As a child, the 31st of October would be an event I would look forward to, and at the same time, fear.
The atmosphere in the air was different; everything felt haunted, as if that night, my neighborhood would go from being an ordinary street to after-dusk fighting an invasion of ghosts and blood-sucking vampires.
One of the reasons why Halloween was so popular for us as children was because it provided a creative outlet to become someone else for one night. On the streets you would see children dressed up as princesses or power rangers, villains or heros, we could have been anything we wanted to be and we carry part of that phenomenon into our adult lives even now.
I remember coming home from school, rushing to get dressed into my zombie schoolgirl outfit, and purchasing a Halloween makeup kit from the local supermarket to lather myself in fake blood. The streets were always filled with children knocking on strangers’ doors and asking for sweets, screaming ‘trick or treat’ from every corner of the street, the houses would be decked out with carved pumpkins, artificial gravestones and a mystical fog that would appear every Halloween with an essence of excitement to see what your friends costumes would look like.
However, now that I am older, this time of year brings nostalgia and longing for the Halloween I used to know.
Our generation has grown up with the rise of social media and prominent pop culture. This has ultimately influenced our day-to-day lives as well as old-school traditions. In the US 30% fewer children go out ‘trick or treating’ nowadays, and the local supermarkets do not have the perpetual stacks of Halloween costumes like they used to as everything has become digitalised and costumes can now be bought on amazon which takes some of the fun out of it.
As young adults, Halloween has become a night where you dress up in a revealing costume and get drunk with your friends at pubs, bars, clubs or house parties. If you think about it, it does not differ much from a normal university night out – the only thing that’s different is that you are dressed up as a classic film character half-naked.
Finding a costume that is not overly sexualised is an impossible task for girls. Stores stock costumes for women with mostly just short skirts and stockings.The sexualization of dressing up as a sexy firefighter or sexy lawyer is damaging. These day-to-day jobs and women in these professions, have been impacted by the depiction of lustrous ideals and whether or not you realize it, it can affect the way their abilities are recognized in the workplace – which is completely unfair, this image has been curated by society and a long history of women being thought of as the lesser sex.
Last year, I attended a party that personified the spirit of Halloween a little too much… It was dead. However, it looked like the most extravagant Gatsby-esque party online.The holiday has become one of the most significant Instagram-able events of the year with your feed being decorated with couple costumes like Hercules and Megara or group costumes such as kiss, marry or kill and captions like here for the boos.
Now don’t get me wrong, I, like everybody else, will be attending Halloween parties and dressing up in overpriced costumes. But I cannot help but think how the genuine fun and excitement that we felt during this holiday has been lost, and instead we care more about our social media presence.
When we were kids, Halloween was a night when we collected sweets with our friends and watched scary movies that actually made us believe that if we weren’t home by a specific time, we would be eaten by werewolves. Whereas, now it’s an event for the world to see – to prove to your high school friends on Instagram that you are having the time of your life drinking way too much at university in a Tinkerbell costume. We face certain societal pressures of expectations of what Halloween should be like as young adults.
Halloween as a university student compared to a primary schooler differs in experience. We have grown out of ‘trick or treating’ and believing that garlic scares vampires, and we have adapted the wicked holiday to fit our lifestyle as students which consists of tequila shots and red lipstick.
As we have changed, the holiday has changed with us. The expectations that come with celebrating ‘Halloweekend’ as young adults may sometimes pressure us to look a certain way and expect us to party the night away. I think it is important that we don’t give into this societal standard and we genuinely focus on just having a good old time with our friends.