For weeks, we’ve all been poring over this coming Halloween, deciding how to carve our pumpkins, what candy to get—and above all? What to wear.
The Halloween costume boasts a long, multi-origin history, tracing its earliest roots back to over 2,000 years ago. The Celtic Samhain festival marked the end of summer in Ireland, a time when the spiritual world was believed to be visible to mortals, resulting in “supernatural mischief.” Revelers wore costumes consisting of animal skins and heads in hopes that the wandering spirits would mistake them for a peer, sparing them from ghostly troubles. Villagers would prank each other in costume and blame the spirits. The lasting message? Costumes are a way to get away with what one usually can’t.
During medieval times, Christians adopted these customs into “All Souls’ Day,” meant to honor the spirits of the dead. During parades, poor citizens would beg onlookers for food, often scoring “soul-cakes” from families in exchange for prayers for their dead. This practice was quickly adopted by children, who donned masks to avoid being recognized by spirits as mortals—birthing the custom of costumed trick-or-treating. In this instance, rather than hiding mischief, costumes were used to protect oneself from the horrors of the outside world.
Finally, Americans brought this European tradition overseas during the late 1800s. Since then, we’ve borne witness to the evolution of costumes. Notably, they’ve become synonymous with being sexy. In Mean Girls, Cady Heron iconically informs the viewer, “In ‘Girl World,’ Halloween is the one night of the year when a girl can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it.” But why?
Some point to the over-commercialization of Halloween and the classic phrase, “sex sells.” Tom Arnold, a finance professor at the University of Richmond, asserts that “Halloween is a marketer’s dream.” Costume trends change each year, and as a consumable with a shelf life, candy is in constant and extreme demand, creating a massive market. Finally, FOMO is a major factor in consumers shelling out for holidays even when money is tight—the yearly experience is too unique and widely enjoyed to miss. We’ve all watched the rise of Amazon and TikTok Shop and are well aware of how predatory advertising is, and just how willing companies are to squeeze our every penny. This time of year, my entire FYP is essentially just costume ideas, transitions, and Halloween GRWMs—building an online pressure to spend money, too.
But I don’t think this is quite it. After all, Christmas is the largest consumer holiday in the United States, and I don’t see too many sexy elves in store windows during December. Sure, Christmas songs play everywhere, and tinsel is already infiltrating our local