Column: What happened to Halloween?
As I looked around the room at the Halloween party I attended this weekend I scratched my wig and wondered, what happened to Halloween?
It’s no longer trick-or-treating and celebrations at school, but rather an incredibly sexualized holiday that revolves around drinking and a hook-up culture.
Halloween, when I was a kid, was the ultimate holiday. My brother and I always had spectacular costumes. Walking around the neighborhood, we knew exactly which houses had full-sized candy bars and which houses were “never home”. With pillowcases in hand and determination on our minds, we made sure to make the most out of the evening. And of course, every Halloween ended with trading candy on the living room floor and a cup of my mom’s homemade beef stew.
But where is all that now? Sure, it isn’t exactly acceptable to go trick-or-treating as an adult, but what about the awesome costumes? This is coming from someone who dressed up as a lady in a bathtub one Halloween, so the stakes are always high for me.
Looking back at old photos of my parents on Halloween, it’s a bit different now. There was more diversity in costumes and more skin being covered. Yes, they still show sexy costumes and poses but not as close to what it is now for college aged women.
Now, devils, angels, cats, and police officers are among the most popular costumes worn strictly by women, but there isn’t much of a costume being worn anyway. Skimpy clothes and lots of make-up are seen as a necessity for any sexy outfit. Creativity as well as clothing become lost as we grow up. I wonder why it is this way.
It could be because the growing hook-up culture and goal to go home with somebody at the, or the desire for the perfect Instagram photo to gain likes and followers. We are a generation that thrives on social media whether we like it or not. When I scrolled through my Instagram feed this weekend, it was hard not to see a photo of someone in a promiscuous costume.
The most laughable aspect of this is the characters that become wildly sexified in the making.A few of them are the “slutty hamburger’, “slutty lobster” and “slutty Oompa Loompa”. The most unattractive objects or people are made sexy and, in the end, objectify the women who wear it. But then again, it is their choice in the first place to go out in public like that.
Why has it become an excuse to expose your body as a woman on Halloween? It could be the ghosts and ghouls telling you to, or it could be the pressure to look good on social media or it could just be the obsessive alcohol drinking and partying. Frankly it wouldn’t be Halloween without it. It seems as though the goal is to drink so much that majority of the night is forgotten.
To be fair, drinking in college doesn’t just happen on Halloween, but it definitely is more prevalent than compared to other holidays and outings. Everyone is looking for an excuse to go crazy, and maybe we actually do need it. School begins to get tough and challenging as the end of October brings the finish of the semester.
Either way, Halloween isn’t what it used to be. We’ve managed to make a once innocent and childish holiday into a drunken slutty mess. Is this what growing up is like?
Columns written by editors and writers of Pacer Times do not necessarily reflect the opinion of staff members or leadership. Letters to the editor may be emailed to Editor-in-Chief, Cecilia Maddox at cmy@usca.edu, and will be published at the editorial staff’s discretion.
