The Costume Industry Has a Very Low Opinion of Little Boys

I went to Hobby Lobby today in search of materials with which to make a Halloween costume for Meyer. Unable to find what I needed, I decided to walk down to Halloween USA—a costume store occupying a space vacated by Circuit City—to see if I could save myself some work by buying a pre-made costume. We've had success with pre-made costumes in the past: Meyer has been a giraffe and a chicken; Resha Kate has been a ladybug and Uniqua. Resha Kate and Malachi both will be wearing adorable pre-made costumes this year.

Here's what I learned at Halloween USA: Costume companies make fantastic pre-made costumes for children age 3 or younger. Once a child grows out of his or her 3T clothes, cute pre-made costumes are hard to come by. Tacky and disturbing costumes are not . Halloween USA has, in children's sizes, every sort of demon, zombie, and ghoul—costumes that would be awesome to a ten-year-old but terrifying to a five-year-old. The scary costumes didn't really surprise me. Halloween, after all, is a celebration of the macabre, and the spirit of the season surely prompts many parents to dress their children in get-ups that aren't age appropriate.

What did surprise me were the pimp and executioner costumes. (Pimp costume pictured.) Considering some of the costumes on sale for little girls (that's another rant for another time), I suppose dressing up a little boy as a pimp makes a certain amount of sense. But who (aside from Ice-T and the parents of the model in the picture) dresses up a child in a pimp costume? I wouldn't even know how to explain to Meyer what a pimp is; I certainly can't imagine allowing him to walk around the neighborhood imitating one. The executioner costume is nearly as baffling. "Daddy, why do I need to carry this axe?" "Well, that's what you use to chop off people's heads."