With Halloween in just one short week, procrastination-prone college students nationwide will be rushing to the racks at local thrift stores, Wal-Marts and Halloween shops searching for the perfect costume.

While some people decide to dress as celebrities and famous movie or TV characters, others choose to dress as superheroes or in certain professions, and still others take the traditional route and dress in scary costumes. However, with the myriad of options to choose from, there is one common denominator that links nearly every college students’ costume – it has to be sexy.

You can’t just dress as a firefighter; you have to be a sexy firefighter, which means in the event of an actual fire, you would be least equipped to repel a fire and would probably suffer from some serious burns. And you can’t just dress as Sarah Palin, unless you plan on going as sexy Sarah Palin.

Furthermore, you can’t even dress as a simple hamburger without being forced into a sexy hamburger costume. And yes, as disturbing as this may be, this costume does exist, and in one short week, hundreds of girls across the nation will attend parties shamelessly dressed as sexy hamburgers.

Obviously, these comments are addressed primarily to the female population of college students who use Halloween as an excuse to wear as little clothing as possible without being arrested for indecent public exposure. Because after all, if we’ve learned anything from Mean Girls, it’s that “In Girl World, Halloween is the one night a year when a girl can dress like a total slut, and no other girls can say anything about it.”

In contrast to girls, guys look for shock factor and originality in their costumes, and they’re not as concerned with acquiring the perfect skin-to-clothes ratio as most girls are.This isn’t to say that I am some new-age feminist, championing that women everywhere boycott dressing up for Halloween, because that couldn’t be further from the truth. I’m not a huge fan of the WNBA, nor do I want to dress up as a nun for Halloween (unless it’s a sexy nun, of course).

I do, however, find it appalling that we live in a nation in which one can purchase (for a fairly reasonable price) a sexy Bert or Ernie costume. As a former Sesame Street viewer, I find this to be a gross exploitation of two of America’s most endearing Muppets. Out of respect for yourself, and more importantly, respect for Sesame Street, try to refrain from dressing as sexy Bert or sexy Ernie.

In addition to the novelty of dressing as sexy Bert or Ernie, there are also options to dress in a sexy straight jacket or as a sexy Chinese takeout box, because nothing says sexy like the mentally disturbed or boxes of MSG-laden pieces of chicken. So ladies – while you’re out shopping for your costume this week, try and remember that while it’s perfectly acceptable to want to dress attractively, some things are simply not made to be sexy.

Tara Massouleh is a freshman majoring in journalism and English. Her column runs weekly on Wednesday.