Booooooooo.....

So I’m dumping the box of Halloween costumes out on the floor, and… there wasn’t much there. I don’t mean there wasn’t a great deal to choose from--we’re talking fourteen year’s worth of costumes here—-but… there wasn’t much there. For a person who very recently passed four Halloweens in northern Indiana, which is not particularly known for its balmy late Octobers, there wasn’t a lot of coverage going on in these costumes. The total square feet of material in the lot of them could have covered maybe a six-pack of Tic Tacs.

The dance hall girl, the adorable ladybug, Tink the French maid whose ancestry is totally German: They were all here. I regarded one gauzy skirt with particular interest… which one was this a piece of? Oh, wait, there’s the matching gold bra. I believe the proper term is “exotic dancer.”

You can get away with this, when you’re nineteen and very, very chemically enhanced. When you’re pushing thirty? Not so much. I don’t care what you’ve been drinking.

I think we can officially file this feminine practice of celebrating the vigil of a major Catholic feast day by tarting it up with the Bureau of Double Standards, Irony Department. You don’t see guys trolling the bars any less covered than normal; if anything, they’re blessedly *more* enclothed, what with the pirate hats and the pimp boas and the occasional cape. But women? Women put on a bodysuit and a headband featuring tiny cat ears and wonder why we aren’t President yet.

It’s the same reason, I suppose, why I haul the sarong and the flower headwreaths out of the back of the closet when Jimmy Buffett comes to town. We are offered an excuse to slut around without *really* slutting around, and God bless Spencer’s Gifts, the Official Enabler of Halloween Whoring Nights, for stocking the fishnet hose.

This year I am dressing up as a double standard, I think.