I’m a big fan of Halloween. It’s at the top of my list of favorite holidays. But in the past couple of years, Halloween slowly moved down the list.

This wasn’t because I stopped liking candy or trick-or-treating, but because of the pressure to look good. Nowadays, Halloween isn’t about going door-to-door with your friends-— it’s about who looks the best.

It seems ridiculous that I’ve started to dislike Halloween simply because of costumes itself, but it’s the truth. It seems there are only a few options for teenagers and young adults to choose from.

Walking through a Halloween costume store, one sees pictures of models wearing the costumes for sale, with airbrushed, perfectly toned legs, arms, faces and abs. These men and women look good in these outfits, even hot. People buy these costumes because they think if they wear it, they’ll appear to others how the people in costumes appear to them: sexy.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to look sexy or being proud of one’s body, except for people are going to start to see someone as only hot or sexy. This might not happen in one night, but overtime, this will become a problem.

Once people start focusing solely on their bodies, they’re going to forget about what everyone truly is: smart, beautiful, strong and the list goes on. People aren’t just toned legs or really great butts, no matter what a costume might make them out to be.

People should wear what they want to wear, even if it is revealing or sexualized, but people don’t have to wear those costumes. People don’t have to be robbers in extremely short skirts if they don’t want to. If someone wants to dress up as the Pillsbury Dough-Boy, they should do it.

How hot someone is or how good someone’s body is doesn’t matter. What does matters on Halloween is how much candy you can manage to shove in your mouth.