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Michael Amann Says ...

Halloween is Ruined Forever

By Michael Amann

College has its own set of holidays. From preschool until the 12th grade, we celebrated inane festivals like Columbus Day or Easter. After we leave the cradle of this university, Labor and Memorial Days will have greater import to us. Thanksgiving and Christmas are family staples. In college, however, a certain group of holy days have formed in the collegiate calendar as ones to have parties on, no matter what. Students may have only tenuous reasons to celebrate the Feast Day of St. Patrick or the Mexican Army's unlikely victory over the French at Pueblo, but with Irish Car Bombs and pink margaritas we celebrate St. Paddy's Day and Cinco De Mayo. No holiday has been more firmly appropriated by collage age hooligans than Halloween. Local municipalities were forced to shift the day of the children's "trick or treat" away from Saturday to avoid children dressed in black G.I. Joe costumes from being sideswiped by drunk 19 year olds driving head-to-toe in green spandex. We took the holiday away from the children.

Like so many usurpers of power, however, we destroyed a good thing. Our arrogant celebration of the core aspect of the holiday that made Hallow's Eve so "adult" and "awesome" has now led to its certainly permanent demise. I am of course not referring to the played out costumes dudes wear. While I think that Joker and Johnny Depp Pirate costumes are really lame, you really can't go wrong with a classic, like Mario/Luigi/Wario/Waluigi or Green Man costume. What they lack in originality they make up for in the sheer fun of wearing a massive fake mustache or a skin-tight body suit. In the evil times we live in, we need hope and joy, and Halloween used to be that for college students. No more.

My fellow Buckeyes, we ruined Halloween by making too many jokes about girls dressing up slutty. I discovered this on my weekend-long Hollow's Eve tour of campus. Though filled with debauched revelry, I witnessed a noticeable dearth of poorly clothed, well made-up females. Girls willing to wear more makeup than clothing are not rare, but like the majestic Okapi, they are easily driven into hiding. The concoction of body image issues and misguided ideas of self worth that our male-dominated society bestows upon young woman does provide for deliciously slutty nurses, insurance company lobbyists, cavemen, bier girls, etc. However, that same fragile psyche responds very poorly to perceived criticism or mocking. All the slutty girl costume jokes, benign as they may have seemed, have like the shadow of a groundhog driven the slutty-costumed girls deep within its hole of ironic zombie grandma hell. The patriarchy giveth and the patriarchy taketh away.

Like bobbing for apples and sacrificing stray bums, slutty costumes on women will be forever relegated to the nostalgic past - a relic of a simpler time when a girl could be a firefighter with just yellow hot pants, suspenders, some toupee tape and a hat. Those days are gone now folks. In the days of my youth the costumes scarcely qualified as dressing up, so scantily were the ladies clad. In the great Halloween of '05, I even saw a pair of girls whose underwear concealed the whole of their costumes. Slutty sailors, slutty school girls, slutty archeologists, slutty refugees, appropriately dressed strippers and prostitutes, slutty cave women, slutty referees, slutty sluts, slutty air traffic controllers, slutty lumberjacks, slutty Gary Buseys and my favorite, slutty Rosie the Riveters - all those great costumes will be lost in time, like tears in the rain.

Claims will be made that someone's bro saw a slutty Hogwarts student on 14th and Indianola, or that like 5 girls were slutty nuns over at Soapdish's on Friday. These claims are panicked rationalizations from short-sighted bros locked in the clutches of the first stage of grief. These sightings are the exception that proves the rule: the girls have gone mild. Others may declare that a bunch of slutty ladybugs made out with the Gugicci brothers. These people are forgetting that ladybug costumes can't be sexy because the costumes don't show off much cleavage - something we will just have to get used to.

This year was only the beginning. When we celebrate Halloween in the next decade, "The Golden Girls" will replace slutty Powerpuff Girls as the most popular group costume. Not even slutty Bea Arthur. Just normal old man Bea Arthur - the future we are faced with. In some cruel attempt to be cool or funny, girls will dress up as unattractive literary figures or non-sexual exploitive cartoon characters. They might even dress up as men. This is all "Mean Girls"' fault.

Originally Published: November 4, 2009

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