"That's the point of Halloween, isn't it? It's spooky season, after all. But where other kids seemed to delight in this, like passengers on a roller coaster feeling exhilarated by the terror, for me, it was distinctly unpleasant, and the weirdness of feeling out of step with everyone else was a second, ancillary unpleasantness, one that blossomed in particular in my twenties as going out on Halloween became a de rigueur social event."
"During that period, failing to come up with an elaborate costume became proof that one was irredeemably boring-the more so in queer circles, where "gay Halloween" and its focus on increasingly niche things to dress up as became so culturally entrenched that it turned into a meme. I hate gay Halloween. What do you mean you're going as the '80s synthpop-inspired mourning fugue-state fever dream of a college professor from a late 2000s animated web short?"
A person stopped celebrating Halloween in early adolescence because of fear rather than religious reasons. Other children enjoyed the spookiness, but costumed people produced intense discomfort and a sense of being out of sync. Adulthood amplified the alienation as elaborate costume expectations, especially within queer social scenes, became normative and performative. Costumes are perceived as granting power to alter identity and social roles, which triggers anxiety about unpredictable behavior and the erosion of familiar social rules. The fear centers on people adopting different selves rather than traditional supernatural imagery, producing social pressure and exclusion. The individual recalls that costumes enable others to step into new bodies and positions, intensifying the threat to stable social order.
Read at The Walrus
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