“I dressed up as a female version of Zorro; Zena or Zorra, something like that,” said Jen Miller about her most risqué Halloween costume she ever ended up wearing. “I wore the full black getup: Mask, hat, platform high heel boots that went up to here,” she said gesturing with both hands a few inches below her knees.”And I had a cape, with a short skirt that went down to about here,” she gestured again, this time a few inches above her knees. “With the sword and fishnets.”

After describing her costume, she ran to her room on the next floor of the apartment house, came back down into the living room with her laptop and looked through her Facebook pictures to try to show her audience of three what the costume looked like. Miller never found the picture on her Facebook page, but her description painted a clear enough picture.

She said she found the costume online at Halloweencostumes.com. She considered it to be a cool design and ordered it. When asked why she liked to dress in such risqué costumes, Miller seemed stumped. She had to stop and think, her onslaught of talkative excitement put on hold.

She was aided by friend Sally Smith.

“It’s the one time of the year you get to dress like a whore and it is accepted,” Smith said.

Smith admitted that she had dressed up in a “slutty costume” before too. She and some of her friends went as a female version of the gang from clockwork orange. She got excited when re-living the details.

Shunning the slutty costumes

But some girls like Jackie Rightenbach and Stephanie Burger, are offended by such Halloween costumes other women have.

“Halloween has turned into a time for women to become skank-a-lanks,” said a senior who asked that her name not be used who we’ll call Jackie Rigthtenbach.

Although she and her alias senior pal, who we’ll call Stephanie Burger, said they had no idea at first what they wanted to be for Halloween, the question started a chain reaction.

“My friend said a few weeks ago ‘I had an epiphany that we should be gnomes for Halloween,'” recalled Burger.

From there, the two decided to figure out what they were going to be for Halloween. As the two sat in the lobby of the Fine Arts Center, Rightenbach got on the Internet while Burger compiled the list.

As they compiled, art professor

Gary Fitzgerald lumbered

by. One of the two girls asked him, “What are you going

to be for Halloween?”

“I don’t really get dressed up for it, I’m scary enough already,”

he replied.

But that was not the end. Fitzgerald began to lose himself

in all the things that one could do as far as putting together

a costume. He stretched out his arms as far as he could to signify how big a set of wings that one could make out of cardboard. He stressed on the endless possibilities of artificial

appendages that could be made out of Styrofoam, cardboard,

and silk. The idea led him to consider having an assignment

in his sculpture class involving taking old Salvation Army clothes and making costumes

out of them.

Minutes later, Liza Myers, the water color professor clad in gypsy jewelry of her own design, drifted past the two girls, bags in hand, done teaching for the day. But she was stopped when one of the girls asked her the same question they asked Fitzgerald.

“I have too many other projects these days to get into something like that,” she said in a regretful tone.

But she kept on talking, despite the fact she had other places to be. She retold a story of a costume she devised herself years ago. It was a crane head with a long thin neck and a puppet beak. And although her head was far below the flapping beak of the puppet’s head, “People at the party ended up talking to the puppet head.”

Skanky sells

At first glance, you would think you would have to prove you were 21 and give a credit card number to visit some of the Halloween costume Web sites. A company called Leg Avenue, famous for its lingerie, also makes Halloween costumes.

Camille’s Experienced Clothing and Spirit Halloween, two costume stores in the Rutland region, supply Leg Avenue costumes.