By Shameem Guiliano

It’s one of the questions you may have already asked yourself in the run up to Halloween – if you’re a woman.

Okay, maybe you haven’t asked yourself whether you should go as a sexy pizza slice, but you’ve definitely had a browse online or in stores for a costume and only been faced with short skirts and cleavage worked into every seemingly innocent idea or theme. It’s actually quite frustrating when you think of current-era Halloween as being what it’s meant to be – a scary and at the same time joyful night - and want to go as something truly Halloween-y.

In the past three years or so I’ve searched high and low for a costume that’s either actually scary or not half-naked and ended up creating my own costume (Miley Cyrus’ costume in 2013 should never have happened...) just so I don’t have to go as a sexy vampire for another year. The pre packaged costumes found at all costume shops make me, and many others, roll our eyes. Okay, so we’re expected to be a slutty witch again this year.

At this point, in case you’re wondering, the sexy pizza slice costume does exist and so does its male counterpart (which is shockingly not very sexy at all).

So in an age where even slices of fast food are sexed up as costumes for women and crustaceans are being depicted as sexy females, at what point will costume companies realise that there is a market for badass female costumes – be it from games, movies, series or something from the imagination? During my weekly browse of ASOS.com earlier this evening I found out they’re producing Halloween gear this year. A quick scroll of their Halloween collection dashes any hopes of finding something remotely normal. Their Sexy Cat Costume is just a black, low-cut leotard with ears (and at £12 for the set is even cheaper than some of their even most basic, standard clothing).

A quick Google search for a male cat costume showed up with this result, (try wearing it at Dusk without breaking a sweat), from halloweencostumes.com.

I think the whole sexy schoolgirl thing also deserves a mention here. It’s not only the sexualisation of women – it’s the sexualisation of underage girls. What’s even scarier is that fact we’ve all been conditioned not to bat an eye anymore (we see this during Fresher’s Week all over the UK at Universities and even I have taken part in this without realising the implications) but once you really think about it, it’s really, really disturbing.

The deal is, you should be allowed to wear as little or as much as you like without being shamed, ever. The problem emerges when those who don’t want to be continuously faced with sexualised costumes at every turn for Halloween are being offered sexy Donald Trump costumes (aptly called Donald T. Rumpshaker).

In an ever increasing feminist world where women and men are more aware than ever of the sexist propaganda being thrown at us and where we’re breaking the stereotypes of ‘the princess gender’, we should have more options when it comes to dressing up and enjoying ourselves being someone or something else. We don’t need Halloween to be allowed to feel sexy, like some kind of pass where the world says “okay girls, go ahead, we won’t judge today, we promise” and then goes ahead and judges anyway; we should be allowed to feel that whenever we want in any way we want without being shamed, but we do need Halloween in order to be a bloodthirsty, non-sexy werewolf for one night and not raise eyebrows. We should be able to have the same normal options as men do and not be thrown into a pile of sexy and slutty.

At this point, I put together my own costumes, usually purchased online in bits. My sister for example hand-makes all her gaming-themed costumes every year; papier mâché, sewing needle and all. While it does seem daunting and expensive to have to buy separate pieces to create the perfect, relevant costume, it really is worth getting stuck in if you can’t bear to be another pre packaged sexy nurse this year.

This year I’m going as a ninja – I’m just waiting for my plastic Samurai sword to arrive!