With Halloween coming up, everyone is busy picking out their costumes. I recently went to a costume shop, and as I looked at my options, I had to wonder if there were any costumes that wouldn’t turn me into a sex object.

Halloween has changed from an innocent holiday in which we, as children, demanded candy from strangers to a Halloween that is about demanding shots from frat bros.

Now it seems like the sexier a costume, the better. Everywhere you look on Halloween, there are sexy kitties, sexy cowgirls and sexy hamburgers (they exist.)

In order for a woman to find a costume that doesn’t make her look like a festive prostitute, she’ll have to scrounge something up from the thrift store or learn how to sew. And if she’s plus sized? Forget about a pre-made costume.

In addition, young girls are being exposed to sexual costumes at an inappropriately young age.

Preteen and youth costumes are becoming shorter and tighter, as if to teach the youth of America that it’s completely okay to have their bodies objectified.

“The pumpkin and princess costumes once deemed as ‘cute’ are today sexy and salacious, complete with halter tops, miniskirts and bare midriffs, and are perhaps the scariest thing parents have to contend with,” wrote Andrea Canning from ABC News.

“One item on the aisles of costume stores this year is a chamber maid costume —for a 6-year-old,” Canning said.

If men want a sexy Halloween costume, they have to make an effort to find one.

Most costumes made for men are meant to look funny or cool. Men can be doctors, cowboys and pharaohs that, at most, show off the chest.

But why can Halloween stores get away with this misogyny?

Simple answer: these costumes are still selling.

The top costumes of 2011, according to the Christian Science Monitor’s “Top Costumes Halloween,” includes sexy Angry Birds costumes, the obviously sexual Playboy bunnies and Nicki Minaj, complete with pink wig and exposed cleavage.

I think young women today can’t decipher between “sexy” and just plain “slutty.”

If your skirt barely covers you up and your nipples are in danger of showing, you don’t look cute; you look like a tramp.

I’m not saying that if you want to wear a sexy costume that you’re a tramp.

If wearing a sexy kitty costume makes you feel good about yourself, then you go be the best sexy kitty you can be.

I’m just saying that young women today don’t have the option to buy a pre-made Halloween costume that doesn’t objectify them.

This isn’t how the spirit of Halloween should be exemplified.

Paige Jurgensen

Staff writer

Paige Jurgensen can be reached at [email protected].