Until this year, I had gone about nine years without celebrating Halloween.

Some of the… Until this year, I had gone about nine years without celebrating Halloween.

Some of the costumes I saw this year, largely those sported by women, made me wish I had stayed home.

I was not wholly unprepared. A friend let me in on the formula for women’s costumes: She’s not just a cat; she’s a sexy cat. She’s not just a devil; she’s a sexy devil.

Clearly, my friends and I have different definitions of “sexy,” because I was repulsed to discover that she wasn’t just a leopard; she was a leopard with … cameltoe.

It seemed, by and large, that 16 percent of the average woman’s costume covered parts that are traditionally considered to be inside the body. And the figure was only so low because, obviously, many women did not fit into the stereotype of sexy costumes. Of course, the women who did wear them didn’t really fit into them either.

Furthermore, how can one really be a sexy leopard? I know I’m rather old-fashioned, but I don’t think I’m wrong in saying that leopards should only be sexy to other leopards.

My costume was nothing special. After a hectic week of school, offering no free time for costume arrangement, I scrapped my plans, instead opting to go as “man wearing clothes” – which was a step up from third grade, when I went as Pittsburgh Pirate legend Roberto Clemente, donning brown body paint to complete the effect. When we learned about blackface in high school history, I had a special, nostalgic memory of the time when I honored the man I respected most by continuing a practice that many black people find insulting.

Not all of the costumes this year were as bad as mine historically have been – or as bad as almost all of the sexy costumes were.

If Halloween is about fun, I saw no costume better than that of a friend who went as the laundry fairy, her costume replete with wings made of feathers painstakingly cut out of dryer sheets. It would have been even better if she had beaten people up and taken their quarters.

If Halloween is about being naughty, no one topped my girlfriend’s friend, who went as sexy Alice, with the words “drink me” written above her left breast. Of course, the costume was made by those two words, and would have been just as terrific a costume if the woman wearing it had been wearing more clothing.

But it simply can’t be about dressing sexily and getting drunk, can it? Anyone can do either or both on any given day. How then, at college, could that make a day any more of a holiday than, say, your average Tuesday? There was just no adventure. A sexy devil is just a devil, and is, therefore, a tired Halloween convention that is only interesting to the extent that scantily clad women are interesting.

Which probably means that a lot of my peers found this Halloween fascinating. As well they should. I don’t really get into seeing a lot of anonymous women roaming nearly naked, through the streets, but if they have fun doing it, then they should, by all means.

But the laundry fairy comes only once a year, and angels in lingerie – of which there were hundreds at Pitt on Friday – come with every Victoria’s Secret catalog.

So next year, I hope to see costumes that are sexy, but also a bit more. I’ve already got mine. I’m going to be a sexy platypus.

When he suggests that platypuses are sexy, Marty Flaherty means relative to him. E-mail him at [email protected].