Halloween

In the movie Mean Girls, the main character realizes that in “Girl World” Halloween is just an excuse to dress up slutty. I remember the realization I experienced watching this movie. "I know!" I thought. "Why didn't anyone tell me that before?"
This tradition about Halloween completely baffles me and I had never had anyone put it into words.

I remember seeing this the first time riding the bus through the college section of Boston on Halloween night. "Who are these girls?" I thought, watching out the bus window as troupes of mostly naked college women roamed from club to club. At the same time, I am sure part of me thought, "Hey! How come I'm not one of them?" It's the repulsion/attraction that is the oddest part of the sexy Halloween costume phenomenon. I was repelled by watching women who felt the need to dress up in ridiculously skimpy, overpriced outfits and freeze themselves in the middle of the night to compete for men who barely bother to put on anything interesting. And at the same time I thought, “Wow, some of those girls look great. I want to look like that.”

For the past two years I've gone out dancing on Halloween and found myself surrounded by girls in these costumes and each year thought, "I could do that. I could pull that off. That's what I'll do next year." So this year, I thought would be the year. Vin and I went from Halloween store to Halloween store looking at the costumes. "I'll be whatever you think is the sexiest," I said. "After all, I'm dressing up to look sexy for you," I told him - and myself. There were nearly-naked Tinkerbells, princesses, witches, nurses, etc. Vin looked at them and shrugged. "Come on, don't you want to see me as a sexy cop?" I asked. "It doesn't really do it for me," he answered. There was one costume in our entire survey of Halloween stores that he liked. It was the Gothic Angel that came complete with a ratty, black lace dress. I think it took him back to his high school days as a skater. "That would be hot," he said. "Uh, no," was my immediate response, which is when I should have admitted to myself that I was NOT interested in dressing up for him, but rather in dressing up for me.

His lack luster response made me start thinking, "Do men really not like these costumes? Is that possible?" And then he came back from a trip to California where he went to an Octoberfest party. The party organizers hired a group of Octoberfest girls in outfits that Vin referred to as 'leiderhosen', which were definitely not leiderhosen. They were little mini dresses that left lots of cleavage and leg exposed. And in the photos of the trip are pictures with each of his guy friends with enormous grins on their faces posing surrounded by 'Leiderhosen' girls. I laughed when I saw the pictures, relieved that I had been saved from convincing myself of an obvious fallacy.

In the end, I couldn't bring myself to even try on any of the costumes. I was baffled to find that I couldn't do it and that I wanted someone else, in this case Vin, to fully convince me it was a good idea. And when he failed to do it, I was frustrated. Why do I need someone else to convince me to dress like a slut if I am doing this for myself? And why do I want to dress like a slut in the first place? After a month of thinking about this, I still don't have an answer. In the end, I settled on a cat costume, composed mostly of clothes I already had.

On Halloween, emails and text messages from friends showed they were getting cold feet about their costumes. I asked Abbie what she had decided to be, "Wouldn't you like to know!" she responded. "I just went and got a costume, but you'll have to wait and see. It's great!" I wondered which sort of sexy character she was going to be this year. When the door opened and she walked in that night, I didn't recognize her. She was draped head to toe in a sheet with two holes for the eyes. She danced like a loon on the dance floor, her sheet flying in all directions. "I decided to bag all of it this year. Forget the stress of those costumes. I don't want to work that hard. I get why some women find the burka liberating!" she said, twirling around in her sheet.

I called my uncle after Halloween. "Your mom said she had a great time at your party," he said. "She said you looked like no cat she had ever seen. She said there are some things you just don't want to see your daughter wearing."
"Marc," I responded, "she has no idea what the alternatives were like."