How Society Interprets Our Halloween Costume Choices

My Costume Says I'm a Tramp!

Every year, millions of adults get dressed in costume for Halloween. They may wear a costume to take their children trick-or-treating, to hand out candy to their trick-or-treating neighbors, or to attend a costume party at home, a bar, or nightclub. Halloween costumes can range anywhere from just a pair of plastic vampire teeth bought at the local Halloween store, to fully engineered outfits that took months to put together. People can dress in costume to have fun, to shock, be sexy, or maybe even get a date. Certainly our Halloween costume choices say something about our personality or intent, but how much do they say?

Each Halloween, the Internet is full of articles theorizing on this topic, including an MSN piece that prompted me to conduct interviews of my own on the subject of sexy Halloween costumes and their meaning. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which consulted with professional psychologists for "What Your Halloween Costume Says About You", offers interpretation of several categories of costume.

They do preface their arguments with the knowledge that "price, comfort and convenience can factor in", but conclude that ultimately our choice in Halloween costume says a lot about us. Most importantly, your costume can tell who you want to be.

People may dress for Halloween as a celebrity because they admire certain qualities that celebrity possesses, or they are just living the fantasy of fame and wealth. They might also engineer their Halloween costume to mock a celebrity that they hate or are disappointed in. As for sexy costumes, Sally Foster (a psychology professor with the University of Miracosta, California) feels that they "can represent one's own repressed sexuality...They also can be healthy expressions of someone who is not very repressed."