Halloween costume designer facing unprecedented challenge

With Halloween approaching, a local costume designer is struggling to deal with unforeseen difficulties resulting from the pandemic. “Basically, how do you make a costume slutty in the COVID era?”, says Billy Braxwell, owner and chief designer for Braxwell’s House of Fashion in South Tampa.

“Cat suits are being replaced by bio-hazard suits. There’s only home school and schoolgirls don’t wear uniforms at home. There’s just so few options for women to slut it up this year,” he says, adding, “COVID has left us without a feasible way to present women as sexual objects. Frankly, we might as well cancel the whole thing.”

He went on to cite specific examples. “Have you ever seen a sexy pirate wench yell, ‘yo ho ho and a bottle of hand sanitizer’? Nurses don’t wear N95 masks. Not the naughty nurses, anyway. We do have some orders for classic French Maid uniforms but they’re all from people who want their hired housekeepers to thoroughly clean their homes.”

I asked him if there was still a market for children’s costumes and he glared at me and said, “That’s disgusting. Children aren’t sex objects. Children should be cherished and protected, not degraded for the purpose of filthy, perverted fantasies. Kids are not a part of this. I’m talking about women!”

I agreed, of course, no one should be exploited, especially children, but can’t his company still produce costumes for trick-or-treating and school parties, like monsters and superheroes? He just stared at me for a long time as though he had no idea what I was talking about before finally saying, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

He added, “Let’s face it; Halloween without a bunch of dirty, dirty whores running around is like a major sporting event without fans present.”