When pumpkins start appearing on front porches and miniature-sized candy swamps the supermarket shelves, you know Halloween is fast approaching.And with Halloween comes the celebration of certain traditions: hitting the haunted house circuit, carving pumpkins and trick-or-treating.

But there’s one tradition that has staked its claim on college campuses, and TCU is no exception. It’s the skimpy costume tradition.

While most college guys hit The Salvation Army to piece together their Halloween getups, the girls hit Frederick’s of Hollywood to find the cutest naughty nurse costume on the rack.

OK, maybe it’s not a naughty nurse costume this year. Maybe it will be a flirtatious fairy or a provocative princess.

The possibilities are endless – but the bodily coverage is not.

Halloween has become the repressed college girl’s dream: a chance to go out in a glorified-underwear costume without any repercussions.

It’s like a free pass: one night to bare all in a sexy Snow White outfit without even tarnishing your sterling reputation.

But the tradition has been taken a bit too far.

It’s become so commonplace that most of the more conservative girls have taken full advantage of the Halloween pass without even thinking twice.

And if the more conservative girls are taking full advantage, the others are taking it a step further.

For them, Little Red-hot Riding Hood and Captain Booty costumes are trends of the past.

Now, as costumecauldron.com puts it, they “tease, vamp and purr” their way into Halloween parties with their own original, homemade creations.

The new breed of costumes is pretty basic: a bra, panties and some sort of accessory that ties the “theme” together.

Like a girl I saw last year prancing into the Neon Moon bar clad in a green bra, green panties and a stuffed animal snake slung over her shoulders.

“Can’t you see?” I overheard her tell an intrigued guy, “I’m a jungle woman!”

Duh.

But for those of us who don’t have such an extensive understanding of bra-panty combination costumes, the new attire still counts as undergarments.

And, even after all this time, going out in your bra and underwear still hasn’t entered the realm of social acceptability.

Don’t get me wrong – there have been changes in the standards for women’s clothing.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Maidenform bras stirred up controversy when the company started running its “I Dreamed” ad campaign.

“I dreamed I barged down the Nile in my Maidenform bra,” one ad read. Another proclaimed, “I dreamed I went dancing in my Maidenform bra.”

But that was just the point. These are dreams. Going out dancing in your skivvies is about as realistic as floating down the Nile alongside Cleopatra wearing nothing but a bra.

Your mom may have dreamt of such things, but she never did it.

Nowadays we can celebrate how far we’ve come in gaining women’s rights, but we can still take certain lessons from the women who came before us.

Keep the respect they worked so hard to earn for us.

Wear an actual costume tonight. Leave the bra-panty ensemble at home and at least go the more “traditional” route.

How about Officer Naughty this year? At least it comes with a cop hat.

Kailey Delinger is a senior news-editorial journalism and Spanish major from Fort Collins, Colo.