This Halloween I intend to dress up.

But when I say dress up -- I mean fully dressed, like, entirely in clothes.

This week I went through the same frantic I-need-a-costume-quick-let's-run-to-Wal-Mart-and/or-Goodwill-because-I'm-poor that I go through every year.

Freshman year I was really creative and dressed up as a cat, otherwise known as my best friend, and I wore black ears and tiger print dresses that she and a friend wore for a seventh grade dance.

My sophomore year, I once again left my costume to the last minute, and two attempts at making fairy wings out of hangers later, went out as a devil. Yup, my creativity astounds me.

However, like the 12-year-old appropriate cat costume, this devil costume was also a little on the ... small side. And by small I mean I wore a black skirt and safety pinned a red glittery piece of cloth to my bra.

Basically, my entire collegiate Halloween costume career has been spent fulfilling the Mean Girls prophecy that says Halloween is the one night a year when girls can dress like total sluts and no one can say anything about it.

And I've found that is true for most of the female population at Penn State. We strip away our usual uniforms of black tops and jeans and essentially adorn lingerie with animal ears.

While guys dress up as anything from a college student to Team Zissou to someone wearing a blue sweat suit covered in cotton balls and carrying a squirt gun, women continuously fall back on the hackneyed ideas of a French maid, a fairy, a Greek goddess, an angel or some other skimpier version of any other costume.

But we shouldn't be expected to dress this way. It's Halloween, aren't we supposed to be dressing like scary ghouls and goblins? Whatever happened to fake blood and vampire teeth? In elementary school, didn't we always admire the kids with the scariest and most gruesome costumes?

I remember one kid who made it seem as if his limbs were falling off -- he was by far the coolest one in class.

This Halloween, I went through the same frantic trip to Wal-Mart. I looked for a red bustier to top off my Wonder Woman costume idea. When that didn't pan out I tossed around dressing as Little Red Riding Hood, a present with a gift tag stating, "To Men: From God," flapper, a dirty 1920s gangster ... the list went on and on.

But then, I made a decision. I bought a $5 baseball tee, knee high socks and a baseball cap. As you might have guessed, I am going as a baseball player. I plan to leave my 4-inch heels at home and run around State College in sneakers -- which will prevent the inevitable sidewalk slipup.

My body, unlike previous years, will be covered. My friend suggested I dress up like an Eskimo -- I thought about it. Because let's be honest, it's cold. It snowed Tuesday, and I want to be warm.

When I told my guy friend what I was dressing as this weekend, he was surprised that it wasn't as risque as I have been previous years. I told him I wanted to be warm this weekend; he told me that's why there is alcohol.

In part, we can always blame society for the unfair expectations placed on women. We can really blame society for everything.

But let's be honest: There is a small part of us all that just wants to let loose, dance on a table and pull our skirts up a little higher. Though the actual clothes that scantily clad ladies wear is restricting, the experience itself is in a way liberating, but the decision to dress this way should be your own.

So honestly, if you want to do the whole sexy nurse thing, go for it. But if you want to throw on a pair of sweats, write boo on the bottom, and go as "scaredy-pants" I'm all for that too.