Lucy Koerner
“Do you think my ass is hanging out of this too much?”
“Your tits look good in that.”
“Is this too slutty?”
“God, he’s going to regret everything when he sees me in this.”
“I’m so excited for Halloween.”
Picking out my Halloween costume, I’m aware that the skirt I plan to don is about two inches shorter than what I would wear any other time of year. I try to balance the lack of fabric on my lower half with something a bit more modest for my torso. I select a top I wear frequently on nights out — cute, satin, and with lace accents. I turn slowly in my common room, modeling my ensemble for a friend and see her shake her head, mildly disappointed.
“Wear this instead,” she says, handing me a tinier and translucent top. “It’s nicer.”
In the immortal words of Cady Heron, “Halloween is the one night a year when a girl can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it.” But what makes Halloween so enticing, liberating, and for the lack of a better phrase, “slut-friendly”?
I had never celebrated Halloween as an adult before I came to Yale. Standing amidst the sweaty, pulsing crowd at Luther on Saturday night, I realized that the ethos of Halloween — from when the holiday simply represented the chance to gorge oneself on candy rather than the obscure contents of red solo cups — hasn’t really changed. Halloween still pledges the prospect of becoming anything and anyone. But when did becoming anything suddenly mean dressing up as “sexy Cinderella,” instead of Cinderella herself?
It’s an almost indisputable yet dispiriting truth that women are constantly overcriticized for their choices. They’re dubbed “bops,” “hoes” and “sluts,” both by their fellow women and men, for their choices — whether they be romantic, fashionable or sexual.
Halloween offers a brief respite from this rigamarole.
Microskirts, if only transiently, do not draw scathing stares. Tenuous tops are celebrated, rather than side-eyed. Risqué ensembles are fêted instead of disdained.
Women, for one night a year, are presented with the chance to exist beyond the confines of social judgment. Such freedom, though fleeting, is a lucrative luxury.
This is not to say that men, too, do not indulge in the liberty that Halloween represents, nor that women exclusively revel in these otherwise-scandalous costume sets. The holiday’s overarching theme — that who you are tonight is whomever you wish to be — fundamentally enables anyone to dress how they wish.
So, dress as a terrifyingly accurate Valek from “The Nun,” or the tennis ball from “Challengers,” or Ghostface. But, compare the number of men and women you spotted in onesies, nightmare-inducing or amusing costumes at Luther on Saturday, and you’ll see a clear distinction. Halloween seems to offer a distinctive reprieve for girls: one that is difficult to qualify but apparent nonetheless.
Yet, perhaps the freedom typified by Halloween does not require investigation. Maybe the holiday’s anomalous nature, of encouraging free expression and the pursuit of a good time without the concern of how one is perceived, should merely be celebrated for what it is: a night of pure escapism. Who wouldn’t want to take advantage of that?