Halloween costumes should celebrate creativity, not cleavage

Two years ago I dressed up as a gangster girl for Halloween. Thick eyeliner traced my eyes and lips, a bandana lay flat across my forehead and aerosol hair spray held my tall bangs into position.

The year after that, I dressed up as a polygamist. A long black braid migrated down my back, a ruffled pink colonial shirt complemented the shapeless denim jumper dress that fell to my ankles and aerosol hair spray held my tall bangs into position.

People got a kick out of the unconventional get-ups and applauded the creativity. Both thrift-store-purchased costumes were Halloween hits. Yet -- get a load of this -- neither required a push-up bra, suffocating corset or platform stripper heels. Shocking, right?

Halloween, as we all know, has turned into an excuse for misguided women to reveal, among other things, all the flesh above their areolas. My problem isn't the flesh, or those bashful areolas for that matter. I'm more concerned with learning why women think it's acceptable to wear skirts short enough to sport butt cleavage simply because the calendar is flipped to October.

And, don't tell me she's wearing little more than a stethoscope and platform dominatrix boots because she once pursued a nursing degree. If women want to pass themselves off as nurses on Halloween, they can wear a pair of baggy scrubs, walk around taking people's weight and tell strangers the doctor will see them shortly, even though it will be a good 45 minutes, like real nurses do.

The obvious explanation for slutty costumes is an attempt to garner male attention. If that's really the reason the costume industry has banked off of putting the word "sexy" or "naughty" in front of every profession that ever existed, then I've got a shortcut for ladies this Halloween: If you say it with words, right into his ear, you don't have to say it with a costume.

You'll save yourself about $44.99 of pleather and keep your wanton ways discreet, the way respectable trollops have been doing for years.

If that's too forward, then stick to the whole 6 inches of fabric approach. Just keep in mind, the guy at the party who wants to get to know the girl in the Playboy Bunny costume is the same guy begging Destinee for her phone number after the most romantic lap dance of his life.

But men aren't solely to blame for the slutty Halloween costume epidemic.

The year I wore the gangster girl costume, I celebrated Halloween at a casino. While washing my hands in a crowded restroom, a woman wearing more trick than treat asked why I would go as a gangbanger. "You gotta show off those curves (on Halloween)," she told me.

"Why?" I replied. "I'm sexy every day of the year."

The other women cheered my comeback -- every last naughty schoolgirl, sexy secretary and dirty Disney character in the bunch. They supported the sentiment. They just didn't practice it.

Walk into any one of these seasonal Halloween costume shops around town, and you'll quickly suspect that not a lot of women do. Each of these establishments is under the same strange impression that Dorothy from the "Wizard of Oz" was hot. Yeah, Dorothy, the chick from the sexy state of Kansas.

Puffed sleeve gingham, ruby red flats and a basket carrying a yapping dog hardly add up to hotness. If you get hit on in this costume, you might ask the guy if he's allowed within 500 feet of a school building.

Speaking of, if you share a roof with an impressionable young girl and you absolutely must wear a trashy costume, do her future a favor and change into it elsewhere. In fact, go one step further. Hand out candy in a costume that doesn't hand out candy.

Wear something in front of her that pays tribute to women with big brains, not big boobs. Dress up as someone like, I don't know, Madeleine Albright before you kiss your daughter good night. After you kiss her good night? Go ahead and change into Sexy Madeleine Albright.

Who knows, it could prevent you from sitting in her principal's office one day saying "Sexting, what's sexting?" And, it could prevent her from thinking she has to bare her body every October.

C'mon, ladies. You're better than a costume that requires zero imagination, no wit and makes you look like your SAT scores are a well-kept family secret.

You are better than that. ... Right?

Contact columnist Xazmin Garza at xgarza@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0477. Follow her on Twitter at @startswithanx.