When did Halloween become HO-lloween?

NOTE: The photos from this post have been removed from Flickr because skeevy people were adding them as favorites. You'll just have to use your experience/imagination (sorry!).

I wasn't going to write this post. I really wasn't. But then I was walking through the mall today and saw THIS in the window of the Halloween costume store:

WHAT THE FUCK?! I know that they call it "Wizard Academy Student" but you and I both know that that is a SLUTTY HARRY POTTER costume!! At what point did dressing up for Halloween become an excuse to whore it up? Seriously. When? When did Halloween stop being about dressing up as something creative, something original? At what point did it stop being enough to dress in an actual costume, and someone decided that you should eliminate about 90% of the material and not look at all like the actual thing you were dressing up as in the first place?

Perhaps you'd like to offend one of America's civil servants. A policeman, soldier or border patrol agent maybe?

Or maybe you'd like to take a beloved Children's character and whore it up a whole bunch. By wearing lingerie.

Who decided that this was okay? Do you know what I saw at the store today? Sexy Spongebob! It was basically a tight yellow t-shirt with Spongebobs face and a really short brown skirt. Seriously, who thought of this stuff? Does it not bother these people that they're taking characters made from little kids and turning them into sex outfits? *shudder*

If you're going to do all of that, why not just forget where the costumes originally came from? You can take anyone and just sex it up.

Never mind that it makes no sense at all because the point of being something for Halloween is to actually LOOK LIKE THAT THING. Sexy Female Elvis? SEXY FEMALE ELVIS? Elvis was not a female. Sexy maybe, in some days, but not a woman. How does that even make sense? And the "Bride" costume... what makes it a bride? The bouquet? The veil? It looks like it's from Frederick's of Hollywood. I guess it could be "Wedding night bride". Perhaps next year you'd like to go as Sexy Vladimir Putin, Sexy Barbara Bush or Sexy Gary Busey. Why the hell not?

There are a lot of things about these trends that are disturbing to me, not the least of which is that most of these costumes are not only available in adult sizes, but in TEEN sizes. I can't imagine what parent would let their teen out of the house in any of these costumes, but it's super disturbing to be in the store watching 12 and 14 year old rifle through the sizes.

What ever happened to creativity? What happened to wearing costumes that don't look like they came from a lingerie store and that they were meant for playing dressup in the bedroom?

Maybe next year, you could just by this costume, titled "Stripper Costume". The ironic thing is that it actually covers more than some of those other costumes...