Why Halloween Is Sexy AF

When I was little, Halloween was my favorite holiday because: candy (obviously) and also because my dad would spend weeks turning our house into the coolest haunted house in the neighborhood. But as an adult, Halloween has taken a very different tone. A very, shall we say, adult tone. Because let’s be real: Halloween is the sexiest holiday.

Now, before you freak out about how Halloween is “supposed” to be for children and making it sexy is wrong or weird or whatever, it's important to note where Halloween comes from — because it’s definitely not originally a holiday for children. Our contemporary Halloween celebration owes its origins to a few different traditions, the first being the Celtic New Years Eve, which they called Samhain.

The Celts believed that the boundary between the world of the dead and the world of the living became thin on Samhain, allowing ghosts to come back to visit. It was a dangerous, spiritual day — definitely not a time that children should be wandering around at night. In the 2,000 years since the Celts regularly acknowledged Samhain, we’ve added on Roman harvest beliefs, some Native American harvest customs, and even a celebration of Catholic martyrs. In fact, the idea of Halloween being a holiday for children only emerged in the late 1800s, when the focus shifted from scary to fun, from superstitious to community-based.

All of which to say, October festivals have existed and have been evolving based on the current culture for a long, long time. Sexy Halloween, then, is just our latest iteration. When you look at the history of Halloween, it has almost always been about things that we fear and considering we live in such a sex-negative culture, sexy Halloween totally makes sense. So whip out your sexy Gladiator costume and let’s celebrate these seven reasons why Halloween is the sexiest holiday!

1. Sexy Halloween Costumes

Whether you love them or hate them, there’s no denying that some sexy Halloween costumes are sexy. That’s the whole damn point! Obviously everyone has their own limits when it comes to sexy Halloween costumes and some are totally ridiculous (like I’m definitely never going to dress up as a sexy poop emoji) but hey, to each their own.

I only have three objections to sexy Halloween costumes: 1) that some women feel like they’re their only options for costumes, 2) that it can get pretty darn cold on Halloween, depending on where you live and, 3) that there aren’t more sexy costumes available for men. Because I would really like to see more skimpily dressed masculine people. Please? Do it for me?

2. Role Play Is Always Fun

Sexual role play is a hugely popular fantasy and activity, for a good reason: It’s a lot of fun! According to the SKYN Condoms Millennial Sex Survey, which included 5,117 people between the ages of 18 and 34 of all genders and sexualities, the most common role play scenarios are stripper, school girl, and Fifty Shades of Grey.

But why not branch out? Do some thinking about what archetypes turn you on and work that into your Halloween costume — and if you have a partner, talk to them about their fantasies too. Even if your costume is not immediately obviously sexy, you two will know that you’re doing it for each other. No says you have to break character once you get home after the party, right?

3. It's A Release In A Sex-Negative Culture

While the tradition of sexy Halloween can be traced to the gay neighborhoods of New York and San Francisco in the ‘70s, famous sex advice columnist and out-and-proud gay man Dan Savage likes to call today’s Halloween “Straight Pride Day” or “Heteroween.” He contends that Halloween used to be the only time that “you could leave the house in leather or feathers without attracting the attentions of the police” but that now gay people don’t need Halloween the way used to.

“Halloween resonated for pre-Stonewall homosexuals because the closeted life — out to a select few friends, closeted at work and home — was a stressful masquerade that never ended,” Savage says in The Stranger. “We were good at masks, at pretense, at dressing up, because we had to be in order to survive. Halloween took our skill set — pretending to be what we are not — and allowed us to find joy in it one night a year.”

These days, however, queer people are able to march in Pride parades and attend public sex events like Folsom. Savage argues that non-queer people “need” the release of sexy Halloween because they’re constantly policing their own sexuality in our sex-negative culture. Halloween, then, becomes a much-needed release from “pressure to conform and maintain.”

4. Masks And Costumes Are Sexually Freeing

Oscar Wilde famously wrote “Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.” When we step outside of our normal roles and costumes — parent, significant other, child, office worker, whatever — and into a totally new role, we give ourselves the freedom to act in ways that we might not in our daily lives. There’s a reason masquerade balls have been popular for so long and are associated with sex, right? Halloween gives all of us the opportunity to explore those parts of us that our every day selves cover up.

5. It’s Sexy, But Doesn’t Have The Baggage Valentine’s Day Has

“Halloween is the sexiest holiday because it's the one holiday where singles can celebrate by wearing their sexiest outfits,” Demetrius Figueroa, founder of the dating blog and podcast Tao of Indifference, tells Bustle. “Couples can do the same, but it has none of the romantic baggage that holidays like Valentine's Day do.”

6. It’s One Of The Only Major Holidays We Spend With Our Peers

Almost every other big holiday — Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving — is spent with family. Only Halloween and New Year’s Eve are spent with our peers, usually out partying, usually in awesome outfits. This makes it automatically sexier than the holidays we spend trying not to notice that Great Aunt Sandra chews with her mouth open.

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