Covert Advice: Why I Hate Sexy Costumes

Halloween is right around the corner, and for many of us, that means one thing: finding the right costume. Now trust me, I know how much time and effort goes into choosing the perfect one, but I want to address an important issue before it’s too late to rethink your idea.

As kids, we would battle the cold of a late October’s night, dressed up as our idols. Halloween wasn’t a fashion statement: it was a night of free candy and expressing your creativity for a single night out of the 364 boring others. But somewhere along the way, the tables turned: now, the right costume is the same one you wore when you were a kid, but with half of the fabric and probably half the size. So why, and I mean WHY, are more and more Halloween costumes turning a cheek to creativity and turning up for the half-naked, barely-legal versions of my favorite childhood memories?

Now, if you are wearing the greatest costume in the entire world, and this does not apply to you, then I hope you rock it come October 31.  But almost all of the girls that I hold dear to my heart here at this university have come up to me with their brilliant costume ideas, asking if guys will find them sexy or whether I had an idea for a better (translation: sexier) costume.

This is my response:

Put the U back in COSTUME.

I’m not asking you to boycott your sexy Halloween costume this year, but make sure you are wearing it for the right reasons. A good costume is something that makes people think hard and laugh harder, but the perfect costume does much more. While you are literally inside of your costume on Halloween, your costume should reflect the creativity that lives inside of you; it should embody your free spirit in a way that says “I am the master of Halloween.” Make your costume personal, meaningful and certainly comfortable, and you will be one step farther away from being just another “Sexy __________.”

You can’t look hot if you’re freezing

As much as we’d all like to forget it, the weather in Happy Valley is just as unpredictable as the ending of “Fight Club.” When you have to wear a coat to your morning classes, and we haven’t even started to talk about winter here, it’s easy to see why a warm costume can be beneficial.

“But Chris, do you even KNOW how hot parties can get?” Well, imagine that you have to walk across campus tomorrow morning at 8 am wearing your costume; by the time you get to class, if you ever make it there without contracting polio or running around naked while the hypothermia kicks in, you will probably want to have worn longer pants. Now this is science: warmer legs means happier legs, and happier legs dance way better.

Impress people the right way

Your costume should be an accessory to your body, your creativity, and your confidence, not the other way around. If “nerdy” glasses are in, then creativity is definitely more valuable than cleavage. By the end of the night, you will have wanted to share your clever idea with the world, right? You should be so proud of your costume that you send pictures of it to your friends and family. That means not embarrassing your parents with those private Facebook pictures that you were tagged in. Remember: you want to wear your costume, your costume shouldn’t wear you.

YOU CAN DO IT:

You are better than a sexy costume: so be proud of your body, but also proud of your brain. Help the generation below you see that Halloween is a celebration of creativity, not an objectification of women. If I could write this entire article in a monkey suit, you can help defeat this problem. You are strong, confident and sure to have the best Halloween of your life. Just make sure that you wear your costume for what you see in it, not for how much others can see of you.

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