Hallo-whaaa?

Shawna Sweeney, Volunteer staff

I started out today trying to write about horrifying Halloween costumes. I did a Google image search, a little random browsing, and went through pages and pages and pages of holiday apparel. I wanted to find a few funny trainwrecks to write about. And there were certainly some available.

But I just wasn’t feeling it. My heart always hurt for that kid at the party who wore exactly the wrong costume so that people made cruel jokes. Hell, I think I’ve been that kid once or twice.

So I changed my search parameters and asked the Internet about the most popular Halloween costumes this year. Wanting a broader overview and more public pictures of the hottest holiday styles, I stopped looking for trainwrecks and started looking for trendsetters. I consulted several authoritative websites such as Iparty.com and Fearnet.com, but finally ended up at Extremehalloween.com.

They had their most popular costumes grouped into sections by age and sex. There were even separate categories for couples and pets. So I clicked and clicked and clicked some more.

And there were pirates and ninjas and nuns and nymphettes of all kinds. A wild assorted variety of costumes from cartoons and movies to singers and sitcoms. For $50 or less you could be just about anyone on the mass media radar.

I looked at all the pop culture reflected in the outfits and wondered about the fantasy behind it. There were so many films and shows and people that the populace wanted to be or be like. And after awhile, I stopped seeing people and started seeing identities. There were funny identities and sexy identities and evil and cute identities; big ones and small ones and brave ones and meek ones.

And that is when I stumbled across the fundamental essence of Halloween. It is not about carving pumpkins or scoring the most candy or spending money you don’t have on a bad costume. It is the universal promise that, for at least one day out of the year, you can be whoever you want. Halloween is a golden ticket to a magical land of make-believe where your authentic self can hibernate for a night or two and make room for all the people you’ve dreamed of being.

So who do we dream of being? We want to be Captain Jack Sparrow, the lovely Elizabeth Swann, Mr. T, a naughty nurse, Darth Vadar, a Playboy Bunny, a French maid, Harry Potter, Hermione, a chick magnet, a gothic witch, a slave.

In our Halloween dreams we are powerful and sexy and clever. We want to feel ways we don’t feel every day. We want to become our very best selves dressed up in disguises that allow us to act a little and put on a show.

These shows play all night long on Halloween. And I wish I had the streak of cruelty necessary to really get my mock on, because some of the costumes I have seen are truly heinous. But I know that underneath every pudgy pirate and listless Princess Leia are invisible elements of the same pretend power so evident in others.

After the epiphany, I went back to the Google images and looked at all the pages again. I glanced through all the smiling faces and crazy antics and the sets and settings. I noticed the way the identities clashed and contrasted before blending together, how natural and unnatural it seemed for Scooby and Shaggy to hang with Mario and Luigi, how the Incredible Hulk and Hermione Granger got along so well, and how, for one night only, fiction and fantasy could exist together up close and personally.

But lurking in the shadows, far behind the cute couples and clever costumes, I’d occasionally catch a glimpse of that heart hurting kid in all of his grimacing anguish. He usually tries to hide a little or fade into the furniture and crowd. And all I want to say is: “Don’t worry about it, guy. This is your time to shine. Forget about the infinite insecurities of the real world for a minute. Harness the healing power of pretend and ride it on home to glory with one of the naughty nurses. She will love it and so will you.”

Happy Halloween.