The Politics of Choosing a Costume
What can you wear this year?
Without fail, every year, I leave getting a Halloween costume until the last minute. I have all the pumpkin and spooky shirts, socks, and sweaters on deck, but picking a costume overwhelms me. The thought of assembling an outfit within a week makes me panic and scramble to pull something together.
But each year, picking an appropriate costume gets even more stressful. The questions—what character I’ll choose, what functions the outfit should have, and how people will interpret my costume—get more tangled.
Am I too old for a costume this sexy? Am I too old for a costume this cutesy? Will I have to ride the subway, and where? Will the night skew warmer than average due to climate change or colder? Do I even have plans this year? Or will I hand out candy to the three kids that will ring my doorbell?
These questions alone knock most ideas out of the running. One year, I decided against riding the subway in my dinosaur costume, a onesie, from my apartment in Mount Vernon to a party in Bedstuy. Dressed in leggings and a simple tee, I trekked across county lines to Brooklyn and then changed in my friend’s bathroom. The following year, wearing the same costume, I decided, “fuck it,” and wore the same onesie home from a sleepover, rationalizing that it’s New York City and folks have seen worse than my polyester green tail. That bravado lasted until I left my friend’s apartment only to come face to face with an older West Indian woman whose facial expression reminded me of my grandmother’s every time I did something particularly silly or stupid.
Leave a comment about what you’re being this Halloween.
However, outside of practical concerns, choosing a costume has sometimes felt precarious.
In pre-k, I dressed as a lion and came to school to find every girl dressed as a princess. That was my first brush with FOMO. Each August, my mom would let me point to a costume in a catalog that she agreed was appropriate and inexpensive. The long shipping time often meant that I would get jealous by the time Halloween rolled around, and I heard my classmates’s plans. My cool costume would become unappealing in an instant. At four, I learned that the cool girls would be princesses, not lions. The following year, when I would rectify my costume choice, I would encounter another problem. My hair did not resemble the girl or the cartoon drawing on the packaging. The headpieces in these costumes often did not fit curls and coils unless ruthlessly pinned into submission.
In high school, I dreaded Halloween for the same reason I cringed around Thanksgiving, ethnic history months, and spirit week. As one of four Black girls in my grade, seeing my predominantly white classmates don wigs with felt locs, polyester sombreros, garishly large plastic chains, or cardboard headdresses inspired a level of shame and anger I couldn’t let go of for at least a month.
In college, once I learned to recognize these costumes as appropriative, I would complain with my peers penning long Facebook, Twitter, or even Tumblr posts calling out cultural appropriation and roll my eyes at gaggles of sorority girls dressed as rappers skittering to frat parties.
In my first year, in a workshop explaining cultural appropriation, one white girl tried to argue why she should be allowed to wear her Pocahontas costume. Sitting atop seven stacked chairs, she perched over the rest of the crisscrossed students seated on the carpet. Workshop moderators, who were sophomores and juniors, tried reasoning with her. They reminded the group that although Pocahontas is a Disney character, she is also a real person whose history is more than the Disney costume can portray.
Chair girl doubled down. “What’s wrong with appreciating another culture,” she ranted. “And don’t we exchange with other cultures all the time? People in foreign countries use microwaves invented in the United States.”
“Are you comparing my culture to a microwave?” a Vietnamese-American student clapped back.
She paled, realizing she’d let herself get carried away, and walked out of the room in a huff. The line “My culture is not a microwave” felt pithy and funny for another two years.
Now, picking a costume feels more complicated than not picking up costumes at Spirit Halloween that say Indian or Geisha. Would cosplaying as a character from my favorite anime count? Should I say something about the Jasmine costume my cousin’s daughter picked out? Would dressing up that orca who attacked those boats be disrespectful towards their plight?
Actors in SAG-aftra now must carefully vet whether they’ll be a scab for dressing as a vampire or doll and inadvertently advertising for Barbie or some other movie.
With all this in mind, dressing up seems more trouble than it’s worth. But it’s still fun, and I will probably find some neon-colored workout gear to look like I do jazzercise at the gym on Tuesday.
Rapid Thoughts about the Tompkins Square Park Dog Parade
Dressing your dog as a hot dog is a classic and will never be cliche.
To the families that chose to be the rat czar, I salute you.
I want a beagle so that I can dress up as Charlie Brown or Lucy.
Even if they didn’t win Best Costume, every pup was a very good dog!
