I was never a fan of Halloween growing up, which is funny to think about now. Since coming to college, Halloween has become my favorite holiday.
Guts and gore have never been my thing (medical majors were never even in the running for me) and spiritual and psychological horror things still freak me out big time.
I avidly avoided haunted houses, though I’d sometimes let my friends drag me to corn mazes. Horror movies were completely out of the question.
Most spooky things I can laugh at now, but as a child, even the sight of fake blood was nightmare-inducing. Needless to say, never in my life have I worn a Halloween costume even remotely scary.
My mom made all my Halloween costumes for me until middle school, when I decided I was too cool for diy.
A major highlight of my childhood Halloween costumes has to be the bumblebee/Little Red Riding Hood crossover I debuted at about three-years old.
My mother and grandmother had put in a painstaking amount of effort constructing the cutest Little Red Riding Hood outfit for me to wear, but at the last minute, I decided I actually wanted to wear the bumblebee costume from the year prior.
In an effort to get me out of the house, my mother agreed and started putting me in the old outfit, but halfway through changing, the Little Red Riding Hood cape became much more appealing than bumblebee wings.
That year my costume ended up being, in the words of my mother, “James Bond crossed with Little Red Riding Hood.”
The fully black outfit under the red cape really made it pop, though, in my opinion.
My freshman year of college, I didn’t understand how big of a deal Halloween was. I recruited a friend from my dorm hallway, found a basic idea on Pinterest and threw it together pretty quickly.
We went out as mermaids, the outfit concocted of carefully tied blue, shiny material off Amazon and cheap starfish clip-ons.
Then Saturday hit and I realized no one was wearing the same outfit twice and panicked. We went digging through my closet and put together a weird attempt at a frat boy/school girl duo, a college classic.
The next year, I came prepared. I started prepping my friend and I’s outfits in August. Overkill? Absolutely. But a year later, people still tell me how iconic these costumes were.
I pieced together less-than-realistic Thor and Loki costumes, complete with horns and a foam hammer.
We went into Saturday completely winging it and ended up digging through her boyfriend’s closet.
Inspiration struck, and we went out that night adorned in polo shirts and khaki shorts, complete with backwards hats, fake mustaches and drawn-on eyeshadow hickeys. The ultimate frat boys.
Consistency is key, I guess?
I started brainstorming my Halloween costume in early September this year, determined to assemble two put-together costumes.
A friend and I decided early on that we wanted to go as Maleficent and Aurora, but didn’t finish putting the costumes together until the day of.
I ended up stuffing my horns with socks in an attempt to get them to stand up straight, but ditched them after about 15 minutes because I thought they were ugly. My poor friend was stuck running around the mall at noon because her top hadn’t come yet.
Despite the technical difficulties, these costumes are probably my favorite of college so far, or close to, if not tied with, night two.
I was digging through pinterest one night and came upon a tank top that said “Support Rock” that I thought was funny, and my idea grew from there.
A friend and I put together full on rockstar fits, complete with red clip in hair, silver hair tinsel, smoky eyes and ripped fishnets.
We ditched the party after an hour in favor of McDonald’s, but thankfully, the costumes will live on in the, I kid you not, 400 photos we took.
Whether I start planning months in advance or the day of Halloween next year is still a mystery, but maybe I’ll come up with a frat boy reboot for my last year of undergrad.
Or, for the first time in my life, I could invest in some fake blood and go as something scary. Or a bloody frat boy, maybe? Only time will tell.
Price can be reached at [email protected].
