Halloween has always been my favorite holiday. I have loved the candy, the movies, and most importantly the costumes. My favorite thing would be to try to figure out who or what I wanted to be and put the costume together. Once we were old enough to decide what we wanted, my mom let us choose our costumes. She would give us ideas, take us shopping, and help us assemble our perfect Halloween costume. When I was younger, we had more money to get more store-bought costumes, but as years passed, we had to get more creative.
I wore a black tutu, a white shirt, and cat ears one year and went as a kitty cat. I recycled that same outfit, replaced the cat ears with a top hat, and I was a dancer. My mom got me a blonde wig and a microphone, and I went as Hannah Montana. One year, I only had on glittery face paint and colorful clothes and I told people I was a gumdrop. My brothers were various monsters for years with face paint and dyed hair. My sister wore wigs that depicted her as different characters until she was tired of the holiday. My mom always found a way to make us what we wanted to be because she knew it was important to us.
Nowadays, Halloween costumes are always more complicated than they need to be. People think that they need the most expensive, or the scariest, or the most slutty. They wear what they think people want to see. Or they dress their kids up in expensive and popular costumes to please their friends when the kid just really wants to be a dog or a tree.
I think people should just wear whatever they want, and let their kids be whatever they want. . Be a dog or princess or a slutty nurse or prisoner or whatever as long as it’s what you want. Halloween is a time during the year where you should be able to wear whatever without feeling self-conscious. Everyone is going to be wearing something scary or weird, so they really can not judge you for doing the same. This stigma on what Halloween costumes should be is absolutely ridiculous.
People are hunting for the most expensive costumes and forgetting about the DIY option. Costumes can be homemade and still be fantastic. There is no reason to go and spend a hundred dollars on a costume that you are only going to wear once. I find that to be pointless. Even something as simple as a Care Bear onesie can make for a great costume and it only costs twenty dollars.
Costumes should reflect your personality, not the personality of the public masses. Just because all of the guys in your school are going as vampires or werewolves, doesn’t mean that you have to. It’s really sad that Halloween has turned into this money, image-focused holiday like so many others. I remember when I was younger it was about being yourself and getting candy. All of my siblings and I would put on our makeshift costumes and meet up with our friends and take over the neighborhood. We would hit house after house. We would proudly answer the “What are you supposed to be, costume?” at every house that asked. We didn’t care if one of us only had a sheet with holes as a costume because we were happy. Halloween is a holiday and people should be happy.