Women’s costumes get short shrift

Acowboy sporting a mini skirt or Captain America in a tank top. Where would you see this?

The answer is in the women’s section of the Halloween costume department.

The majority of women’s costumes available in stores are most likely to be the sexy version of the male’s costumes.

Staff Writer

Looking through a costume store, most of the items for women are gussied-up versions of bees, cartoon characters, and random things, such as hippies and huntresses.

That means skirts added to costumes that wouldn’t call for them, such as a Ninja Turtle or an army soldier.

This makes looking for a scary or an accurate version of a certain character difficult.

You might not think it’s that bad, that there can’t be that much of a difference between the women’s and men’s costumes. But if you compare men’s costumes and women’s costumes you’re in for a shock.

The women’s mummy costume is a toilet-paper looking dress while the men’s version is what you image a mummy to look like — covered in bandages from head to toe.

The biggest difference can be seen in the Cookie Monster costume. The men’s version is an accurate Cookie Monster with a mask. Meanwhile, the women’s version is a mask-less blue dress with a headband with eyes on it.

Most of these costumes are cute and creative, but there’s still a problem.

The problem isn’t the costumes themselves or anybody who wants to wear them.

The problem is that there should be more choices for women.

Halloween costume designers make a variety of things for the guys to choose from. They get to pick from silly, scary and even sexy.

They should make women’s costumes that are diverse or just stop making certain things gender specific.

Instead of making different versions for women and men, the costume makers should make some costumes gender-neutral and then make alternative versions of that costume.

If a woman wants to dress up like a superhero without a miniskirt, she either has to make the costume herself or go to the men’s section.

My recommendation is for people to wear whatever costume they want.

If somebody wants to dress like Batman or a vampire, then they should get whatever version they like best, regardless of what gender is on the cover.

Christine Ritter is a journalism major from Big Sandy.