The innocent family holiday of dressing up and collecting candy has been perverted by the ever increasing “sex sells” mindset.

In anticipation of Halloween, stores stock their shelves with costumes during fall months. Children’s costumes have remained rather innocent, minus the occasional gory ghoul, but the costumes aimed towards teenage girls and adult women have become more revealing each year.

“In this commercial [for Halloween costumes], all the girls look like prostitutes. Every outfit was aimed at sexuality. To me, it should be offensive to women… That’s what it’s come to. Irony to these young, liberal feminists,” Tony Fernandez said.

Though it may seem counterintuitive, dressing modestly is more feminist than showing off your body. When women first began to wear less as part of the feminist movement it was in effort gain freedom from societal rules of men, but now society has reached the end of that. Instead, women now play right into being visual pleasures for men by wearing so little. Being modest is not about shaming or hiding your body. Rather, it is about self respect and not allowing others to see what is not theirs to see.

By buying and wearing sexy costumes the consumer plays directly into the “sex sells” mindset of major corporations and the desires of the majority of heterosexual men. You can find anything from sexy nurse and police officer to sexy princess and referee outfits. In reality, most sexy versions of costumes only make the wearer a visual spectacle.

Nurses do not wear ruffled bikinis and garters to work, nor do police officers wear cleavage accentuating corsets and skin tight booty shorts to work. Therefore, the wearer is not dressed as either of these professionals, despite what may be written on the tag.

“They’re selling perversion. They’re selling sex. They are marketing it to very young ages, and I think it’s the trend of our culture,” Fernandez said.

Not only do sexy versions of costumes serve little to no purpose other than for sex appeal, they are often disrespectful to many groups of people. For instance, some companies sell sexy nun and sexy Osama Bin Laden outfits.

Wearing the nun costume is openly perverting and mocking a religion.

“It’s disrespectful, honestly. Nuns are holy people, but you’re trying to give them a negative connotation by making them sexy,” Isaiah Robinson (10) said.

Similarly, wearing a sexy Bin Laden costume makes light of the many atrocities perpetrated by Osama Bin Laden. The wearer is dressed up as a mass murderer and shows disrespect towards anyone who was involved in 9/11 or in the manhunt of Bin Laden.

Another group paying the price for these sexy costumes are parents and their children. Some would argue that revealing costumes are appropriate for adults eyes, just not for children’s. However, advertisements for these sexy costumes are played on family television channels and displayed in store windows, exposing kids to these images. Children are also exposed to the live versions of these costumes on Halloween night.

“I think Halloween was originally a family holiday and really revealing stuff really dampens some parents’ spirits sending their kids out,” Reeva Kedia (10) said.

There are many ways to dress up for Halloween without making parents cringe and cover their kids’ eyes while other people gawk. Do not buy into the sex sells mindset and show your self-respect by wearing an appropriate costume this Halloween.