Behold Halloween, the once-a-year opportunity to deviate from our assigned roles in society. Halloween gives us a glimpse of what our lives would be if we didn't live under a category; Halloween is a one-night escape from classification.
We expend too much of our energy formulating a one-dimensional identity. Choosing to be Republican or Democrat, East coast or West coast, beer drinker or wine drinker, leaves no room for exploration. Halloween is our excuse to venture inward, confronting our collage of super heroes, sex icons, rock stars and fairy-tale characters that we encompass under our one name. Halloween visually displays our complexity. If we didn't need to dress in costumes that deviated from society's rules of normalcy, we wouldn't have Halloween.
Every day we dress in costumes. This is problematic because we form relationships with categories and costumes, but not with people. There are three dominant costumes we wear: suits, uniforms and T-shirts and jeans. An example of why associations with costumes are problematic: If a woman on the street wears a business suit we will automatically conclude she is a professional. However, this costume reveals nothing about her favorite color, nor how she feels about today's weather. We make automatic generalizations based on costumes that could still be made if the costume was worn by a manikin. Costumes make no distinction between what is fabric and what is flesh.
If we allowed ourselves to experience more than one costume we could better understand each other. For example, dress as a vine of grapes for the evening and then one can empathize with the true complexities of this iron-rich fruit. Applied to the larger scale, be a minority and experience racism, be a woman and experience objectification, be a Jew and experience anti-Semitism. We would be more unified if we could understand the experience of wearing a costume that is not our own.
We act correspondingly to our costume. Our costumes: suits, uniforms, jeans and a T-shirt or beautiful Halloween costumes, are all limiting. A tie and sport coat brings a feeling of power. One cannot deliver mail unless one is adorned in baby blue. Furthermore, the T-shirt and jeans ensemble necessitates relaxation. Our clothes make rules for our behavior, and letting our clothes decide how we act is ridiculous. Halloween is our ticket to transcend our daily costumes, to transcend our daily roles, and for college students to transcend their majors.
We, as students, are just beginning to fall under our own classifications. Take your name, for example John Doe, and then place after this name your major, John Doe Engineer. This now becomes your name, and this new name will try to dictate a new set of rules. Quite possibly, we are locking ourselves into an identity at age 20. Watch the streets on Halloween and see the brilliance that cannot be contained in a single word. We are much more unruly than an area of study.
Halloween is trying to grab our hand and show us what we possess beyond the boundaries we have established. The costumes on Halloween are the same as the costumes we wear every day; they aren't real. If we allow ourselves to experience more than a singular identity, we could create a true melting pot of perceived reality and fantasy. Why have we chosen only suits, uniforms, jeans and a T-shirt when we could be princes and princesses every day of the year? Capes, swords and crowns are just as legitimate as suits, uniforms and jeans and a shirt.
