Well, I’ve been half-avoiding the topic, but there’s no denying that it’s Hallowe’en tomorrow.  Mr. Mezzo and I didn’t get any trick-or-treaters last year, but we still have some candy on hand. We’ll turn on the front porch light and will set out a few seasonal decorations tomorrow evening, just in case anyone comes through the neighborhood looking for treats.

But I won’t be taking the time to get dressed up in costume.

Part of that is plain pure pragmatics: considering that the odds are so high that the evening will consist entirely of us hanging out, watching DVR and waiting for a doorbell that won’t ever ring, it seems entirely foolish to be all dressed up in costume for that.

The other part of this decision is how high the odds are that my head might explode t’were I to step into the local costume store.

Which brings me to the reason I was half-avoiding the topic of Hallowe’en here on JALC: I just didn’t have the desire to have to get into the whole issue of sexified women’s costumes. Instead, here’s a pretty good round-up from EW of some of the most egregious examples of the genre. (Plus a Mashable link that responds to the awfulness of a “sexy Ebola nurse” costume with perhaps the most perfect response: “Internet, this is why you can’t have nice things.”)

For anyone needing to burn the midnight oil to come up with something for tomorrow, here’s some good advice from Feministing:

From there, move on to Take Back Halloween, a blog created by the Real History Project where you’ll find all sorts of low-cost DIY costume ideas for women that go well beyond “sexy [insert ANYTHING AT ALL].” Some of my favorite costume ideas: La Sirène, the goddess of the sea in Haitian Voudou, Queen Liliuokalani, the last reigning monarch of the Kingdom of Hawaii, Marie Laveau, one of the most legendary and mysterious Voodoo priestesses ever, and Bessie Coleman, the first African-American woman to earn a pilot’s license.

For myself, I have a small witch’s hat ready for tomorrow, so I’ll just be spending a great deal of my time studying this chart generated by SumoCoupon about the “most-Googled Halloween costume” for each state:

The grad school friend whose Facebook feed I first discovered this chart expressed her gladness that Katniss and the Avengers’ Black Widow were both outnumbering “cheerleader” by a margin of 4-to-1, and I guess I’ll co-sign that sentiment.

Quite honestly, I’m a little more interested in the oddities here. Like: what is the difference between New Jersey and Virginia that has each choosing different sisters from Frozen? Why has Colorado become Medusa central, and what exactly is the reason for North Dakota’s disproportionate interest in the Care Bear franchise?

No, none of these are questions I expect to be able to answer — particularly since the “research methodology” used to generate this chart is way, way, WAY unscientific, meaning that any deep analysis of this chart’s “results” is pretty much a moot point.

But hey, this train of thought has me focusing on something other than the awfulness of the sexy-costume trend, and that’s good enough for me.

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Image credit: http://www.sumocoupon.com/most-trending-halloween-costumes-each-state/