by Rachel Garvey
Can you imagine walking into a pub or club, or even a simple house party, and everyone’s eyes just fall on you? Even your friends look away in embarrassment, trying to pretend they don’t know you. You look around, confused, thinking that everyone’s eyes are drawn to something near you, but no. Everyone’s eyes are locked specifically on you. Somewhere in your horror-driven head, a skeletal hand wipes away the spiders and cobwebs that cloud your judgment and realisation dawns on you like a crowd of hungry zombies. Every female there is dressed in a tight girlie costume, every male there is dressed in dark colours, with a few even making the effort to decorate their face and body parts in fake blood and bits of fake skin. Then, there’s you, wearing a bright yellow raincoat, a paper boat clasped in your hand, dark blue jeans, green wellingtons, a scarred face and a fake bloody arm that hangs from the sleeve of your raincoat. Georgie from It is an iconic costume choice, it’s simple, but a great idea at the same time. However, not everyone thinks so. Everyone’s confused gaze gives you the impression that you may have gone just a tad overboard with your costume and the preparation you invested in it.
It’s like a scene out of Mean Girls when Cady enters the Halloween party dressed as a dead bride and everyone asks, “Why are you dressed so scary?”, to which she replies, “It’s Halloween”. We are all supposed to dress up scary, right? I also just want to point out that this experience has never happened to me, at least not yet. As an October baby, I take Halloween very seriously, so if a themed Halloween party has extended an invite to me, then I would gladly put in the effort to a costume that is scary or has some connection to the world of horror. I’ll be honest here, I’m not a fan of Halloween-themed parties because, knowing me, I’d be the one to turn up looking like Georgie and getting confused looks from left, right and centre. Cady was right, it’s Halloween, and that obviously gives people the chance to be the scariest thing you can be, but some like to take it in a completely different direction, a direction where the costume doesn’t give off a scary vibe, if you know what I mean?
When we were children, it was a lot easier. We begged our parents for a specific costume because it looked scary and we had this idea in our tiny minds that it would be the greatest costume ever. We could be dead little red riding hoods, skeletons and zombies, or even just throw a sheet over our heads with holes cut out where we can see through. As we grow older, our costume expectations change dramatically, we have different ideologies about what we want to be. It still confuses me to this day how it’s acceptable to dress inappropriately for Halloween. The spooky holiday is meant to be a celebration of the barrier-breaking between the living and the dead, the excitement to carve a pumpkin and go trick or treating, it’s not meant to pose as an excuse to show off pieces of our lingerie. The whole reason behind children dressing up in scary costumes was that the spirits that roamed the streets would leave them alone, the spirits believed that the child in the costume was one of them. Spirits nowadays would be disappointed in our costume choices. If you experience this large gust of wind that lifts up your costume in certain parts, then think nothing of it, that’s just them flying past wreaking havoc and saying, “Shame on you, wear a scarier outfit next time”. I do feel like there is a lot of pressure on people when it comes to Halloween-themed parties, but I’ll leave you with one piece of advice; it’s Halloween, it doesn’t take a genius to know that the holiday involves all things scary. Be the Georgie from It, be the beautiful but mysterious Morticia Addams, be the one to dress up in a deformed Teletubby costume because I can guarantee you that you won’t feel any unexplained gusts of wind or shivers roll through your spine, you are simply fitting in amongst our invisible friends that have come to visit for one night and one night only.