I sat behind an all-male train klatch on the way home from work. The highlight of one man’s day: “After lunch, my boss dressed up like Keith Richards,” he said, his voice suppressing mirth as his jowls shook. “He had a wig, a guitar, a leather vest. He even pierced his ear to wear the earring.”
“He pierced his ear?” An older man with an impeccable mustache frowned. “They have clip-on earrings. Lord.” But the other men laughed. “Nobody dressed up at my office,” another man said. “Except, well, we had a Sexy Witch at reception.”
The other men chortled huskily. Who doesn’t love a nice piece of Halloween eye candy sauntering around the office in a black tube dress with Elvira-esque hemming, knee-high black leather boots, and a pointy black hat atop of a feathered nest of hair? Who doesn’t love Sexy Witch?
I’ve read a few articles recently about the overt sexuality of adult women’s Halloween costumes. Many women see Halloween as a chance to get all whored up without fearing their own morality. Sexy Mrs. Santa, Sexy Referee, Sexy Snow White, Sexy Nurse, and the classic School Girl.
In middle and high school, the popular girls were always Sexy Babies. They’d dress in flimsy pajamas and puffy slippers, put their hair in pigtails, clench a stuffed animal, and occasionally dangle a pacifier around their neck. Even though it wasn’t revealing, they were still walking around in pajamas, looking obscenely innocent and nubile. (I was Sexy Freak… but every day was Halloween for me).
The popular boys always dressed up like women. I attributed this to latent transvestite tendencies until I saw a heavy metal documentary that explored why glam rock bands like Poison and Motley Crue dressed up like women to sing about their heterosexual prowess. “Dressing like a woman is the most macho thing you could do,” someone pointed out. Indeed, a boy with any doubts about his peer acceptance would never don a dress and heels. Only a cocksure young alpha male could flaunt his undisguised masculinity under a wig and heavy make-up.
As for me this year, I went as a documentation coordinator (cue the chuckles). I sat at home with a bowl of micro-boxes of raisins, waiting for trick-or-treaters who never came. I can’t say I was surprised. Halloween in my neighborhood had grown quieter, more subdued.
But as I listened to the rumbling train and the chorus of chuckles, I felt a small pang of nostalgia for the absurdity and audacity of Halloween—the day when costumes become a canvas for revealing not just what we want to be, but what we believe we can get away with. And as I grabbed a box of raisins and popped a few in my mouth, I thought, Well, more treats for me.
