If when passing out candy I saw kids dressed in these outfits, not having seen this site I wouldn’t have guessed they were dressing as a Ho or Pimp. As for that girl outfit, I too would have thought that she was dressing as a flapper she had seen in old movies. The reality is that hookers don’t tend to dress like that, or in any specific way. In fact I tend to associate hookers dressing in a way that shows a lot of skin. Like a halter top and a miniskirt. As for the boy costume, I’d have thought like you he was dressing like some rap artist. NO real life pimp would dress in a manner like that who would attract the attention of cops. Real life pimps dress normally, and are the guy the hooker points to the john to set up the deal, and then the pimp gives the hooker the thumbs up to turn the trick.
We know YOU know, it’s about whether kids know. I sure didn’t know what a pimp or a prostitute was at that age, and that wasn’t terribly long ago. I guess you hear the word pimp in common society more than you used to, i.e. ‘that’s a pimped-out ride,’ but it’s devoid of sexual connotations when used that way.
All of which is relevant how? If you dress a ten year old in a “crack dealer” costume, is verisimilitude really the issue?
While these are being marketed as pimp and ho costumes, it isn’t kids who will be buying them. Ten year old kids don’t buy halloween costumes off the Net with their credit cards. What if the parent just thinks the ho costume is cute, and tells there daughter it is a flapper costume?
Such as the common phrase “pimp hand,” used in reference to beating up women. Sure, that’s innocuous …
The kids will know, sooner or later, and when they do the idea that “pimps are cool dudes,” or “there’s nothing wrong with being a ho” has already been stuck in their minds.
You think a twelve-year old can’t remember what her parents dressed her up as for halloween four years ago? You think that message won’t register?
Christ help us.
Never heard it.
I had no idea kids’ brains were controlled by their Halloween costumes. Then again, that would explain why I’ve become Batman. :smack:
First off, I have a problem with a parent “dressing up” a child as if they were toys. For a child to dress up is healthy role play. For parents to go around sticking junior in a costume because they like it is just weird.
More to the point, do you seriously think that’s what’s happening? That a sudden mania for 1920s fashion has gripped these people?
As for the first point, I wouldn’t be surprised that in a lot of cases parents just selecting the costume for the kid is how it happens. And likely in most cases the kid doesn’t care. What is important to them is the candy, and the activity of trick or treating.
As for your second point, do you think that many parents are actually buying these costumes for their kid, and when the kid asks what the costume represents, tells them the truth?
Daughter: “Mommy, what does this costume represent?”
Mommy: “It’s a ho outfit.”
Daughter: “Mommy, what’s a ho?”
Mommy: “A ho is a woman who hangs out on the street looking for guys who are willing to pay to fuck her. Be a ho is in fact the world’s oldest profession.”
You don’t listen to rap music. Kids do.
I’ve no idea what this means.
Follow me: At age eight, Mommy dresses Susie in costume. Susie sees the package that says it’s a “ho costume;” or she overhears some adult say Susie is dressed as a ho and everyone laughing. Susie doesn’t know what this means, so she just smiles and tries to make them laugh.
At age twelve she finds out what a “ho” is.
“Oh, now I get it! My parents thought it was funny to dress me up like a streetwalker! Oh, how clever of them!”
I guess you’re right; after all, it’s not like junior high girls have insecurities that would make them wonder about whether or not their parents respect them! They’re usually so self-confident; I mean, it’s not like they’re desperately concerned with being attractive to boys and at risk of thinking that their sexuality is a commodity to be sold in order to gain male approval.
I must be imagining things.
Out of curiousity, furt, where did you get your expertise on eight-year-old thinking patterns and musical tastes? Because from where I’m sitting it looks like you’re pulling random scenarios out of thin air to justify your strawman proposition. I.e., “I think this could corrupt kids by this method, ergo they are evil!”
Well, I was eight, so I kind of think that counts for something. I know that at one time I could recount all my halloween costumes.
Are you arguing that rap music and its attendant language and culture is not popular with junior-high and unders?
No, merely your oversimplistic assumption that kids who listen to rap will all want to be pimps 'n ho’s.
And I’m sure you’ll take it out for me if you grope long enough to find it. I haven’t judged them; they have judged themselves by the Word they profane. How can a pimp costume be so horrible when a costume of their god, the devil, is perfectly fine?
