Tonight is the night when a large number of people my age put on costumes and get drunk, and a smaller number of people my age scoff and roll their eyes at what the women are wearing.

There is a lot to criticize about the way we “do” Halloween in our culture, but here’s what we shouldn’t be criticizing: individual women who choose to wear so-called “slutty” costumes.

First of all, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to dress revealingly. It can be fun, and as long as you’re not feeling pressured into it, there’s no reason why you should need an “excuse” to show off your body if that’s what you want to do. Not really my thing, but not everyone has to be like me.

Second, if you’ve spent any time at all on a college campus, you know that the way some women dress on Halloween isn’t really that different from how they dress when going to a frat party any other night of the year–that is, pretty revealingly. To me, this says that the problem isn’t really with Halloween itself or with individual women’s clothing choices.

Third, women are often shamed for not dressing revealingly when they go out, especially on Halloween. Friends have told me that they’ve tried to wear “normal” costumes on Halloween, only to be shouted at by men, “Why are you wearing so many clothes?!” So, in a way, women are damned if they do and damned if they don’t, and I wouldn’t blame a woman for deciding that she’d rather get called a slut than a boring, no-fun prude.

Fourth, although dressing revealingly can be intrinsically fun, women in our society grow up learning to base their self-worth on their looks. It’d be nice if everyone became a Super Duper Feminist and broke down their assumptions about gender and beauty and only wore revealing clothing for Completely Personal Reasons, but that doesn’t happen. At least, not for now. The idea that you must look good and you must put on a display for (heterosexual) men is one that can take a long time for women to dislodge from their minds because it’s often so subconscious.

Fifth, “dressing slutty” is a stupid phrase and I wish we’d stop using it. How someone dresses has nothing to do with how much and what kind of sex they want to have, and with whom. Saying that someone is “dressing slutty” promotes rape culture because, in saying so, you are making unfounded assumptions about someone’s sexual availability. Stop saying it.

Sixth, just try finding non-“slutty” Halloween costumes for women. Not everyone has the time, money, and skill to make their own costumes (but here’s a great resource for those who are so inclined). Also, not all female-identified people are willing to wear men’s clothing.

So if we can’t necessarily criticize individual women and their choices*, what can we criticize?

Well, our culture.

And that’s where it gets difficult. It’d be a lot easier to point at women who wear “slutty” costumes and blame them for the problem. It’d also be easier, and definitely more to the point, to blame costume manufacturers. But even that fails to get to the heart of the problem, which is this:

We still make a number of destructive assumptions–we, as a culture. One of those is that women exist primarily to be “on display,” and that anything else they do is secondary to that. Another is that female bodies are attractive and pleasant to look at (assuming they fit into the narrow criteria we prescribe), whereas male bodies are not. Why do we never see men “dressing slutty”? Why aren’t men expected to wear garments that restrict their movement, make it difficult for them to breathe, and require constant readjustments to make sure that nothing “indecent” is revealed? Because female bodies exist to be looked at, and male bodies exist to do things.

Another destructive assumption is that women who admit that they find themselves attractive and that they enjoy getting attention for their looks are “full of themselves,” “attention whores,” “think they’re all that,” and so on. We need to put this to rest right now–not only because it’s barely-veiled misogyny, but also because it’s part of the reason “slutty” Halloween costumes even exist. Women feel like they need a special “excuse” to show off their bodies, and Halloween provides such an excuse. As Cady narrates in Mean Girls, “In Girl World, Halloween is the one night a year when a girl can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it.”

It may be tempting to ridicule women who wear “slutty” costumes, but it misses the point. Although we ultimately make our own choices, we don’t make them in a vacuum. In this case, we make them in a cultural context that still treats women as objects for display.

*Of course, that’s not to say you can never criticize people’s costume choices. If you wear this (TW for anorexia) you’re just a terrible person, for instance. And also, here’s a PSA: don’t be racist.

And meanwhile, enjoy:

Edit: A number of people have been misinterpreting point 3 above to mean that because men (sometimes) ridicule women for not dressing revealingly, that means that they should dress revealingly. No. While I’m glad my readers are all disagreeing with that idea, that’s quite an impressive misinterpretation of my point. I’m not prescribing what women should or should not do. I’m explaining why women should not be ridiculed for wearing revealing costumes by showing that they’re damned if they do and damned if they don’t.

Likewise, I’m not saying ridiculing costumes is wrong. I’m saying ridiculing people is wrong–if you’re doing it in a gendered way.

So, OK: “Whaaaat that costume looks nothing like Scooby Doo/the Doctor/Super Man/Big Bird/Angry Bird/whatever”

Not OK: “Ugh, look at that slut.”