Sexy costumes for kids?
KRISTIV.COM – a local station in Corpus Christi, Texas – has a post titled “Sexy Halloween costumes cause concern for kids.”
Our first clue that something is amisss is the bad vocabulary. Despite the headline, nothing in Roxanne Carrillo’s article gives evidence that kids are concerned about anything; actually, the focus is on parental concern about kids.
The concern, voiced by a counselor and a probation officer, is that increasingly sexy costumes for younger Halloween-goers could trigger child predators by portraying children in a “sexual role.” I’m not an expert in this area (unless having read Lolita counts), but aren’t child predators drawn to children because they are children? Making them look like adults is probably a turn off.
In any case, an owner of a Spirit Halloween store says the more revealing costumes are not selling well, so this may be a case where unfettered market forces are “solving” a problem that does not even exist.