as outrageous as all the other fantasy costumes since there are probably as many nuns in this style habit as there are nurses running around in fishnets and short-shorts. What a world. What a world.
