11 Years Old Is Too Young For A Sexy Halloween Costume!

Dear Tazi:

My daughter is eleven years old and has told me that she wants to dress up as Miley Cyrus for Halloween. A few years ago I would have been okay with this choice, but her behavior as a young adult has been scandalous. While I had no problem with “Maria” watching Miley as the wholesome Hannah Montana I caught highlights of her performance at some recent awards show and am horrified at how far she has fallen from grace!

I dodged my daughter’s request by suggesting she come up with a list of different costumes to wear for Halloween and we could go through them together to decide on the most practical costume for her. I live in the Midwest, and the weather can get a bit cold by the end of October – much too cold to wear what I saw Miss Cyrus wearing at that awards show! Maria rolled her eyes and said she wouldn't mind the cold, that this would be her last year trick-or-treating and she wanted a really cool costume. I told her to get working on her list!

Tazi, Maria and I have always made her Halloween costumes – an annual mother-daughter project. I am bittersweet that it will be ending, and I would like to keep my little girl an innocent girl for as long as I can. I know she is growing up and will soon be into “sexy” Halloween costumes, but eleven is much too young for this! How do I  get around this issue without coming off as an overbearing witch who refuses to allow my daughter even the smallest amount of freedom – like the freedom to choose her own Halloween costume?

Signed,

Wringing My Hands Over This:

Dear Wringing My Hands Over This:

Stop that, you’ll get wrinkles and old looking hands age a woman – just look at Madonna!

Note the red Kabbalah bracelet...

In fact, I want you to think back to when you were young; when Madonna was all the rage and all young girls (maybe even you) wanted to be just like her. How many of them grew up to be “boy toys” or “material girls”? Exactly. Your daughter’s idolization of Miley Cyrus may be upsetting, but it is just a phase – she is pushing the limits of the boundaries set forth for her; push back too hard and she will rebel, too gently and she will think she can get away with anything. I think you have struck a good balance in attempting to get her to consider other costume ideas.

Halloween used to be about having fun and stockpiling candy, but over the last several years “sexy” costumes have become all the rage – a “sexy piece of fruit” costume earned a “Throat Punch” around this time last year, which makes me wonder how far costume designers will go to come up with original ideas!

While you are assuming your eleven year old daughter wants to dress up like Sexy Miley, she may just want to throw on a Hannah Montana wig and go as a younger, more sanitized version of Miley Cyrus. You can hope for that and ask her if she wants to go shopping for a Hannah Montana wig for her Halloween costume; if Maria bucks at this idea, it is time for a sit-down conversation about why she wants to go out as Miley Cyrus and to what extreme she is planning on going. Eleven years old is not too young to feel peer pressure to look sexy; it is nauseatingly young, at least in my opinion, but it is not too young. Children – especially girls – grow up very fast in the age of media. It could be that Maria thinks a risqué costume will increase her popularity; do your best to convince her that some kinds of popularity are not worth the cost.

Snuggles,

Tazi

Ask Tazi! is ghostwritten by a human with Bachelors degrees in Communications and in Gender and Women's Studies. Tazi-Kat is not really a talking feline.