The Slut Rule

It’s almost Halloween! Halloween is hands down one of my favorite holidays. I mean how could it not be?? It combines two of my favorite things – candy & costumes. Of course adults aren’t really supposed to go trick-or-treating, but that’s the benefit of having godchildren. You still get to dress up, and you can eat all their “bad” candy.

This year sadly I’m not taking the kids out since they’re a plane ride away as opposed to a 4 hour drive. Still, there are always Halloween parties to enjoy. But as much as I love this holiday and start obsessively considering costume as early as late spring, I also inevitably end up having a costume crisis at the end of October.

Why? Well simply put, because of the slut rule.

To understand what I’m talking about, you simply need to think back to Mean Girls.

As Cady explains: in the regular world, Halloween is when children dress up in costumes and beg for candy. In Girl World, 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.

The problem is I don’t WANT to necessarily dress up like a total slut. But on the other hand, I don’t want to dress like an old woman. I try to find some sort of balance between the two, and each year it gets harder.

I’ve had some success in the past. I created a whole round of costumes using various pieces I wear to the Renn Faire. The corset kept a hint of slut, the long skirts kept it classy. Then I found a Princess Leia costume I rocked 2 years in a row. It wasn’t the slave bikini one, it was the white dress. However, to sex it up they added slits in the skirt, which paired beautifully with my clunky boots I bought waaaaaaaaaay back in middle school.

This year I couldn’t make any decisions at first. Normally by the end of summer I have a pretty good idea what I want to do. This time around I was still hung up on the question of whether I should reprise a former costume or buy something new. Then last month when I had a friend visiting, we decided to go to one of the Halloween stores. I was starting to lean towards a flapper look (which, not gonna lie, was totally inspired from The Vampire Diaries flashbacks to the 20s in season 3). Then I happened to find a Wonder Woman corset type top. They only had one in the store which I didn’t think would fit me, but I decided to try it on anyway.

And it looked amazing. I was skinny and powerful with some serious cleavage but nothing too daunting. My friend was able to easily convince me to buy it.

It sat in my closet for a month while I fondly reminisced about how awesome it looked, and eventually went about getting the rest of the pieces for my full costume. I was pretty pleased with the decision. I like Wonder Woman. Not that I’ve read the comics due to my parents forbidding any comic purchases when I was a kid, but I remember Superfriends fondly, and watched Justice League for a season or two when it came out. Plus in one of my favorite author’s books they have a whole spiel with the women having a Wonder Woman party that amused me.

But even better! Eventually my friend Erin and I are going to make it to Comic-Con, and I could totally use the costume there too.

Since I’m a bit of a procrastinator, I didn’t finish ordering my other costume parts until last week so they’re all still arriving this week. When I got the bottoms I had finally decided on, I decided to try them together with the top.

And this is where the panic set in. The top is way tighter than I remember. It’s not serious cleavage. It’s freaking breast explosion. This is the issue with not owning or believing in things like scales and weight. I don’t recognize slight weight fluctuations, so of course I assumed the top would fit the same.

So now I feel overexposed on top. While I went for shorts as opposed to bikini bottoms, I’m questioning the exposure for my bottom half as well. Essentially, I tried for my nice middle line of sexiness, but instead I’m feeling that I ended up near the top of the epically slutty column.

Of course, it’s Halloween! SOMEWHERE out there is certainly someone with an even sluttier costume than me. But nonetheless I’m now torn over whether to fall back on an old costume or not. Why isn’t it easier to have that middle line where you’re not in underwear, but you also don’t look like Cady?