Masking Their Desires
In past Halloweens, Laurie Donati has showed up at work as Endora from “Bewitched”; a Swiss Alpine hiker with a pickax lodged in her shoulder; and Sally, the stitched-up doll from the movie “The Nightmare Before Christmas.”
She spends a couple of months working on her costume, and often even her friends don’t recognize her in her masquerade.
“It lets me not be me for a day,” Donati says.
Precisely. Dressing in costume for Halloween was once a ritual reserved for children, but now millions of adults want to be warrior princesses, caped crusaders or other creatures.
Why do grown-ups like to play dress-up?
Don Laffoon has some theories. He’s studied the meaning behind the masks as co-founder and executive director of STOP-GAP (a Santa Ana-based theater troupe that uses drama for educational and therapeutic purposes) and as a registered drama therapist and president-elect of the National Assn. for Drama Therapy.
By wearing a costume, adults are escaping the pressure-filled roles they play the rest of the year, Laffoon says.
“The fact that more adults are dressing up shows that there’s a need--we’re telling ourselves we need to be more playful,” he says. “If you’re a banker or an executive, wearing a costume is quite liberating. You get to change your role.”
For people who make tough business decisions all day, wearing a clown suit or other goofy outfit gives them freedom from executive responsibilities.
“Halloween always reminds me of the movie ‘Big,’ in which Tom Hanks plays a boy in a man’s body,” Laffoon says. “He becomes a huge executive in a toy company, but he’s still a child inside. We’re like Tom Hanks in this big body.”
Other holidays do not afford the kind of escape many find on Halloween. Adults still have to behave like adults. If anything, the pressures they face during the holiday season are even greater because they’re expected to put on the perfect celebration with all the trimmings.
“You don’t get to regress in a healthy way,” Laffoon says.
Costume shops are mobbed throughout October with kids and their parents seeking to turn themselves into everything from knights in armor to “Night of the Living Dead” corpses.
“We started getting calls from people wanting to reserve costumes in early September. Two weeks before Halloween, it’s wacko in here--wall-to-wall people,” said Julie Fitzgerald, owner of the Costume Connection in Costa Mesa.
Fitzgerald sees examples of such regression throughout October. Adults come into her shop and act like children digging through an attic filled with old clothes.
“Men like to be knights. The minute they see you have a sword to rent, they’ve got to have it--and they don’t want the plastic ones,” Fitzgerald says. “Boys and their toys.”
This year, shop owners say, aliens and superheroes top the list of most popular costumes. People tend to mimic the characters they see in movies and on television.
“Most people do pick something they’d secretly like to become, whether they admit it or not,” says Vera Bailey, wardrobe supervisor of the Laguna Playhouse.
Bailey has worked at costume rental shops and has dressed characters for 13 years at Halloween Haunts at Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park.
“I think dressing up is an escape,” she says. “Life is getting awfully harsh.”
Even if they don’t have buffed bodies, many want to be Hercules or Xena the warrior woman. Laffoon attributes the popularity of strongman and strongwoman costumes to a longing for a superhero or heroine.
“We’re sadly lacking in heroes and she-roes,” he says. “In our hearts, we all want to be heroes.”
Choice of costume allows one to experiment with a role, but Laffoon maintains it’s not necessarily someone we’d like to be in real life.
“The costume I pick lets me relax from my ordinary role. If I dress as a clown, it doesn’t mean I want to join the circus. It just means I don’t want to make decisions. It gives me permission to have fun.”
Halloween also gives people a chance to dress up in fancy clothes--a rare opportunity in a society where casual dress has become the norm.
“There has been a sameness of dressing,” Laffoon says. “We used to dress differently. You’d put on a suit to go to church or to a wedding. In California, that’s not necessarily so.
“I’ve seen blue jeans at weddings. When I first came here, a friend said, ‘You can wear anything.’ But Californians are militantly casual. If you wear a suit, people look at you funny, like who do you think you are? It’s rare to dress up, so Halloween becomes a really big deal.”
That’s why opulent, Renaissance-style costumes are hot rentals at costume shops. Many women are asking for bustle dresses inspired by the musical “Show Boat,” says Vicki Williams, owner of Rental Boutique in Santa Ana.
“Women want to go elegant,” she says. “They see the costumes in movies like ‘Interview With the Vampire,’ and it’s their chance to wear them.”
It’s also common for conservative dressers to wear something revealing on Halloween, Laffoon says. Women--and men--like parading around as Vegas showgirls and other sexy characters.
“It gives them permission to be more daring,” he says. “Some people don’t need that permission.”
While working in a rental shop, Bailey helped a group of women in their 70s who insisted on wearing sexy flapper dresses.
“They were little old ladies with square shapes who all wanted to be flappers in tight dresses,” she says. “They wanted something risque. They wanted to show off for a day.”
Donati, who works behind the scenes in the wardrobe department at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa, says, “I usually think of something odd to wear for Halloween each year. I don’t even care if other people dress up.”
