Though some of us believe we are too old or too cool to still dress up, hot-pants Heidi and S&M Spiderwoman were already defying the norm of preppiness at the Guards last Saturday. Many more young women will freeze radiantly beneath pink wigs, feather boas, fish nets, fake eyelashes and little else Thursday through Saturday. Halloween is a time of fantasy, an excuse to step out of gender, class and cultural roles to try on another identity. L.L. Beaners go goth, gothers go hippie, children of the ‘80s try on the ‘20s. Anyone can become anything, right? Wrong.
Regardless of whether the Halloween fantasy begins with Girl Scouts or bacon bits, the woman almost always ends up getting mistaken for a prostitute at some point throughout the evening. I know some men who use Halloween as a opportunity to try dressing more feminine, but the mainstream majority follows the muscled superhero-scary villain-pimp trend that dominates commercial costume production. I have rarely heard anyone talk about why they dress as they do, beyond “It’s fun, it’s easy, it’s funny, I look hot.” Even the most analytical people I know fail to analyze their Halloween fantasies. Why are so many peoples’ fantasy worlds made up of the same stereotypically gendered childhood toys, roles, idols, heroes and sex-gods and goddesses? I thought that costume retailers might be able to tell me why we dress like we do, so I asked them.
Before we are old enough to choose our Halloween costumes, our parents choose them for us. At the Kids’ Closet, parents opt for unisex pumpkin suits for infants. After 21 months, however, princess outfits for girls and dog outfits for boys are all the rage.
At Lynelle’s Boutique, Lynelle, the owner and a costume expert of 20 years, told me that wigs have been especially hot the last three years. “All women’s Halloween costumes are just some version of the show girl. It’s women’s opportunity to act out fantasies,” she says. Lynelle always sells out of garters, fish-nets and feathers around Halloween. “It is the one day of the year you can blow everyone’s mind,” she says. Lynelle is amused by “these little tiny shrimpy guys that come in here wanting to be big pimps.”
At Commander Salamander, an expensive store which considers itself “alternative,” Mandy greets me in her everyday wear of red wig, pink tights and thick black eyeliner. Mandy informs me that whips and collars are hot this year among women and that Halloween shoppers are easy to identify. “This conservative girl from Georgetown came in here in khakis and a sweater and told me, ‘I want to be a biker chick!’ So I guided her to the dog collars,” she recounts with a wry smile.
Brenda at Hats in the Belfry tells me that many white men want to be Middle Eastern this year, as she leads me to a “sheik” mask, still popular though more controversial since Sept. 11. As to why “becoming Middle Eastern” through such a mask was acceptable before Sept. 11, I am not sure.
Rage Clothing is one of the few stores in the area that offers more than $50 packages of sheer colored polyester marketed with woman’s breasts as “Purr-Fect Pink,” or something else as cheesily lovely. I wait to talk to Seiko and sap her four years of costume fitting insights while she helps a man with retro outfits. After 30 minutes he settles on a $11 Army-print bandana, grinning, he has found his Halloween fantasy. Seiko tells me that dead ‘80s prom queens are in this year, though really anything ‘80s and Madonna-esque is popular. Seiko says that married couples sometimes come in together to have the husband transformed into his wife.
Seiko finds that guys are scared to play out their Halloween fantasies. “They come in ties and suits and tell me ‘I don’t want to dress crazy, this is a work party.’ Ten minutes of prompting, they are in skin-tight ‘70s prints. Then I have the guys who don’t dare say they want to go for drag, but I have been doing this so long I can just tell. I follow their eyes to the dresses and then I say, ‘Have you ever done drag?’ They say no. I pull dresses, and they are awkward at first, but end up looking amazing.”
She tells me that lots of people want to change their cultural, ethnic and racial backgrounds. She says that lots of white girls want to be Middle Eastern this year. “One college girl brought in a picture of a Middle Eastern princess she found on the Internet and said she wanted to be her,” Seiko says.
People play with cultural anxieties and act out their fantasies through their Halloween costumes. This appears to suggest that people are anxious, and want to fantasize about sex, gender, the Middle East, race, and food (I actually came across a lot of women dressing up as food). A day or weekend of fantasy is one thing, a life of fantasy is another.
Heather Murphy is a senior in the College. She will either wear a repulsive mask or be a unicorn for Halloween.
