Cassandra Tognoni | Giving out eye candy

On Saturday, they were everywhere: sexy referees, sexy gladiators, sexy cats. It's Halloween, and that means discovering that just about any occupation and any animal can be made into tight, cleavage-baring, upper-thigh-revealing ensemble that oozes sexuality.

But don't call the girl draped in a few square inches of black-and-white fabric slutty; it's just a costume. Most of these girls wouldn't be caught dead in anything remotely as promiscuous any other day of the year. Indeed in many of the conversations I had with students, they defended their choice of dress by citing their feminist right to publicly express their sexuality and said something along the lines of "because I can, damn it."

Because on Halloween, women are sexually liberated and can wear whatever they want. On Halloween, women break free from the chains of societal restrictions that bound them into sweaters and jeans.

This is what feminism is fighting for? This is female empowerment?

Decades ago, the women's liberation movement together with the sexual revolution promulgated the notion that women should approach sex as men do: unadulterated and unabashedly. But this hasn't given women sexual equality. Rather, the feminist sexual revolution has led too many women to approach sex and their sexuality simply as men want them to. When Halloween rolls around, this translates into wearing next to nothing.

Women's dress at one point in history did serve as means of subjugation. To feminism's credit, women are now free from the days of constraining corsets and petticoats. That, undoubtedly, was uncomfortable.

But just because feminism has bestowed all outfits with the stamp of social acceptability, doesn't mean that anything a woman puts on is, as a result, an expression of her feminism.

Under the anything-goes assumption, the corset has gone from a symbol of male repression to one of female power. Wearing one is no longer required or expected, but chosen. Yet a corset was worn then to make the body look more attractive to males (smaller waist, bigger breasts) and it is worn now for the same purpose.

A woman may convince herself that it is her innate desire to wear push-up bras and tight short skirts; she may reason that she likes the way revealing clothing accentuates certain parts of her body. This isn't so unreasonable. Women and men alike are always going to prefer to present themselves as physically attractive.

But the extent to which women try to attract the opposite sex with their outfit selection is far beyond any similar effort exerted by men.

There are not many guys I know here that spend hours enhancing certain features of their body to make themselves more sexually appealing. Furthermore, on Halloween, very few guys jump at the chance to show off their bodies in costumes. How many Chippendale's dancers did you see Saturday night?

When Halloween comes around, most guys want to show off their creativity and humor, not their six-packs.

So while certain self-described "feminists" may assert that their stripper heels and bustier are expressions of their feminism, they're not. This supposedly liberated mode of dress merely adheres to a standard of sexy that is dictated by men. It is the antithesis of feminism.

As Ariel Levy writes in her book Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture, "A tawdry, tarty, cartoonlike version of female sexuality has become so ubiquitous, it no longer seems particular. What we once regarded as a kind of sexual expression we now view as sexuality."

And though men can always be blamed for controlling the media and determining cultural norms, women do their part in perpetuating such objectification; women are the agents in the equation and consequently contain the power to overcome this "tawdry" standard.

Some may bemoan that girls don't have many other options. Look in any Halloween store for proof: The majority of women's costumes are prefixed with "dirty" or "sexy." But there is another option to buying a packaged costume: creativity, original thought. A woman using her brain over her body? Now that's feminism.

At the end of the day, a woman is and should be free to wear whatever she wants. So go ahead and be a sexy nurse; I'm not going to call you a slut. Just don't call yourself a feminist.

Cassandra Tognoni is a Wharton junior from Andover, Mass. Her e-mail is tognoni@dailypennsylvanian.com. Skirting the Norm appears on Mondays.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.