“Good for you for not dressing like a slut”

Well finally the gluttony of Halloween is over.  The York Peppermint Patties that I bought for the house (I mean, for the trick-or-treaters) is gone, the weekend of drinking pumpkin beer, after pumpkin beer, after witches brew is over, and the time has come to welcome November.

Before I allow myself to move into November completely, I wanted to chat about Halloween briefly (I meant to post last night...but my timing has been off lately, so suck it up and read it anyway).

I love Halloween.  I love the opportunity to dress up, I love seeing people's costumes and laughing at the funny ones or being envious of their clever disguise.

I have a lot of fond memories through the years of Halloween and trick-or-treating...who doesn't remember the houses that always had tons of Reece's Cups and gave out whole candy bars. 

I've also always liked dressing up, even just when I was playing.  As a little girl I would often put on a a bunch of old clothes of my mothers, shoes that were too big for me and mittens as fashion gloves and walk around like a Hollywood star, blowing kisses...or dressing up in old dancing costumes and dancing around the living room. 

I think that it's part of my imagination that never went away as I aged, and remains a joyful thing for me.  Simply put, pretending to be someone, or something, else is fun.  I'm trying not to read into this too  much and evaluate myself on why I like to pretend to be someone else, but I'll just confirm to you and myself that I do love being me. I want to be me...But, for a day (weekend)? I'm cool with being someone else.

Some of the costumes I've been for Halloween were a skeleton, an 80's punk, a witch,  a Greek Goddess, a princess, a slut, a devil, a pumpkin, an angel, a double rainbow…

Wait, what? A slut you say, E?

Well, I'm kidding.  I actually haven't.  

I usually do “homemade” costumes by using things I already own with a few key props.  These costumes tend to err on the side of being less expensive and having longer hem lines (this year I was Amelia Earhart, doesn’t get much sexier than that, right?). 

To be fair, there was one year I wore a very short toga dress (sheet) and another where I wore a long blue t-shirt with leggings, but as I'm writing this I feel like it's silly.  If we’re being honest a sheet or a long t-shirt doesn't really move the needle, in the same way as a sexy bumble bee or a hot version of Mario/Luigi (even with the mustache - jut in time for Movember) does.

I’ve typically been a bit more…well…prude with my costumes.

Not that there is anything wrong with dressing provocatively for Halloween.  Frankly, I think that when people say “it’s just an excuse for girls to get slutty”, that they are right…but I think it makes sense and really who is complaining?  Okay, well other chicks I guess are complaining and typically (like me) they wouldn't be caught dead in something that resembled a sheer short and low cut Princess Jasmine outfit showing...well everything.

To be fair though, I think there is a little dirty Cinderella in all of us. 

For those of you who are confident in your body enough to show it to the world in a bar or at a party (and have your thigh high frills and cleavage forever remembered by your Facebook friends) then who am I to judge that?

Okay I realize that sounded sarcastic, but really, I guess I just know that if I was in better shape or felt like my body was a hot commodity, I would likely want to show it off too. 

Since this weekend I wasn’t dressed like an Amelia Earhart whose clothes were ripped off by her plane (likely) crashing, I didn’t nab any Zombies, or drunken-chicken-eating Red Sox Players, or Jersey Shore Fist Pumpers, but I did manage to get some attention...most notably from…an older heftier lady.

“Good for you for not dressing like a slut,” this woman at the bar leaned over and said. 

“All I see is red slut, green slut, blue slut.”  She continued. 

From there she went on to offer me some of her makeup to make my face look “dirty” which would have actually looked like I was trying to make A.E. look like she was from Africa.  She was a nice lady.  I think she was wearing a candy striper costume that, to be nice, we’ll say was probably for someone who was still eating PB&J with the crust cut off and drawing stick figures…not slutty at all, but way, way, way too small.  I guess having outfits that fit is worthy of a whole other blogpost.

Anyway, back to the compliment about not dressing like an invitation to be hit on. 

Ouch?

I don’t know really how to take that.  Thank you for acknowledging that my skin is primarily covered, but are you calling me frumpy?  Are you inadvertently saying that I don’t look attractive?   Are you like me, Ms. Candy Striper and mad because you’re not getting attention Mr. Spock or Quail Man? 

Of course she was trying to be nice and I got other compliments on my costume calling it cute or creative…so I felt good about what I was wearing, but still, a compliment for not looking slutty almost comes off as a backhanded compliment.

I guess I’ve always kind of been the one that was cute or creative one vs. the overly sexy one.  I guess I’ll just have to leave that to my hot and sexy friends and fellow party goers, and really I'm fine with that.

I have had this daydream where I meet a guy on Halloween and he’s dressed as a giant Solo cup, or Peter Pan or something.  Makes for a good story. I guess that's what most of us are looking for when we dress up and try and impress others either by being scary, attractive, interesting, funny or slutty on Halloween.  

Anyway, enough rambling. 

I say go forth and show whatever you'd like when you dress up for Halloween.  My only word of caution is - If slutty Halloween costumes kind of resemble your normal attire, maybe you need to rethink some things for the 364 other days of the year...

Well maybe more like 363 days - since I enjoy dressing up, I'm thinking I might do a costume party for my birthday this year since it will be on Friday the 13th....Halloween in April? I don't see why not. 

Maybe for that I'll show some skin...birthday suit?

Until next time,

Amelia (E)arhart