Sexy Halloween costumes for women have been a cultural punch line ever since Amanda Seyfried slipped into lingerie and fuzzy ears and called herself a mouse in Mean Girls. But anyone who’s ever been to a gay club on October 31 knows that when it comes to bearing it all, we’ve got the ladies beat. After all, we don’t spend 20 hours a week at Crunch to cover our gym-sculpted torsos with a white sheet with two eye holes cut out. For every woman roaming the streets in a “Sexy Nurse” outfit, there’s a muscle-bound ’mo shakin’ his ass on a dance floor somewhere in red micro-shorts and devil horns. Hell, some dudes forgo the fabric altogether and opt for body paint to recreate the impossibly clinging look of a superhero costume. They don’t call it “Gay Christmas” for nothing; it’s the one night of the year when we all unwrap our packages.
And now, as with most trends, straight guys are apparently taking a cue from the queers. Today over at Racked, intrepid gay journo Brian Moylan profiles 3Wishes, a web-based lingerie company looking to corner the market in revealing men’s costumes.
“When you see pictures from a frat party, the guy didn’t button his police shirt or he cut his sleeves off. He would take the toga we sell and shorten it,” VP of design Janet Teller tells Racked. “We’re addressing a market that definitely was already there but they just weren’t being designed for.”
Moylan chalks the trend up to our more body-conscious, fitness-obsessed culture. As he points out, you’ve got to have the bod to pull off these looks, and more-and-more straight guys are spending as much time in the gym as the most ripped muscle queens at David Barton. And given the thirst inducing properties of Instagram, it’s not surprising that the customer base for 3Wishes’ ever-expanding line of incredible shrinking costumes for guys skews younger. CEO Caron Spatola estimates that about half those customers are gay, but to be honest, the company’s sexy cop, sexy sailor, sexy caped crusader costumes seem a little…modest by gay Halloween standards. Let’s be real, when was the last time you were at a costume party where all of the boys weren’t wearing jockstraps?
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ingyaom
No, not str8 guys on a gay website…
Brian
People must be so desperate if they need to show a lot of skin on Halloween. Halloween is supposed to be about scary, not sexy. People need to grow up.
CaliKyle
@Brian: No one gets sexier on Halloween than twink boys and for this I am eternally grateful. As for Halloween being only scary and not sexy, “up yours, sweetheart,” as you like to say.