If you plan on answering the door tonight, be prepared to see some skin.

Perhaps on a 9-year-old.

Each year, girls' costumes get skimpier and skimpier. But this year, seems to be the year of Kandy Korn Porn. According to the Spirit Halloween website, the tween "Kandy Korn" lace-up dirndl dress with puffy sleeves and kicky skirt spells F-U-N (or T-R-A-M-P.)

Most of the girls' costumes on prominent display in stores feature the pouffy skirt that barely skims the bottom, paired with fishnet tights or thigh-high stockings and a low-cut corset top.

Even the princesses have gotten a makeover a la The Girls Next Door. Their ballroom gowns are now cheap cocktail dresses. Do costume designers send their market research surveys to the names on the sex offender registry?

If women want to use Halloween as an excuse to, uh, "dress up," that's fine. But why have we allowed companies to market the cheap hooker look to our young girls?

Ironically, the only modest-looking costume I could find was of a geisha, a Japanese entertainer who sells her company to men.

In our culture's hypersexualization of young girls, perhaps some parents have come to view these outfits as cute. They're not.

You may think your daughter is too young to understand what it means to use her prepubescent body to attract attention, but this age group has been well-taught by their pop idols. (See Miley Cyrus and her stripper pole.)

I asked a mom why she thought parents let their daughters buy these sort of costumes.

"It's easier than fighting," she said. "It's one night."

But the message is much more than one night. It's another drop in that bucket of how girls develop their self-worth. If wearing an off-the-shoulder, low-cut top garners a second look or any sort of reaction, it creates an awareness of how a girl can use her body to attract attention. It takes a parent to explain why not all attention is good attention.

Halloween shed its innocence some years ago.

But parents still have the ability to reject the trash being sold to us. Because peers carry so much more influence in the lives of children than adults, recruit another parent (as an extension, their child) to reinforce your position.

I have never met a single parent who will admit that they approve of the younger racy costume selection. In fact, they will unanimously bemoan the trend. Take a like-minded parent and child shopping with you. When the glossy costume catalogues and advertisements arrive in the mail, take a minute to look them over with your child and have a conversation about the messages the outfits send.

Find a few pictures in magazines or online of fun costumes that look like something a 10-year-old can wear in public. Consider it a new holiday tradition: Detrampifying your kid's costume.

But even the most prepared parent can run into some unexpected surprises. Here's a heads-up:

If an 8-year-old comes to your house dressed like a pimp and says "Trick or treat," go for the treat.