Scanty Costumes

Yesterday was Halloween, a day beloved by all who have a soul. I had my usual job of passing out candy to the kids. Although there was only one kid. Sigh.

Anyway, glancing at the news wire over on NYRA, what Halloween related thing are whiny parents bitching about now?

Ah, yes. The concern over sexually suggestive costumes on little girls. Little 10-year-old girls wearing costumes that show a lot of skin and include fishnet stockings and other things usually associated with dressing like a total whore. I’ll admit even my first reaction upon that thought is “dude, young much?”

Then I think “well, these things are only sexual because our society associates them with that.” Which gives me nor anyone no actual reason to have a problem with it except for the discomfort of seeing guilty apparel on an innocent being.

Then comes the other realization. You get parents and other adults making a huge deal out of this, all like “why do these little girls want to grow up so fast?”

My answer? They don’t. They don’t see it as being grown up (well, some might). They see it as a pretty costume. It’s there in the costume store. It’s in their size. Might have seen it in a magazine or somewhere. So they might have decided they like it and want to wear it. (So, basically, no different from adults in that aspect!)

This brings us to the other part of this. Last I checked, we don’t have 10-year-old girls in the marketing divisions of costume designers and stores. All adults in those ranks. All adults who are ones designing these costumes and selling them! It is adults who are providing these “risqué” outfits to little girls. Not the girls themselves. They’re the innocent consumers. It is adults who are designing the scanty costumes, making them small enough for elementary school kids, getting little girls to model these things, and acting like they’re the big thing that all girls want.

And we see yet another example of corporate jerkoffs telling their consumers what they want. It’s the hottest thing, so let’s edge out any other kinds of costume. The adult-run costume stores put away the ghosts and goblins and devils and bring out the Little Thai Brothel Slave outfit. So they’re not only supplying the little girls with the scandalous costumes, but leaving them with little other choice.

And sure enough, the girls are somehow at fault.

I know from experience this sort of thing happens with pre-teen and teen apparel. I have never cared for revealing clothes. I usually head right for the plain colored shirts with the collars around my collar bone. But there were times during my teen years, when searching around Nordstrom’s Brass Plum or other teen girl sections, that my nice conservative type clothes didn’t seem to be around. Instead, everything available was low-cut to show cleavage and/or very tight and left little to the imagination. Not to mention didn’t cover the belly. I have no interest in clothes like that. But I was stuck. It was all that was even available to me. Okay, there were some things that I found suitable, obviously, but not much.

It wasn’t until I got into my twenties and start shopping at a different section of the store that I found more my style of clothes.

Yet as a teen, what all the adults want to think is still a helpless child who should never come close to looking or acting sexual, I couldn’t very well choose anything else.

And that was somehow my fault.