vip in the city

Ricky’s Halloween

Halloween is the one night a year when girls can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it.
— Cady Heron (Lindsay Lohan), Mean Girls

Ricky’s NYC beauty shop–36 locations and growing!–carries an impressive line of cosmetics and hair care products, but they are perhaps best known as one of the city’s prime sources for body glitter, temporary tattoos, wigs, and uh… let’s just say “novelties.” The days leading up to Halloween are the chain’s busiest, and tonight on the way home from my weekly CSA pick-up, I passed the Upper West Side store to find it packed with last minute costume shoppers scouring the aisles to a pounding dance music soundtrack.

If Ricky’s is the “paramount venue to discover your inner drag queen,” then judging from the store and window displays around town, October 31 is apparently the paramount day for every girl to discover her inner vixen. When did Halloween costumes become so aggressively sexy?

Increasingly, what passes for women’s “costumes” seem to fit the mold of headgear + exposed undergarments and/or skimpy skirt. (And it’s not just the case for big girls either. “Major Flirt Child“? “French Maid Child“?! So. Wrong.) A cat becomes a sexy cat. A devil becomes a red, hot devil. Goldilocks is naughty Goldilocks. And Wonder Woman… well, I guess that one’s pretty much the same, but you get the idea.

At least Wonder Woman gets to wear a cape sometimes.

Tags: costumes, Halloween, Ricky's, women's issues