{"id":217,"date":"2009-10-19T12:15:36","date_gmt":"2009-10-19T12:15:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/everydayethics\/2009\/10\/racy-halloween-costumes-for-kids-outrageous-sad-and-inevitable.html"},"modified":"2009-10-19T12:15:36","modified_gmt":"2009-10-19T12:15:36","slug":"racy-halloween-costumes-for-kids-outrageous-sad-and-inevitable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/2009\/10\/racy-halloween-costumes-for-kids-outrageous-sad-and-inevitable.html","title":{"rendered":"Racy Halloween Costumes For Kids: Outrageous, Sad, And&#8230; Inevitable?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As Halloween draws nigh, the questions fly&#8230; &#8220;What are you dressing up as this year?&#8221;<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>For me, the answer is simple. I&#8217;m dressing up as that frumpy hausfrau who opens the door and ladles candy out to the adorable kiddies trick-or-treating in her building.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>When I was younger (like, early twenties), the answer was more likely, &#8220;I&#8217;m squeezing myself into something slutty and trying not to freeze my buns off all night as I tear around town getting tipsy.&#8221; (I had a misspent couple of years there.)<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>But as a child, it was all about good, clean fun. I was: a ghost (this meant a sheet with two holes cut out for eyes, as my mom and dad were not home-ec types); a witch (store-bought flame retardant black crepey ghoulishness); a ballerina (oh, how I loved that tutu!); a hippie (borrowed bell-bottoms and a Cher wig), and a devil in red flannel.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>All my friends and I cared about was scoring candy, telling ghost stories, carving pumpkins and bobbing for apples. Now&#8230;?<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\n<font color=\"#000000\" face=\"Arial, Helvetica, clean, HiraKakuPro-W3, Osaka, sans-serif\" size=\"6\"><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-size: 20px\"><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial\">It seems like there&#8217;s an insane amount of societal pressure for kids to mimic adults, and not any old adults, but hyper-sexualized adults. Sexy Halloween costumes are more fashionable than ever. Is this a trend parents can prevent? Should manufacturers be held accountable for marketing <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nypost.com\/p\/news\/local\/manhattan\/slutty_halloween_costumes_for_kids_SRwRcSfA1Q1eigdQRAOsyL\">slutty Halloween costumes to tweens<\/a> and even younger children?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial\">I mean, look at this &#8220;tween&#8221; costume:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><font size=\"6\"><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin-bottom:.25in\"><font size=\"4\"><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-size: 16px\"><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n<p><font size=\"4\"><span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"tween costume.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/200\/import\/tween%20costume.jpg\" width=\"256\" height=\"400\" class=\"mt-image-center\" style=\"text-align: center;margin: 0 auto 20px\" \/><\/span><\/font><\/font><\/span><font size=\"6\"><font size=\"4\"><\/font><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: center;margin-bottom: 0.25in\"><font size=\"4\"><font size=\"4\"><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-size: 16px\"><\/span><\/font><\/font><\/p>\n<p><font size=\"4\"><font size=\"4\"><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: left\"><span style=\"font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial\">Seriously? I think it&#8217;s sad our girls (you don&#8217;t see boys exploited&#8211;or willfully exploiting themselves&#8211;this way) are taught this is what society values them for. I think it&#8217;s outrageous manufacturers agree to put this stuff on the market. And if any gals come to my door in this get-up this year, I&#8217;m handing them a blanket, and their moms a poke in the eye.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: left\"><font size=\"3\"><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-size: 13px\"><b><i>What do you think has brought on this trend toward trashy trick-or-treating? And can we regain innocence once lost?<\/i><\/b><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: left\"><font size=\"3\"><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-size: 13px\"><span class=\"Apple-style-span\">Subscribe to receive updates from Everyday Ethics or&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/EverydayEthics\">follow us on&nbsp;Twitter<\/a>!<\/span><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: left\"><font color=\"#333333\" face=\"arial, helvetica, hirakakupro-w3, osaka, 'ms pgothic', sans-serif\" size=\"3\"><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-size: 13px\"><b><br \/><\/b><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n<p><!--EndFragment--><br \/>\n<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n<p><!--EndFragment--><br \/>\n<\/font><\/p>\n<p><!--EndFragment--><br \/>\n<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sexy Halloween costumes for kids are more fashionable than ever. Is this a trend parents can prevent? Should manufacturers be held accountable for marketing such costumes to tweens and even younger children?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-by-hillary-fields","category-parenting-responsibility"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Racy Halloween Costumes For Kids: Outrageous, Sad, And... Inevitable? - Everyday Ethics<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/2009\/10\/racy-halloween-costumes-for-kids-outrageous-sad-and-inevitable.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Racy Halloween Costumes For Kids: Outrageous, Sad, And... Inevitable? - Everyday Ethics\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Sexy Halloween costumes for kids are more fashionable than ever. Is this a trend parents can prevent? 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She attended St. John's College in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she studied classics and philosophy, and then respectfully declined to spend the rest of her life in an ivory tower. Instead, she turned to the life of a writer and editor, penning three romance novels published by St. Martin's Press and contributing features to such periodicals as Cosmopolitan magazine. Her fascination with the moral dilemmas that crop up in everyday life--and the many intriguing ways people handle them--has always colored her writings. Now, that interest is leading her to take the discussion online; where, hopefully, the addition of reader feedback will bring these quotidian quandaries--and their potential solutions--vibrantly to life. When she's not plumbing the ethical mysteries of humanity, her passions include cooking (especially baking), origami, kittens, reading, watching really bad television and playing online scrabble. (And no, she doesn't cheat... much.)","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/author\/hfields"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/197"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}