Tastefully Slutty: Halloween for the New Golden Age

This week I spent an inordinate amount of time hunting social-media clips for the Spooktacular edition of Cloth Off Friday, and folks , , , I gotta tell you, women are dressing pretty slutty for Halloween these days. They're dressing too slutty in general, but Halloween seems particularly slutty right now. At this point, Halloween seems little more than the Ho-lympic Games.

Let's take a look at an example:

See what I mean? Those Monster-Mashing Mummy Milkers are ghoulishly glorious, but… I mean, that's just titties out, bouncing around like they escaped Tit-ankhamun's Tomb. Too slutty. Way too slutty.

It’s time for a talk.

It’s time for a new standard.

It’s time to embrace: Tastefully Slutty For Halloween™.

Yes. Tastefully. Slutty. Two words that, when paired, sound like a $27 bottle of rosé marketed to 35-year-old unmarried AWFLs. But hear me out.

It's October 31st. The blood moon rises and every woman between 20 and “I think I'm ready to settle down now that my body count has reached triple digits” is prepping to venture out into the balmy October night and use Halloween as an excuse to consume toxic amounts of alcohol and frolic with their besties. And as they do . . . I ask that they, we, all of us, consider the following question "is this costume too slutty?"

“Is this costume too slutty?”

Historically, Halloween has been a strategic balancing act. Society grants women a pumpkin-spiced permission slip to dress like flirty versions of random nouns.

Slutty pumpkin.

Slutty super hero.

Slutty teacher.

Slutty feline.

Slutty, slutty, slutty.

Yes, yes, I know what you're thinking: “Bart, you're a smut blogger, surely you love all this?” First of all, fuck you, I am not a smut blogger. More importantly, no, I do not approve of this.

We did not build the greatest civilization on Earth by baring every square inch allowed by municipal code. We built it through strategic modesty and by men channeling their weapon-grade horniness into skyscrapers, steam engines, and constitutional republics. Civilization was not formed in full frontal; it was forged with the flicker of a fairly-modest french maid costume.

The ancient Greeks understood this. Women floated around, draped in chitons, revealing just enough shoulder to drive Aristotle pioneer scientific reasoning as a coping mechanism the Parthenon pitched under his robe. Pericles didn’t launch the Golden Age because he was spiritually pure. He did it because some Athenian girl exposed a collarbone and he thought, “By Zeus, I must build a civilization to convince this broad with Ample Archimedian Eye Gougers to bone me.”

Fast-forward to the Renaissance and advancements in art, trade, and bust support technology. The corset arrives and cleavage becomes the engine that inspires Michelangelo to climb atop scaffolding to paint the Sistine Chapel because it allowed him to stare down corset wearing women's blouses. Da Vinci didn’t paint the Mona Lisa for a paycheck. He saw a noblewoman lean forward slightly at a banquet and thought **italian hand gestures** “I will make a doodle of her and she may one day become my Moan-a Lisa.”

Then comes the Industrial Revolution. Factories roar, steam rises, and ankles rebel. Hemlines tick upward one inch under the guise of “air filtration.” A textile factory girl reveals a glimpse of her calf and suddenly men work 18-hour shifts, build railroads, and industrialize half the planet in effort to bed a woman with dysentery, public lice and the black lung.

The waist cinched dress of the 1950's ignited the American empire and a baby boom. The big hair and big breast implants of the 1980s fueled Wall Street. Baby tees, low-rise jeans and choker necklaces ended the Cold War in the 1990s. Smart phones would never have been invented in the 2000s had women not started wearing camisoles stacked under cardigans and revealed necklines that whispered “there are secrets here, work for them, peasant. Go invent the iPhone!”

And then…the breach.

The 2010s arrive. Modesty collapses. Suddenly every costume is an exercise in anatomical exposure. TikTok follows shortly thereafter and influencers begin competing for clout by uncovering their curves. Americans stare into the ring light abyss and the abyss twerks back into our brains, permanently rerouting dopamine pathways, leaving us overstimulated, oversexualized and under romanced. We have been rendered impotent by our own lack of shame and decency.

Tragedy. Civilization. Precipice of our demise and all that.

So, how do we fix this?

As with many great human endeavors - from circumcision, to marriage, to nuclear treaties - we need a pact. A truce between the sexes. A Monroe Doctrine of Mild Degeneracy™. A national policy for horniness that balances allure with modesty, fun with restraint and raunch with respect.

This Treaty of HerThighs™ (sounds like Versailles—very clever) can be summed up and operationalized quite simply:

We must: Mind. The. Ratio.

Ratio is everything. Cheese to pizza. Areola to nipple. And yes, skin to fabric.

Give the world one head-spinning feature and let imagination run the rest of the relay. A well-timed neckline and a strategic flash of thigh have launched empires. Entire love poems, naval voyages, and family lines have been triggered by a single glimpse of tasteful décolletage (that’s French for “tiddy window,” very classy)!

Believe it or not, men crave the balance and need the ratio.

When you walk into a party as Slightly Slutty Snow White - knee-length skirt, tasteful corset, looking like you know how to bake and are still on speaking terms with your dad? That’s kryptonite. That's the energy that built suburbs, railroads, and allegedly landed a man on the moon.

Conversely, if you show up as Super Slutty Snow White wearin only sports bra, fishnets, a thong and looking you just Bonnie-Blew seven-hundred dwarves in a mineshaft? Too Slutty. You have the blood of Western Civilization on your hands.

Mind. The. Ratio.

A Slightly Slutty Little Red Riding Hood in a velvet-red cloak, finger-length skirt, white knee-high socks, and a dash of tasteful cleavage will make any wolf howl (once they've collected their tongue from the floor).

A Super Slutty Nurse wearing a white coochie skirt, crop top, and mid-thigh fishnets? That's just too slutty. No nurse would ever dress that way and if one did, well . . . I wouldn't let that dumb slut insert a catheter up my urethra, thank you very much!

Mind. The. Ratio!

A little leg? Perfect.

A little thigh? Eh, ok, still within the parameters of decency.

Full cheeks out and I can chart your stretchmarks like Lewis & Clark mapping the Missouri? Sweetheart, no, that’s not seduction, that’s cartography. Fold that map back up, you've gone too slutty

Mind. The. FUCKING. Ratio.

It's OK to leave people wondering. Mystery isn’t oppression. It’s marketing.

Wear something that causes someone to ask, “do you have a boyfriend” and then invents cold fusion to impress you. Do not wear something that causes someone to ask "do you have an Only Fans" and then angrily masturbates while scrolling Reddit and planning an assassination attempt (communists).

Be hot. Be bold.

Tasteful. Teasing. Tempered titillation.

A little wicked, a little sweet. Scandal with structure. Seduction with dignity.

This is the way, my fellow patriots.

The republic depends on you.