This Halloween, I had a game plan. By the end of October, I was scheduled to have my third set of braces removed at the tender age of 22. I was going to be the tooth fairy, and my costume was not going to be any adjective that starts with an ‘s’ and ends with ‘lutty.’

I couldn’t wait to wear my glittery wings and pastel tutu and throw on a fanny-pack equipped with toothbrushes and Listerine. I was ready to party like I had just been declared cavity free.

My costume was not going to be “sexy.” There’s nothing sexy about braces. I’m above parading around half-naked making bad decisions.

Or so I thought I was…

In a sick twist of fate, my orthodontist ruined it all. He’s exceptionally good at doing that.

Sitting in the waiting room before my final appointment, things that used to bother me just didn’t. I was able to stomach the irony of a dentist’s office decorated for Halloween. I was oblivious to the incessant tween Disney television programming. I smiled at the pre-pubescent punk who gawked in awe at my apparent lack of a parent and asked if I had, in fact, driven all by myself to the office. It was okay that my reading selections included Highlights and “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.”

It was time to finally cut these metal ties to my awkward adolescence. I was done explaining my adult braces. I was done with the dental distress of my childhood.

These damn braces were coming off — until they weren’t. I chomped down when the technician told me, her hands in my mouth, that my teeth weren’t “quite there yet.”

Then, I accepted defeat. I needed braces for another three weeks. I needed a new costume idea too.

Traditionally, I scoff at women who wear underwear as outerwear.

I am classy broad. I do not bare my butt cheeks for the world to see. My self-respect is always higher than my hemline; my skirts are skirts — not crotch napkins.

This year, things are different. My inadvertent stint in dental purgatory has changed my stance. My braces suggest I’m 12, but I could prove my maturity by throwing on cat ears, a mini-skirt and heels higher than my parent’s expectations. Nothing defines a woman like the ability to showcase her, um, dignity?

Halloween is the only day it’s socially acceptable to dress like a skank without being labeled one. That’s the Great Double Standard, Charlie Brown.

I’ve got new respect for the sexy giraffe, the sexy watermelon and the sexy what-the-heck-ever. They don’t look so trashy anymore — plunging necklines might not indicate plummeting self-esteem. Sometimes, an overtly sexy costume is an attempt to create an alias that can be exchanged for your morals the morning after.

If I must endure the brackets of oppression and shame, I might as well embrace them. They’ll make a lovely accessory to my costume — which has been limited to either a sexy orthodontist or Ugly Betty.