Anyone who has watched the evolution of women's Halloween costumes in the last several years will not be surprised that these images - culled from the Web sites of some of the largest Halloween costume retailers - are more strip club than storybook. Or that these and other costumes of questionable taste will be barely covering thousands of women who consider them escapist, harmless fun on Halloween.

"It’s a night when even a nice girl can dress like a dominatrix and still hold her head up the next morning," said Linda M. Scott, the author of "Fresh Lipstick: Redressing Fashion and Feminism" (Palgrave Macmillan) and a professor of marketing at the University of Oxford in England.