I hope no one else brought this up. But that costume (actually that exact picture) has been for sale and rent at a party store near me for years. If someone is selling it as a ho’ costume, they are simply using a bit of clever marketing.
In fact, after going through their costume catalog for a bit, I see the exact same picture in the Costumes / Halloween Costumes / Child Halloween Costumes / Child Period Costumes / Child 20th Century Costumes / Child 20s and Child 70s Costumes. Apperently it was a flapper in the 20s and a ho’ in the 70s.
Oddly, the ratio is reversed. There is one girl costume in the 70s and only 1 boy in the 20s. Go figure.
It seems to be a simple copy of one of the adult woman’s flapper costumes. Oddly enough, there are several adult female “pimp ho” costumes which seem to be more pimp than ho. None of these or any of the other adult female costumes from the 70s have children’s versions.
Clearly more research is needed. 
Wow, if a pimp costume can make kids want to be pimps, just think what the stuff on this page might make them do! Kids will be sticking swords through their heads and carrying bloody knives and hatchets to school!
Maybe not, but I think it’s a little troubling to justify the product based on the ignorance of children. Maybe kids do think a “pimp” is just a guy with big, flashy cars and flamboyant clothes, but should this mistaken idea be encouraged by parents or costume manufacturers? If my (imaginary) kid came to me and said “What’s a ‘pimp’, Mommy?” I wouldn’t say “A guy who wears a big feathered hat and drives a big white Caddy.” I’m not sure how I would explain the concept of pimping to a child, but it would involve “He’s a kind of criminal.”
I’d probably be more comfortable about the whole thing if I thought the kids wearing these costumes would have a good understanding of what they were supposed to represent. But it seems twisted to dress kids up in outfits that are meaningless to them just to…what? Have a big laugh at them for being kids and not knowing what pimps and hos really are?
Ah, that *would be * an oversimplistic assumption had I made it, or anything close to it. Good thing I didn’t.
Confirming what I suspected. In fact, if you look at the picture of the model wearing the ho costume, she appears to be a young woman, and not a child of the age that you’d expect to be going door to door yelling “trick or treat”. In fact, that costume looks all wrong in the context of the ho/pimp culture, which is street oriented. Only hooker I’d ever expect would wear that would be the high priced call girl/escort, rather than a streetwalker looking to turn cheap tricks. This company well may have decided to market this flapper costume as a child ho costume precisely to get the sort of free advertising this site is giving them.
We tend to think of pirates as the cutesy Peter Pan foils or romantic Johnny Depp swashbucklers, but the reality was and is nothing like it. Piracy is a crime against humanity. Offenders can be tried in any state with a competent tribunal, regardless of nationality, and the penalty has traditionally been hanging. In bygone eras occassionally the body of a notorious pirate would be tarred and hung in a cage by a waterway as a warning to others. They were and are criminals of the worst sort. Piracy on the high seas is like home invasion to the nth degree, and there’s no dialing 911. You either hope some nation’s coast guard shows up or you beg for your life. It’s not something that quit happening in the 18th or 19th century, pirates still prey on ships today, only with assault rifles insead of cutlasses. Modern air piracy is more commonly known as hijacking and modern air pirates are usually associated with terrorist or revolutionary organiztions.
It’s considered acceptable to let kids dress up as pirates of eras past for Halloween nowadays because their image has been romanticized through pop cullture, but 17th-18th century pirates were pretty much the terrorists of their time. Sword fights have taken on an undeserved romantic quality that plain old knife fights lack, so we let our children carry swords, put on eyepatches, and pretend to have peglegs. The reality is that the pirate had that eye gouged out by someone he was murdering with a large knife in order to steal their belongings, and lost the leg to gangrene the same way. Pirates are murderous, evil scumbags who would bring down property values and the general atmosphere at your average death row.
I can understand if you think there’s something wrong with kids dressing up like pimps and prostitutes for halloween; after all, they’re criminals who sell sex and occassionally commit assaults. However, pandering and prostitution don’t even come close to piracy in terms of criminality. It seems that if kids shouldn’t be dressing as pimps or prostitutes, they shouldn’t be dressing as pirates a fortiori. If you find this offensive or wrong, would you let your children dress as pirates, or find something wrong with others dressing their children as pirates? Why?