The 5-year-old boy who chose to be Daphne from "Scooby-Doo" for Halloween.

And the mother who chose to blog about it.

So now there's a viral photo on the internet of a boy dressed as a girl and endless speculation about what that all means.

1. Did the mother invade her son's privacy? By blogging about the issue of a very young boy who wants to pretend to be a girl? Or was it the photograph? Or was it wrong even to invade the child's fantasy world by speculating about his sexual orientation? The mother's blog post was titled "My Son Is Gay." Do we owe children restraint in thinking about what sexual behavior they will find compelling when they grow up, and if we do, don't we all violate that duty in one way or another?

2. Consider the notion that a costume of a perfectly nice girl was perceived as an unusually scary Halloween character. Kids dress as devils and monsters and dead people all the time, but to be a pretty girl — if you are a boy — is terrifying. As the blogger noted, a girl dressed as a male character would not stir the same anxiety in the grownups. What does this say about sexism? Is there a special aversion to females, that manifests itself when a male associates with female things? Or is it that people have a special aversion to male homosexuals and are really pretty much okay with lesbians?

IN THE COMMENTS: Big Mike said:

I'm glad I'm at home when I followed your "perfectly nice girl" link because some of those cartoons are definitely NSFW.

I've changed the link to the Wikipedia article on Daphne Blake. Previously, it went to the results of a Google image search on: Daphne Scooby Doo. I'll just add the "bestiality" tag to this post to indicate what you would have seen if you scanned the page too long.

Sex.

The 1-person Halloween costume. [I'm trying to link to the 9th picture in the slideshow, the one with the woman inside the mattress, with an inflatable man on the mattress.)

From Freakfest, which officials regard as a success this year solely on the metric of fewer arrests.

Halloween... we just got the tiniest little Spiderman...

... coming to the door by himself. There was a parent back there in the dark somewhere. Earlier, the bell rang and there were 3 kids: a clown, a ketchup bottle, and a witch.

ADDED: I'm less sentimental now than when I wrote that — 10 minutes ago. We've been holding out a bowl with 6 different kinds of full-size candy bars and saying "Take one." There were 3 kids and one boy took 2. Meade said "Take one!" He said that 3 times, and the boy didn't put one back. Nor did the parents, 15 feet away do anything to rectify the situation. The next group came, and Meade held out the bowl and said "Take one," and a parent, standing back 15 feet, called out "Take one or 2." The hell? Full-size candy bars cost 89¢ at Walgreen's. You don't take 2. My faith in kid-humanity is shattered. Now, we have to switch to choosing for them and handing out one apiece.

ADDED:

What's worse?
	The boy who took 2 and didn't put one back when Meade repeated "Take one."
	The parent who called out "Take one or 2" after Meade said "Take one."
pollcode.com free polls

IN THE COMMENTS: Meade said:

Hey, we just finished up the night with a great bunch of seven kids - looked to be about 10-12 years-old - and they all sang us a song! They were great! And polite.

Faith in kid-humanity restored! Thanks, Obama!

The Meadhouse jack-o-lantern.

I picked out the white pumpkin, found the black candle, and sharpened the knife. Meade did all the design work and carving.

"When I was a kid, Halloween was strictly a starchy-vegetable-only holiday, with pumpkins and Indian corn on the front stoop..."

"... there was nothing electric, nothing inflatable, nothing with latex membranes or strobes. I do remember the first time I saw bright orange lawn trash bags decorated with smiley pumpkin faces, which was about ten years ago; I thought they were kind of clever and festive, if a bit commercial. Now they seem quaint, compared to, say, yard decorations like Demonica Zombie Baby ('a latex skin foam filled child with sound and motion activated flashing eye lights,' in stock and ready to ship for $39.99) or a life-sized Hellraiser Pinhead Animatronic (a big investment at $279.99)."

That's Susan Orlean, who also bemoans the trend toward Halloween as a time for adult revelry: "when I was young, Halloween was a holiday celebrated only by children." That made me look up Orlean's age — 54 — and city of origin — Cleveland. The trend toward Mardi Gras-style street parties and parades for adult revelries goes back to the 1970s. That's when Freakfest began here in Madison, Wisconsin and the time of the first Greenwich Village Halloween Parade in NYC. I remember those parades in the late 1970s, when I lived in Greenwich Village. It was a continuation of the counter-culture of the 60s, isn't it? They called us Baby Boomers, and we internalized the concept of "baby." You'll just have to deal with it now.

ADDED: Orlean... Mardi Gras... Maybe that has something to do with her annoyance at the migration of adult revelry to the autumn holiday. That and the fact that — as she reveals in the article — Halloween is her birthday.

"I have a feeling there's going to be a lot of Snooki this year."

What's your Halloween costume? Surely, you're not going as Snooki. So lazy!