Opinion
Halloween exposes RF’s inner children
November 3, 2006
Until this year I spent the last several Halloween weekends in Madison bingeing on Milwaukee’s Best and Qdoba burritos, sleeping in urine-scented elevators and flushing pepper spray from my eyes.
My old age seemed to be catching up with me this year, so I sought after the tamer environment of downtown River Falls. To much surprise, there were hundreds of college students packing house parties and bars. Even more surprising was the number of students who dressed up for the holiday fun.
I wasn’t quite sure what to expect for an Allhallows Eve in River Falls. It was rare to run into any familiar faces or costume critics within the incapacitated crowds in Madison, so any costume hecklers were easily disregarded. However, in River Falls, I imagined it would be quite easy to identify friends dressed up in laughable attire.
Out of fear of embarrassment, I didn’t expect to see anyone wearing the grossly perverted and otherwise incriminating costumes I’d seen in recent past.
Much to my delight though, I was wrong. Nearly everyone who was out on the town last weekend was wearing some kind of weird getup. In fact, the students who weren’t dressed up were the ones who looked out of place. And the wide range of costumes was some- thing of a spectacle.
By far the best were the ones created from old, wacky clothes and sheer originality and creativity, not the ones sealed in Wal-Mart packaging. The Anchorman quartet was a big hit, and the posse of Smurfs was imaginative. Though they looked a bit peculiar if they weren’t with their respective groups.
The drag outfit for a man is far from a new idea, but its timeless qualities keep it premier. There were dozens of guys dressed up as some form more characteristically masculine than the other, which added to the humor.
A large shout-out went to the late Steve Irwin (a.k.a. the Crocodile Hunter), as many chose to sport Irwin’s khaki outfit and hiking boots as their costumes. One lad even carried with him a large stuffed crocodile to fully complete the effect. At certain instances throughout the night he pounced on the croc, putting it in submission in such a way that looked as if he was sodomizing the poor thing.
One scantily clad young lady caught my attention. “Oh my goodness,” I remember thinking to myself. “There’s the shy girl from my HHP class. And she’s dressed up as a- ,” I paused to size up her costume, “-as a smelly pirate hooker!" That was one of my first memories of the fantastic night when I woke up the next day, and it was refreshing to know that even the most conservative-minded college students still like to dress up in holiday spirit.
Knowing these costumes make you look like tramps or expose too much crotch -- especially for the guys -- wasn’t a concern. So kudos goes to all of you costume wearers. Way to demonstrate your inner-child.
Not long ago your main goal for Halloween night was to land a heap of candy, but now wearing a Halloween costume has taken on a different meaning. It shows you still possess somewhat of a youthful and carefree mentality, which is precisely what you should be holding dear at this point in adulthood. It shows you have the knowledge that you’ll probably look ridiculous, but you have the understanding that for one night out of the year, in the name of fun, it’s socially permissible to dress up in a childish way and nearly sodomize stuffed crocodiles.
Ben Jipson is a student at UW-River Falls.