... the complaint that tween girls (if not children themselves) are "dressing too sexy these days" or being "sexualized" every time they put on an outfit that doesn't suggest and scream total asexual being and fit the puritanical standards that our gerontocentric society insists they're just naturally supposed to adhere to, is all over the place in the media. And of course, every Halloween it reaches its peak. This complaint is one of an endless barrage of pontifications to suppress tween and young teen sexual expression, and to force them not to look in what can be in any way perceived as "sexy," i.e., beautiful in a sexually appealing way.

Why is it a problem? Because, plain and simply, mainstream adults in our culture do not want their kids to display any sort of sexual expression or appeal. Since our super-culture associates sexuality and sexual expression with our notions of adulthood only, it sends this message first and foremost to the minds of parents: "Omg, my little girl is growing up!" That suggests associations with the following concepts: "Independence." "Loss of control." "Thinking thoughts that parents cannot effectively monitor, but must try to do so at any cost to stifle or control the pace of these distressing moves towards independence and 'growing up.'"

Loss of control and moves to break out of the enforced dependence imposed on all underagers regardless of individual merit is the crux behind the powerful desire for so many parents and supporters of the status quo in general to promote any aspect of the sex abuse hysteria and the suppressive war on underage sexual expression overall. Not to "protect" them from any form of objective harm. And conversely, the potency of these attempts at suppression is precisely what encourages so many tween girls to transgress against this synthetic and forcefully imposed state of being.

Yes, there is the constantly stated fear that adult men may "look at them" in an "inappropriate" way, and the possibility of such thoughts entering the minds of any men offends parents and supporters of the conception of underage innocence and asexuality. The other stated fear that an adult will attack and rape them is based on the "stranger danger" phenomenon that ignores the fact that such attacks by strangers are exceedingly rare, and a tween dressed in any way whatsoever is more likely to be struck by lightening when out trick or treating than she is to be abducted by a perverted stranger who is enticed by the girl dressed in a sexy pirate outfit. This fear is also based on the all-too common misandrist attitude that male sexuality is inherent predatory, and invariably begets predatory behavior when males are enticed in some way.

And finally, part of the conflict lies in what Halloween represents in many ways on a cultural basis to contemporary Americans in particular: transgression. The common practice of dressing as horror icons and "scary" stuff in general, or as unsavory characters like pirates, is a part of this transgression of boundaries and it's all intended in good fun for a single evening. Tween girls dressing in outfits that suggest something transgressive is simply another variation of this, albeit one that raises emotional hackles in ways far profound in the current Western mindset than monster or pirate outfits. After all, your child is not actually going to become a zombie or a pirate, but they are likely to become a "sexy" or sexual being in a real objective sense. So this is a type of transgression that is more than just metaphorical, and current Western attitudes are not comfortable with it for that reason.