Halloween could get scary

Today the New York Times gave us the lowdown on Whore-o-ween; the recently ubiquitous phenomena where young women put on their tightest slutty/sexy/empowering costumes for the October 31 festivities. According to the paper of record this practice -- post-post-post feminism, they guess -- is particularly popular on college campuses.

When I first read the article I had the same reaction as I did about five years ago when the parade of reports on the teen oral sex epidemic began: Damn, I was born a decade too late.

But when I thought about it, maybe this is not such a good thing. Thongs -- especially worn with low cut jeans -- were once nothing but a positive contributor to the world's sexiness quotient. Yet around the time of Lewinsky they took a turn for the worse. Papers like the New York Times started writing articles on the thong and suddenly the general population took this to mean devising outfits that exposed your stringy underwear had become a required part of modern femininity.

Or, to put it politely and return to the subject at hand, if everyone looked sexy in a "Bad Girl Scout" Halloween costume would anyone look sexy in a "Bad Girl Scout" Halloween costume?

The Times article ended with a senior from my alma mater reporting an "abundance" of skimpy Halloween garb on campus last year. Then she implied the coeds were going to be taking it up a notch this year.

In the lake-effected upstate New York town I went to school, the end of October means one can't be further removed from needing to be in bikini-shape while still in the continental United States. Even so, there were some girls I wouldn't have minded seeing in pigtails and bustiers.

But an "abundance" -- that's a frightening word in more ways than one.

Although I guess that would be the point of the Halloween costume in the first place.