The question remains, however, why do women dress in hyper-sexualized ways on Halloween, a day meant to be “scary”?
The answer to sexy witches lies, perversely enough, in the virginal bride. Indeed, the point of being hyper-sexualized on Halloween is to be sexually pure the rest of the year.
In other words, certain women- particularly white, middle-class women- have been afforded the status of being sexually pure and innocent, real ladies. Other women- especially poor women and/or women of color- have been marked as hyper-sexualized and dirty.
Thus white, middle class women, especially college students and soccer moms, love to put on sexy, slutty costumes on Halloween. In this way, they mark themselves as sexual, but also sexually protected. No one would call your mom or daughter a “ho” on November 1st, but let’s face it, on October 31st she might just be dressed like one. In this way, being a Halloween Ho marks one as “really sexually pure” in the same way that men dressing up as women marks them as “really men.”M'kay. I would have said that the reason white, middle class chicks dress slutty on Halloween is because they want to feel sexy and recapture their lost youth in a safe, socially-acceptable way. But, hey, that's just me. (BTW, I'm a Halloween grinch. I loathe the macabre and the gruesome, and while I have a soft spot for teensy-weensy chocolate bars, they do not compensate for all the attendant grossness.)
Update: This is the sort of Halloween gross out/Grand Guignol porn I hate:
It will be dark outside, so perhaps they’ll not notice the shower door — Roberge’s homage to the movie Psycho — that next greets them, as they prepare to venture through a dark and narrow corridor made of thick sheets of black plastic. It leads to the butcher’s room, where severed body parts, jars of eyeballs, and a body wrapped in bloody sheets — oh, and a butcher, too, one of 10 friends Roberge has enlisted to help animate the outdoor haunted house — all lie in wait.
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