Costumes- pink sparkles and everyday leather

Halloween is usually my absolute favorite holiday. What's not to like? Costumes, crafts, treats, parties, alter-egos, creepiness...

I love making the costumes, but this year we kept it very simple. Baby Monster is Batman's The Joker and somehow, he hardly needed any costume. We dyed last spring's cotton suit purple- it already had an olive green shirt- sprayed his hair green and applied the right make up. His personality does the rest :)

Big Girl Monster decided months ago that she would be a Zombie Doctor. Once again, she made her own costume and also befitting HER personality, it took almost no effort. She sewed one patch onto the scrubs she got for her birthday (*real* scrubs, she's quick to point out). Make up makes the zombie they say and for her, this is certainly true. She is very no frills.

What I love about them is how they are right on my wavelength as far as costumes. Every day we wear a costume. Most days it's the "regular day" costume that we wear with slight variations. Baby Monster likes his "regular day" costume to say "I'm cool" while Big Girl Monster's "regular day" costume says "I'm sporty." (Meanwhile, my regular day costume says "Thank God I made it out of bed and got us all out the door with lunch boxes in hand and breakfast in our tummies.)

Sometimes it's fun to put on the princess costume with its pink, fluffy sparkles that says I am soft and I am beautiful and I like to twirl. It's fun, but harder, for boys to put this costume on too.

Sometimes we put on the dressy costume. We might need to for work or for a recital or for an event. But it can also be fun to dress up in fancy clothes- and then take them off and throw them on the floor.

Sometimes we put on scary costumes that speak of violence and fear. Ninjas, pirates, superheros, bad guys. And then we take them off and cuddle on the couch.

We dress for sports, for fencing and jogging and soccer and swimming.

We wear cozy pajamas and snuggle up under the covers when we're sick.

We dress tough and we dress beautiful; we dress for you and we dress for ourselves. It's all a costume.

Some people think the costumes are problematic. Girls these days can be overly fixated on the princess theme, undermining their own power while boys focus on hyper-masculine themes to the detriment of a full range of human expression. Women obsess about sexy kitten costumes and insist on wearing make up to the 7-11 while men wouldn't be caught dead in pink or fingernail polish or... whatever.

I love all these costumes. I love make up- which is a normal aspect of human culture- but I don't wear it every day or even feel that I "need" it. I love to see my girl dressed all in girl and my boy dressed all in boy. And then too vice versa. We swing both ways over here. Because it's all a costume. A wrapper for what's inside. The what's inside stays the same, but the costume can change to represent different aspects of who we are.

The costumes are not the problem. It's when people get stuck in one costume- I MUST wear make up; I can only wear pink princess outfits; I have to appear masculine and tough. That is where the problem lies. Help! I'm stuck and I can't get out. I only feel comfortable expressing one aspect of my whole self.

I am more than happy to wear my Doc Martins with ripped jeans and leather jacket when I'm feeling tough and then a swirly floral dress when I'm feeling soft. Or the dress with the doc Martins when I'm feeling both. I can put on a suit when I'm feeling businessy although I am almost never feeling businessy and this type of outfit invariably persists in feeling like a costume- but that's ok, if I need to feel businessy it helps put me in the role. (Terry Gross on Fresh Air recently interviewed former supreme court justice John Paul Stephens and asked him if putting on the robe helped him feel the part and he said that he'd never thought about it but yes, absolutely).

So on this weekend, we are our ghoulish, scary-fun selves and on most days we are our regular day selves, but on ANY day, we could be any of these selves. We're all in here just waiting for the costume.