If you’re unfamiliar with the term “slut-shaming,” it essentially refers to a form of degrading women based on the way that they dress. Slut-shaming functions through assuming that wearing revealing clothing implies promiscuity. Sounds pretty bad, right?

I truly think that our society has come a long way regarding the treatment of women in recent history, but it seems that we lose all of our progress each year around Halloween.

I agree that costumes marketed toward women are generally pretty revealing, and that’s an issue in its own right. Provocative costumes shouldn’t be limited to one gender, and no woman should feel obligated to wear an overly-sexualized version of a costume if she doesn’t want to. However, that is her choice.

So why is it that so many people seem to be concerned with what girls are wearing on Halloween these days? I certainly don’t think that everyone is upset with this trend, but in the days following Halloween each year more and more people turn to the internet to express their discontent.

Women are writing articles about the “lack of creativity” in sexy costumes, and men are tweeting about how much they’d love it if girls would “respect themselves a little more.”

Are some sexy costumes uncreative? Yes. Are there also some very creative, more revealing costume options out there? Yes. Are there women who don’t respect themselves? Absolutely. Does a woman’s choice of clothing indicate whether she respects herself? No.

Our society is too concerned with what everyone else is doing: who’s wearing this, eating that, on whichever diet. It becomes easy to judge when you’re able to see more of an individuals’s life than ever before, thanks to the internet. But judgement gets you nowhere.

Women who want to dress up as sexy cats and football players and nurses have every right to do so. Women who prefer more “modest” looks have every right to those. The moral of the story is that no one deserves judgement for what they choose to wear on Halloween, or any other day.

There’s no point in wasting your time calling girls names for what they dress up as on Halloween. If you’ve still got some reservations about this whole “skimpy costume” thing, reconsider your reasoning. Based on the amount of Donald Trump-inspired outfits I saw this year, a sexy nurse or two should be the least of our concerns.