Until 2014, flipping through catalogs of Purim costumes for girls presented rather uniform results. Each of the costumes for the Jewish holiday carried an identical and short description: sexy policewoman, sexy nurse, sexy student, sexy doctor, sexy soldier, sexy princess and so on. But as a result of a protest over the use of the word “sexy” to describe costumes intended for teens and even young girls, marketers dropped the term from the catalogs they distribute before the holiday. By the way, the costumes are exactly the same. They still range from skimpy to downright discomfiting. In fact, they are suspiciously similar to the wide variety of professional costumes worn by strippers or costumes that are sold at sex shops to adults who want to spice up their bedroom activity.

Some parents are fed up with this. Last month, attorney Roni Aloni Sadovnik, adviser on the status of women to the chairman of the Israeli Bar Association, sent a letter to Economy and Trade Minister Naftali Bennett, asking him to ban the marketing and sale of such revealing costumes to minors. “I appeal to you urgently as both the mother of small children and as a lawyer who represents minors who are victims of sex crimes, asking you to use your authority to ban the marketing of all Purim costumes to minors, when those costumes are sexual in appearance and correspond directly to the clothing used in the trafficking of women, prostitution and S&M clubs,” she wrote.

She told Al-Monitor that these catalogs are actually deceptive to the consumer: “They say that these are costumes of a policewoman, a doctor and so on. Actually, they are deceiving the young consumer, because it’s really the costume of a call girl. Policewomen, doctors and nurses don’t dress like that.”

The Ministry of Economy and Trade responded that it has no authority in the matter, but nevertheless, attorney Aloni Sadovnik’s letter did cause a media storm. “It all clicked,” she said, “among parents and among the marketers, too. The message was absorbed by parents, who are the most important factor here beyond the regulator, who should be preventing the marketing of dangerous material to minors. Just like real explosives aren’t made available to teenage boys, the costumes of prostitutes should not be marketed to girls. Ever since the issue first evoked public fury, those costumes really have disappeared from the newspapers.”