Remember when Halloween meant sweating in your colorful polyester Batman costume? Or nearly suffocating under the bulk of the hard plastic princess mask with the tiny eyeholes and painted on hair? Back then it was all so much fun: running around with friends, screaming "trick-or treat," and getting to eat a bunch of candy your mom never let you have on any other day of the year. No more. For many the new Halloween means serious business-and heavy duty social pressures.
Allison, a 26 year old Baltimore fundraiser, notes: "If you are in your 20s and single, then you are kind of expected to go out, dress up creatively, and get a little ridiculous-in the adult way, not the trick or treating way. Here they close the streets and people end up partying outside on the way to bars and house parties. It's utter mayhem. I have seen street fights, arrests, passing out on sidewalks."
In other words, Halloween has become a big night on which people are expected to have a big time.
Julia, a 21 year old junior at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, echoes the bigness of it all: "it's a huge party scene. There are house parties, gatherings in bars, live bands... and it begins several days before Halloween. Some people even wear a different costume every night, and party continuously for three or four days. It's one of the most important events of the year--we definitely celebrate more on Halloween than we do on New Year's."
And what about the hard plastic masks with the eye holes and painted princess hair? Not so much.
"There's a lot of pressure for people to wear sexy, scandalous costumes," according to Missy, a 27 year old designer who lives in New York City. "Women use Halloween as an excuse to parade around in their bras and underwear. Someone might be wearing next to nothing, stick a pair of cat ears on her head and call it a costume. And even the stuff they sell is so racy it makes a lot of women uncomfortable." Apparently, clothes really do make the trick or treater --and the club-goer.
And the popularity of Halloween is no secret to bar and nightclub owners, many of whom raise prices that evening to capitalize on all the frenzy. Meaning: the pressures aren't just social, but financial, as well.
So what if you don't want to go out? "I forced myself to go to a party last year," says a thirty year old single woman in New England who asked that her name not be used. "I had the worst time. I didn't want to be at a crowded bar in my overly-revealing Lady Gaga costume, forcing down shots--all I really wanted was to go home and get into bed. But all of my friends were going; it was the thing to do. I finally left at 11:30. The whole evening was a disaster. I felt like a big loser."
Parties. Bars. Bands in the Street. Drinking. Mayhem.
The pressure to go out and live it up makes Halloween feel, in some ways, more like New Year's than even, well, New Year's.
Allison, the Baltimore fundraiser, notes: "New Year's is overly-hyped and everyone knows it. It's a silly holiday and you can get away with being low key and avoiding the whole thing. But Halloween has a more ‘anything goes, be nuts' vibe-and that makes you feel like you should be out doing something great." Missy, the NYC designer also feels the pressure: "it's as much pressure as New Year's-if my friends and I don't know what we are doing, we start to get anxious and call around to make sure we have plans."
So, Halloween is clearly not for the faint of heart. Some even swear the holiday has grown so important, it provides a sort of referendum on their standing in the community.
"It's a major night of the year. You definitely want to make sure you have something to do," says Samantha, a New York teenager. "It starts early. You wear your costume to school, and some people change into a different (inappropriate) outfit at night--it is like Super bowl or New Year's--you definitely measure your social standing by what parties you get invited to."
And it's not just high-schoolers and single twenty-somethings that are wont to feel excluded and to experience anxiety about making Halloween plans. Parents of young children also gripe about the holiday's social pressures. One Long Island man rolls his eyes when the subject of Halloween comes up: "I absolutely dread it. One year my kid was the only one in the class who wasn't invited to a certain party. I was furious. Then I wondered why he hadn't been included, and whether that meant he was unpopular or a pariah. My kid felt left out, but I felt like it was a real slap in the face."
About one thing many seem to agree: this year Halloween falls on a Sunday, which means less parties, less booze, and less angst overall.
