As a kid, I used to spend a lot of time planning my Halloween costumes. The moment the calendar hit October I started brainstorming and once I had an idea, I spent twice as long constructing the outfit itself.
In second grade, I was a puffin. I wore orange tights and made webbed feet out of felt. My wings were the arms of a baggy sweatshirt and I used a baseball cap for my beak. Needless to say, I looked awesome.
When Halloween finally arrived, I remember eagerly showing off my ensemble to all my friends before going out in the middle of the night to stuff my pillowcase with candy. When I came home, I always ate my goods as quickly as I could so my mom wouldn’t have the chance to swipe my stash. Those were the days…
I have to admit, October 31 doesn’t have the pizzazz that it used to. I still enjoy Halloween, and I still use the holiday as an excuse to stuff my face with tons of candy but no one seems to get quite as excited as they used to.
I think part of the problem is that Halloween festivities are not confined to October 31 at Bowdoin. Because of parties on the Thursday, Friday, and Saturday leading up to the holiday, people can’t spend all of their time perfecting one costume and instead must haphazardly pull together a few.
In addition, even if students only had one costume to focus on, I’m still not convinced they would care enough to spend time on it.
As a kid, whoever worked the hardest on their outfit was dubbed the coolest cat on the block, but in college it seems as if the opposite is true. If I wore that same well-thought-out puffin costume to a social house party, I would definitely get some strange looks. In addition, most of my friends only decided the day of what they were going to dress up as, and the costumes that received the best reactions were often the ones that required the least amount of effort.
For example, one friend placed a quarter on the back of his shirt and told everyone he was a “quarter back.” Another drew a compass on her shirt that only pointed south and claimed that she was “one direction.” Although I did chuckle at these clever outfits, I miss the craftsmanship of the old days.
In addition, every time I see a “seductive cat,” “sexy bumblebee” or “promiscuous devil,” I can’t help but cringe. I want to be careful when I talk about this, because a bunch of my highly-intelligent and awesome friends opted to dress in this less-than-wholesome manner. Plus, as Mean Girls famously taught us, “Halloween is the one night a year when girls can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it.”
And yet, I can’t contain myself. Ladies, when you dress in such costumes, you are putting a label on yourself, a label that you might not want. I think a lot of the fun of Halloween is seeing how original and creative you can be and these costumes are, in my opinion, just a missed opportunity.
Now, Halloween is over and perhaps I am a little too late in delivering my message. But if the world doesn’t end, October 31 will come again next year. We all remember how Halloween used to be when we were young. I would argue that most of us are at least a little nostalgic for those old days. So if you are feeling like me, I propose that next year we prove that Halloween is not a day “just for little kids.”
I propose that we spend a ridiculous amount of time crafting our costumes, and I propose that we wear them with our heads held high. Yes, it may be hard to find the time, but let’s get over our apathetic attitudes, for Halloween can be one of the best days of the year. All we have to do is start caring about it.