Toddler

As a toddler, I didn’t give a heck as to what I would be for Halloween, just as long as my night ended with a pillowcase full of king-sized snickers and jumbo-sized bubble-tape. (To those of you who give out Sweet Tarts and Nerds, you know who you are, and you should be ashamed of yourself. Chocolate is always the way to go.)

A toddler’s Halloween costume is entirely up to the parents, who I think all share the same method in costume selection:

One, the parents must choose a costume that makes their child look adorable and cuter than their friends’ children. Why compete in your own Halloween costume contest when you have a willing and unable-to-argue-with-you child to do it for you?

Two, the parents must select a costume that is very uncomfortable and itchy because it looks cute at a cheaper price, and well, it’s not their chins getting a rash from that cute bonnet that looks soft but actually feels like sandpaper. 

But above all, at number three, the parents must select a costume that is both embarrassing and equally degrading.

Though many parents attempt to fulfill such standards, few have reached the degradation levels that my own parents succeeded in bestowing upon myself. 

When I was a toddler, my parents decided that I would trick-or-treat dressed as a clown.

Job well done Mom and Dad…Job well done.

Toddlers can be seen year after year,  flying around on fake broomsticks in their black witch frocks, tripping over their toilet-paper mummy ensembles, or sweating through their one-piece zip-up zoo animal disguise.  (Ears attached to a furry hood are always a plus.)

Even though it was embarrassing and shameful, and even though dressing me up as a loon or a fruitcake would equal the humility of that colorfully-spotted clown suit, I cannot deny that in photographs I do look pretty flippin’ adorable.

Elementary School

With the wide age-range in middle school, it’s a little surprising that the costume ideas fail to vary. Kindergartners are often seen in the same getups as their older, superior 5th graders.

Elementary students are mature enough to dress themselves in the morning, so they are surely mature enough to choose their own costume.

The regular choices? A princess, a pop star, or a pop star princess, (belly-shirt and tiara not optional.)

Other children might go for the typical witch, the retro decades girl, or the movie/TV show character costume.

Now, for the average elementary student, Halloween isn’t just about candy and haunted houses. One of their main concerns is the Halloween parade, which occurs at all theWestportelementary schools.

For me, marching across that baseball field atGreensFarmsElementary School, the one with the hill that seemed like the biggest hill in the world until I grew up and realized I could barely sled down it, was the proudest moment in my elementary school career.

My strut in my Britney Spears costume, blonde wig, sparkly blue outfit, and headset microphone,  trumps the first time I completed a long division problem correctly.

Yes, for elementary students, their Halloween costume is one of the most important decisions of their lives, and they never fail to impress.

Middle School

Middle school is notorious for being the awkward transition time where you aren’t a child anymore, but not yet an adult.  So what is there to be said about middle-schoolers on Halloween?

To start, its the night that thirteen-year olds try to show off hips they don’t quite have yet by showing up from door to door on Halloween night wearing costumes designed for women of a more mature age.

 The regular costume choices for these ready-to-be-slutty middle school girls include the winged creature costumes, (fairy, butterfly, angel) the cutesy costumes, (cup-cake girl, rag doll, cheerleader) the any-animal-seen-in-The-Lion-King costume, (Zebra, Flamingo, Wildcat) and the career costume, (Cop, firewoman, soldier.)

Considering I wore the same pink stretchy-pants every other day through 6th grade, I was clearly unaware of what was “In,” and I chose to dress as a mouse. Long gray pants, a long-sleeved gray turtleneck, ears I bought from a Nutcracker performance, and painted on whiskers, made up the final look.

Can we say nerd alert?

But as I reached 8th grade, I finally understood the Halloween middle school expectation, and dressed as a rag doll with a few of my friends, striped stockings knee-high and bonnet left at home. 

I look back at myself in pure embarrassment. Why did I want to look older than I was? And why hadn’t I at least selected something with a bit more class?

        A friend recently asked me why middle-schoolers don’t dress up scary. Well, these girls definitely aren’t wearing monster costumes or fake blood on their face, but I think that a 12 year old girl in a Fifi the Sexy French Maid costume is scary enough.

High School

Halloween Costumes reach a whole other level when it comes to high schoolers.

With trick-or-treating out, and Halloween parties in, many high school girls choose to dress the far more provocatively.

As Cady Heron wisely puts it, “In the regular world, Halloween is when children dress up in costumes and beg for candy. In girl world, Halloween is the one night a year when a girl can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it.”

The costumes selected by high school students are usually just slutty versions of things people wouldn’t ordinarily think of as risqué. A student, a police woman, and a referee all seem like dignified professions, but on Halloween, they become far from respectable.

It seems to me that girls can take any random profession, tv/movie character, animal, or object, and twist it to seem promiscuous, maybe even titling the costume a supposedly “creative” name to give it a raunchy spin.

Really, the names sound like they were written by the people that think up fortunes inside Chinese fortune cookies.

Some interesting examples include the “Tackle Me Sexy” football player costume, the “Officer Rita Dem Rights” police costume, the “Sedusa Medusa Costume Elite”, and the “Babe-A-Lonian Warrior Queen” costume. 

But for High Schoolers, it seems it doesn’t matter how ridiculous the actual costume is, just as long as the hemline is far above their fingertips.

Now obviously there are high schoolers who choose to actually dress up scary (I know, crazy right?) but for the majority of high school girls, Halloween is about dressing up seductively, and maybe just a little about scoring some left-over Snickers bars on the way home from the party.