Selling sexy to girls

Diane E. Levin, a professor of education at Wheelock College in Boston, is the co-author, with Jean Kilbourne, of "So Sexy So Soon: The New Sexualized Childhood and What Parents Can Do to Protect Their Kids." With Halloween approaching, Levin spoke with The Times' Health section about girls' -- and boys' -- costumes on offer this year, and what they mean.

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There's a recurring theme in Halloween costumes for girls this year, and it's kind of spooky. What's going on?

Halloween costumes for 7- and 8-year-old girls and even younger have become downright titillating, and for tweens and teens, the vast majority of those sold in stores and on the Internet are unabashedly sexually alluring.

Little girls and their big sisters are being encouraged to get dressed up, in many cases, like child prostitutes. Then, they wander the night judging and being judged by their friends as to how well they meet the provocative standard and begging for candy from strangers.

It can be very hard for parents to find an alternative to letting them do it, short of having a war in the family or making their kids miserable.

This is a continuation of what's been going on for quite a while: Halloween costumes are reflecting an increasingly sexualized childhood. They often reflect the stars and starlets and popular culture role models that girls have, starting with Disney princesses or Hannah Montana when girls are young. But even traditional favorites, like witches and pirates are sexier every year. And French maids are quite the thing for tweens and teens.

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What's the most outlandish example out there that you've seen in this or recent years?

The sexy princess costumes, sexy witch costumes seem to be most ubiquitous and most dramatic. For girls 8 and up, the skirt will have a big slit on one side. By the time girls are 12, the costumes are low cut. This year, the wigs and boots and makeup and all kinds of stuff to be grown up and sexy seem to have become part of every costume.

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But kids are drawn to try out new personas, and Halloween has always been about imagining yourself transformed in some edgy, scary way. Is this any different?

That's always been one of the exciting things about Halloween. But there was once a time when children were trying out personas that were of their own making. When they decided they wanted to be a knight or something, they had to figure out what the knight did. It wasn't a matter of having grown-ups -- marketers -- saying, "Here. This will make you look like such and such a character. You don't need to do anything." This isn't about imagination. This is about marketers trying to hijack kids' imaginations.