Sometimes Slut Is Not A Halloween Costume

My daughter wants to be a Dementor, which means I’ve done my job right so far. She knows that Halloween is about scaring the bejesus out of her Catholic school chums and the neighborhood door openers. Or else it’s about being something you’re not—like a boy. She was a doctor before she turned two; before three, she was a scary witch; the following years found her as a scarecrow, Harry Potter, Spider Man, and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. Last year, we bought a disgusting skeleton from Target, with blood that squirted through a plastic chest labyrinth from a heart-shaped squeeze pump.

We looked online for a Dementor costume, but they were all wrong, with faces like a cross between a gas mask and a Snuffleupagus. We might have to make it ourselves, which is no problem for two people who work from sunup to sundown every day of our lives. Well, except for the thirty minutes taken to write this blog entry and the twenty minutes we spend in the bathroom.

At Spirit online, one of those seasonal costume shops where we looked at Dementors, my husband saw the link "Sexy" under the "Women’s Costumes" header and wanted to see the offerings. It’s what you’d expect: nurses, peasants, school girls—all with thigh-high boots or socks, lots with midriff-baring blouses. The models are a size two with legs that go all the way down to the ground from their necks.

I have nothing against the costumes or even the women wearing them. But.

Last night, my husband and I attended a Halloween dance at the Catholic school where he teaches. It’s an annual event, and everyone drinks and debauches like one is supposed to at Halloween parties. Neighborhoods compete with each other by doing skits; winning neighborhood gets the trophy for the year. It’s all good fun.

Most of our school moms and dads dress in mildly creative attire: men wear their daughters' school jumpers or dress as prom queens; women make frightening messes of themselves. I am frequently an artistic something or other; last year, I was the heavenly body, with a sun/moon mask I made and black clothing adorned with stars and clouds. The best costumes are always by the same couple who, this year, dressed as vanGogh (with bandaged, bleeding ear) and his sunflower. Ed and Andrea beat me out by a snake for scariest, with their Angel and Man Who Just Ate the Angel, as Ed described it to me.

It was last minute for us. I’d just gotten home from New York, and I didn’t have time to get something together. Marty took us to the Prime Rib for his birthday dinner, and we were both a bit heavy and sleepy from good meat. Still, a house full of odd clothing and masks held promise, so we scrounged up something: he a monk’s robe and a gold mask, I a wig with snakes sewn in. I found scary teeth in the kitchen's utility drawer, where one's scary teeth should be preserved. My clothes were black and red and witchy, rather than tight or revealing.

Every year, some petite or large-breasted mom plans her costume with lots of leg or cleavage. I don't mind. It's usually a soccer mom or a theater type. But this year, due to the status of our entertainment (they are incredible musicians), we had some sexy-costumed guests. I’m not sure they had to buy their attire from Spirit. I’m not sure they were costumes.

I’ll probably get in hot water for saying this out loud in public, but when you’re already a slut, does it count as a Halloween costume? My husband thinks I'm assuming a lot. "She was a school girl," he still insisted this morning. Hello: what school girl is allowed to wear a plaid skirt up to her pupik and an unbuttoned shirt and thigh-high white socks? "Why are you so hostile?" he asked. In the next breath, he told me that he learned she was "the bass player's latest fuck toy." How good must that feel?!

Last night, the "school girl" emerged from the bathroom with her already-too-short skirt tucked into the back of her thong, right butt cheek lighting up the dark church hall. She was sitting in front of me and a friend, and we both gasped and giggled. My husband, who never misses a moment like that because he's always looking, saw from the other side of the room. The girl, embarrassed (and, literally, em-bare-assed), mimed an apology, to which my husband responded with utter appreciation for the mistake.

Hey, that's OK. I don't mind if he looks. My complaint isn't about women who can turn the heads of all the men in the room. I can recall a time or two that I had angry wives nudging their husbands back to the reality of their regularly scheduled programs. But I was dressed.

And that's what it's really about. "God help you if you are an ugly girl," Ani Difranco sings in "32 Flavors." "Course, too pretty is also your doom / 'cause everyone harbors a secret hatred / for the prettiest girl in the room." She wasn't just pretty. Pretty isn't something that can be your fault. Naked is your fault. Naked is deliberate and hateful. It takes the attention off the fun of the moment and shines the spotlight on you, even when the stars are elsewhere.

This woman and her friend—who was dressed in a snug dress and five-inch clear, spike heels as something I couldn’t discern—rubbed up against each other and their boyfriends as often as possible. At one point, the school girl did a pole dance and plopped, ass first, on the floor.

So my assumption comes from the actions, not the "costume." I'm not jealous of beauty; in fact, I find beautiful women much more fun to look at than attractive men. But I'm curious about why, for one night out of the entire year, some women can’t bear to put themselves in clothing that doesn’t show off their perfect breasts or legs or abs or ass?

But OK. If I wore a size two and had legs all the way up to there, I’d flaunt it, albeit tastefully. Just not on Halloween! Dressing like a Catholic school girl in a porn movie would not attract the kind of attention I’d want to attract, and my friends are not people I need to seduce in that way. With them, our personalities shine through whatever we're wearing.

A sweet, decent Catholic man who calls me J-Lo said, “Hi, pretty lady!” I replied, “Oh, wait a minute” and put back in my creepy teeth, removed and replaced between beer sips. He said, “The teeth are sexy” and giggled a little.

My husband and I talked about being liberated from each other and how our desires might play out on a night like last night. Would he be lured by the Catholic porn girl? “It’s an undeniable and substantial aspect of our psychology. Men want it, and we’re attracted to women who will give it.” In other words, of course he’d do it with her, though he wouldn't expect it to go beyond that. I guess if I were liberated, I’d have done it with her boyfriend, the uncostumed bass player—except that I'm far more attracted to men who participate. Give me the pocket-protector-and-wedgie-wearing nerds, the Dementors, vanGogh with his bloody head wrap, white-faced Ed, who looked a little like Grandpa Munster.

My husband was the sexiest of all, completely unrecognizable under his mask and robe. He was a total mystery. Most of the party-goers had to ask, check for evidence of his beard, look at his hands. My girlfriend, Kim, who was dressed as one of the children from The Sound of Music, thought he looked terrifying. But he was surreal and exotic to me, his personality shining through his bizarre and unfamiliar features. And even though the Catholic slut girl might have caught the eyes of all the men in the room more than a dozen times, and even though I might have focused my own attention on her, I, as Medusa, still felt like a more desireable creature. I mean, who needs a bare midriff when you've snakes in your hair? Who needs thigh highs when you can make a man hard with your stare?