It was a slow day at work today, so on my break I headed over to a store called Trashy Lingerie.  Trashy Lingerie is situated across the street from Star strip, an all nude stripping club and is famous for their custom made lingerie and their very provocative window displays.  They also have very beautiful, very sexy and yes, very trashy Halloween costumes.  Around Halloween the store gets packed with young ladies searching for something that will put their best assets on full display.  It totally made me think of the movie Mean Girls.  Lindsey Lohan’s character comments on how Halloween is the one day a year where a girl can dress like a complete slut and no one can call her one.  Judging by the number of women in the store, there are quite a few ladies who are happy to take advantage of this free pass. And then I got to thinking how hard it is to be sexy in our culture.  You should be sexy, but not too sexy, because then you risk being labeled a slut by men and women alike.  We get told to “look” or “act” sexy in our culture, but there is no real room for a woman to authentically display her sexuality, to put it out there, so to speak, without risking shame, embarrassment or real harm.  (Except on Halloween, of course.)  I think that is why so many women love pole dancing class.  Not because they just want to put themselves on display, but because they can be authentically, openly sexual and they will be supported, even cheered for it by other women.  In that one or two hours of class, they give themselves permission to fully express a part of themselves that has otherwise been pushed away, cut off, demonized.  They have a safe space in which to fully express their sexual selves. And that doesn’t really exist anyplace else in our culture.