I’ve been trying to write my yearly post in defense of Slut-o-ween: the holiday celebrated with spray tans and short skirts–something that has become all too easy to cast shade on. I’ve given myself the pep talk: boobs-on-display-for-one-night! I’ve given myself the  face-slap: Go team sex! Boo Internet feminists against sexy costumes! But it just all feels tired.

Am I becoming an old curmudgeon? Like the dreaded  “no candy” lady, but instead a yawning bisexual refusing to pass out kisses to curious straight girls?

Maybe, Halloween, it’s not me. It’s you. You have become “straight person’s pride weekend”.

Halloween has become our culture’s celebration of sex. It is the one night of the year where sexuality is on full display. Our sexually repressed culture is transformed to a land where sex is celebrated! Is the norm!

But while we are given a free pass to flaunt our bods and sexuality, the culture doesn’t actually become un-repressed. It’s what happens to sexuality when you cage and  judge then give it one night where it’s suddenly okay. Good for 8 hours until we all turn into wart-covered pumpkins.  Halloween is sexuality shouted at us.

This is where “straight pride weekend” differs from real pride weekend. Both shout sexuality. And it is cool to shout your sexuality from the rooftop– if it is conscious, purposeful. Pride Weekend has an element of reclaiming sexuality, of spreading information. But with Halloween, we aren’t acknowledging what’s going on–  we aren’t passing out condoms like candy.

I don’t know what Halloween would look like in a sexually free society. But I know that it wouldn’t include an article on AOL, warning women that if they dress “like sluts” people might think they “are sluts”.  An article is meant to warn women that sexy costumes send the signal  “you want to have sex.” Oh?

While we might not own that Straight Person’s Pride Weekend is about sex, I don’t think the role play Halloween costumes are that unconscious. The AOL writer acts as though women  just don’t know they are doing. Cue some naive Marilyn Monroe costumes. Is this why feminism hates on slutty costumes–so feminists assume the same thing?  Do we  feminists forget thatwomen can be exhibitionists?

Or perhaps it is that Halloween has become mainstream– Halloween becoming Straight People’s Pride made it infested with alcohol sponsors and amateurs from the burbs–and third wave indie girls in their etsy-bought ironic costumes will have none of.

But maybe if we own that for adults, tricks and treats are  about sex,  we can pry Halloween from Smirnoff and Budweiser. Besides you can’t really play a proper game of  “bobbing for penises” at those venues anyhow.

HAPPY SLUT-O-WEEN!!!!!!