In defense of the miniskirt

“Halloween is the one day a year when a girl can dress up like a total slut and no other girls can say anything else about it.”

If you don’t know that quote, then I am slightly disappointed, but that probably means you’re a guy, who either thinks slutty Halloween costumes are the best thing in the world and should be compulsory, or that slutty Halloween costumes are the worst thing in the world, and who hopes you like your afterlife toasty.

And then there’s me, fighting the good fight alongside my ol’ buddy equality, i.e. Slutty Halloween costumes for all!

Right, so where to start? Probably with the word ‘slutty’, which gets cast around like the very candy of Halloween, starting in mid-September, and ending the morning after All Hallow’s Eve. Sadly, it gets flung around with equal gusto by both sides, either as a disparaging remark about female sexuality, or as a term of endearing woman-power. Let’s be honest, ‘slut-shaming’ is never alright, and the word itself is a nasty one, which essentially dehumanises women to nothing more than their sex appeal, sexuality, and sexual practices. Which is not really ok, yeah?

Secondly, however well-intentioned, attacking these costumes on the basis that a-woman-should-be-modest is, whether or not you consider yourself a feminist, as close to patriarchal gender-control as you can get without joining Ukip. It’s nice that you’re trying here, but if you’re laying down rules as to what women can and can’t wear (and there’s nothing of this sort for men) then that is, actually, sexist. Regardless of whether or not you see it that way, deciding what a woman is allowed to wear smacks of a medieval mindset, and you may be more comfortable leaning out of your castle, yelling about heathens, and dragons and the like.

Next up, teaching everyone that this business of wearing few clothes is not ok, is really a step in the wrong direction. Remember how much fun everyone looked in Victorian times, with those sepia photos of dour, joyless practicality? No? Oh that’s right, because sex was something that happened after marriage, behind closed doors. In the dark. Through a hole in a bed sheet.

We’ve come a long way in the past few years, especially in terms of gender equality, and especially in not being bigoted when it comes to people of a different sexuality/colour/religion/shape/etc., and we can lay a large part of this at the door of broadening social and cultural norms. I’m not saying the gender revolution has come solely through people having more sex, but when society stopped trying to legislate vaginas it peaked in the Swingin’ Sixties.

And finally, at the end of the day, it is just a bit of fun, so calm down. It’s one of the few times each year where nobody is taking anything seriously, and generally without many relatives either, unlike Christmas. So treat the whole thing less like a war between good and evil, and just dress however the hell you want, as a free, sexy, human being.

Personally, I brought out the latex gimp-suit again.

Image courtesy of http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Microskirts#mediaviewer/File:Marcia_Imperator_back.jpg