As Cady so aptly puts it in the 2004 movie Mean Girls, “Halloween is the one night a year when girls can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it.”
Halloween has always been and will always be my biggest opportunity to wear all the outfits I wouldn’t wear in pleasant company, whether for practical reasons or more personal ones. This even goes back to the non-sexy costumes I used to put together; a loofah costume I wore once in middle school had a whole lot of glitter sprayed onto it, which got absolutely everywhere. Entirely impractical. But so much fun!
This year, I got a lot of adverts from the site 3wishes.com to source my teeny tiny, impractical outfit from. I’m sure you’re no stranger to the sheer possibilities of sexy costumes for Halloween, but in case you are, let me give you some examples. On the 3wishes site, you can be a number of sexy things, including but not exclusive to: sexy Pikachu, sexy Minnie Mouse, sexy gingerbread man, sexy garden gnome or even just the effortlessly chic, sexy little black cat. These costumes, regardless of the source material, all have about as much fabric involved as a set of underwear. However, I (as well as many others) fully intend on wearing these outdoors this weekend. These costumes will signal sex to all who view us, and may even score us a Halloween hookup. While the usual rules of decorum are paused, we are allowed to wear outfits that tell people to look at us. These costumes make us look great, and we don’t have to act ashamed about it.
Not all the costumes on 3wishes are meant for outdoor wear. Some are labeled as “bedroom costumes.” Here you will find many maid costumes as well as some nurse and school girl uniforms. Much less elaborate than the costumes made for parties and clubbing, these garments are made to be taken off or pushed to the side before the main dish: sex. Sex gives people a space to unabashedly wear and do the things that they wouldn’t do in real life. The act provides the same topsy-turvy protection Halloween gives girls from embarrassment and slut-shaming. The models instead look empowered and confident — the core aspects of true sexiness. Sex gives us the agency to explore situations that we wouldn’t want to encounter in real life; people with pain kinks don’t want to be slapped across the face outside of the scene just like pe ople with piss kinks probably wouldn’t like it if they stepped in dogshit while walking down the street. Wearing costumes that emulate vulnerable and potentially demeaning positions like a schoolgirl in detention or a Victorian-era maid can be a powerful sexual exploration for the modern adult woman who isn't under the dynamic of her day-to-day life.
Sex and Halloween are fun because they offer a blip of freedom. For a short period of time, you can interact with the world as your heart desires, and no one will judge you for it. This can only be taken to the max in college environments, as we are encouraged to find ourselves through exploration and experimentation. We, as undergrads, can not afford to take for granted the rare moments that we can explore without any judgment at all.
I would be mistaken to leave out the pure debauchery this leads to on Halloweekend. Many of us have spent our entire teenagehood repressing every craving that arose. On this special day, sometime around the witching hour, our latent desires bubble to the surface as the brews we drink encourage us to do things we really should not do. Something this magical can not come without a catch, as I often tell myself while recovering over brunch the Sunday after.
But this is less of a concern for me. I’m satisfied with Halloween as I have constructed it. Every year, I slip into the most impractical outfit I can put together from cheap pieces on Amazon and go out for up to three nights in a row for the sole purposes of getting plastered and having the absolute best time of my life. Most years? I do. And who could be unhappy with that?
Cherry Poppins is a virgin who considers herself a treat that might very well trick you. Take your chances at cpoppins@cornellsun.com. Happy Halloween!
