How do I make R2D2 slutty?
That's the question facing me
today. I could dip into my collection of past Halloween costumes and
just go as a slut devil, or a slut angel or a slut pirate.
Hubby is going as Luke Skywalker with Zev – dressed as Yoda – strapped
to his back, just as the characters appear on the swamp planet of
Dagobah in "The Empire Strikes Back" (have I lost you yet?).
only other character in that scene is R2D2. And since it'd be kinda
lame for Luke and Yoda to be traveling around Dagobah with a French
maid, I have to figure out how to slut up R2.
If you're asking
why I have to turn a 2-foot droid into a whore, why I can't just go as
a "normal" R2D2, then you've probably spent the last 20 Halloweens
alone in some darkened patch waiting for the Great Pumpkin to appear.
When you're a kid, Halloween is about treats. When you're an adult,
it's about looking as though you turn tricks.
I suppose, as a
presumably thinking person, I should question why women across the
country have silently declared one of the coldest evenings of the fall
as the night we collectively waltz around outdoors in our underwear.
But when it comes to tradition, I've learned not to question: Why do we
eat turkey on Thanksgiving? I don't know. Who cares? It's the one day
of the year my mom ever cooked. Why spoil it with analysis?
is true for vampish Halloween costumes. Is it odd for a nice Jewish
girl to celebrate a pagan ritual that's been funneled through Christian
traditions? Yep. Is it any more odd to do so while wearing a corset?
Probably not. So lace me up!
Truth is, women are sexual beings.
At least, we'd like to be. There's an awful lot of punishment and
condemnation and mixed messages out there for women who enjoy sex and
feel comfortable with their sexuality. There is this weird definition
women have of "sexy" as "being sexy for men." Halloween, the way I see
it, is a way of turning that on its head. Of being sexy for ourselves.
is, of course, some harm we're doing our daughters and little sisters
in presenting "dress up" as something other than a fulfillment of our fantasies.
Do girls look at these revealing costumes as a choice or a mandatory
uniform? It's hard to know, but I suspect the latter.
if crazy, reader, Kirsten, says the whoring of Halloween starts young
these days. Her 8-year-old daughter wants to go to her "very orderly
Lutheran school" dressed as Marilyn Monroe.
"Of course, I'm letting her," she wrote in an e-mail.
But that doesn't mean the sex-kitten-for-a-day thing doesn't get her dander up.
really bugs me is the women who answer the door with candy and a
skin-tight, low-cut top with their giant boobs hanging out," she wrote.
"I know they're doing it for my cute husband, but my 11-year-old son
stands there staring at the 'candy.' "
Which brings me back to my own boobs – and just how I am going to manage to reveal them in an androgynous droid costume.
gone through various methods in my head: The super short white dress
with blue buttons sewed on it and a silver hat? Nope. I'd be mistaken
for a Rockette. The cylindrical box that shows off much leg but covers
my head? I'm afraid I'd look like a suppository.
I was about give
up, when I decided to turn to Jessica Paster, the celebrity stylist
responsible for dressing Kate Bosworth, Thandie Newton and a host of
other starlets. If she couldn't help me out with my R2 costume, no one
As it turns out, years of dressing the sexiest women in
Hollywood have given her some insight into this Halloween tradition of
ours. In other words, she's questioned it. And it didn't hold up.
creative and having a creative costume is fun. Looking like a hooker is
not fun," said Jessica, who will be sporting an elaborate raven costume
tonight. "I think that women think that's sexy. It's not sexy."
I've got, like, five hours to figure this thing out now, and the way I
see it, I have two options: Either I realize that I'm under no
obligation to show skin tonight and stick myself inside a big white
box. Or I take the slut costume tradition to its logical conclusion,
strip all my clothes off, paint the words "I'm R2D2" on my body and
call it a night.
A cold, cold night.