Halloween is just an excuse for women to dress like sluts. I’m sure you’ve heard this before, but how much of a choice is it?

Are women choosing to dress in this way or is the costume industry forcing them?
The two major sellers of Halloween costumes: Spirit Halloween and Party City are run by men.

If you walk into one of these stores, three quarters of the costumes are for women.
Men are dressing women up in sexy outfits for Halloween. Why? That’s what they're taught to do.

Additionally, 66% of all American men openly admit to watching porn. And anyone who doesn't watch porn is exposed to the attitudes and expectations of those who do because they are in the majority.

So, let's bring the two together. The sexualization, fetishes, and fantasies of porn have pervaded our Halloween. Women are dressed up in costumes that reveal their breasts and legs, alter their hair color, eye color, or ethnicity, and help them fit better into a category on the PornHub.

When browsing on Spirit Halloween’s website, you’ll be overwhelmed by breasts bursting from shirts, barely covered legs, high heels and women standing in seductive poses. The costume selection includes a variety of professions such as teacher, nurse, doctor, maid and stewardess, along with superheroes, cartoon characters, ethnicities and animals, so there are plenty of options to realize a variety of men's sexual fantasies.

This year’s most popular costume is Suicide Squad’s Harley Quinn, a character who spends most of the film strutting around in a wet t-shirt and high heels, seductively licks the bars of her jail cell, and is a victim of male manipulation and abuse.

This Halloween, you too can be “Daddy’s Little Monster,” and a victim of over-sexualization.

More female costumes include this "Red Hot Fire Chief" whose breasts are well exposed and oversized to satiate men with a fire of their own

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Miss Curve Ball is another option, with a title echoing the porn industry's emphasis on and distortion of a woman’s curves

Other options I came across included “Racy Rag Doll,” “Adult Marionette,” and “Wind Up Monkey,” placing women in submissive roles and encouraging male dominance and control.

Unfortunately these trends extend into young girl's choices for Halloween. Teen porn is the second most popular category of porn in America, so young women’s options for a non revealing costume are also slim. Young women are over-sexualized before even developing their sexuality. Tween costumes include a school girl who loves nerds, a spider geisha, and a witch. Each is wearing overly short skirts and standing in poses ranging from the innocent school girl with her arms crossed, a flirtatious witch with a hand on her hip, and an open armed, open legged, geisha.

Perhaps, you're a star wars fan, and want to be Darth Vader this Halloween. Notice the difference between the young male and female choices:

I don't recall Darth Vader wearing a short skirt and no mask in the films, but the women's costume neglects these details in favor of sexuality.

This Halloween, I urge you to think about who you want to be and how you want to dress. Avoid the sexist pressure to dress (or undress) a certain way. Some say ghosts haunt us on All Hallow's Eve, but it looks like porn is the more present spirit in our celebrations.