When worst-dressed really means best-dressed

MANILA, Philippines - It’s that most wonderful time of the year, when garish colors and over-the-top styles are more than all right.

The Today show, that bastion of journalism where already overplayed viral “hits” get a five-second extension to their shelf lives, recently did a mini-segment on Halloween costumes available on online clothing shop www.yandy.com. One of them is the Sexy Pizza outfit: a nude-colored body-hugging mini-dress with a Dracula-like upright collar at the back and the most unappetizing pizza pattern on a triangular panel on the front. It’s ridiculous, of course, but its bigger crime is that it’s boring. I mean, only three kinds of toppings and not even a stuffed crust?

My Halloween costume standards got raised when I joined the crowd ogling at a P. Burgos costume parade a few years ago. It was a display that could make even the notorious Halloween costume enthusiast Heidi Klum look like a wallflower: tiyanaks, writhing corpses, and the whole cast of Pan’s Labyrinth marched down the street. Even non-horror-themed costumes were elaborate, like Satellite Dish Girl who was covered in silver paint from her toes to the tip of the upside-down umbrella stuck on her head. That night, every exposed inch of skin was smothered in makeup and everyone wanted to be the scariest kids on the block, their costumes obviously planned and prepared weeks in advance. It was as maximalist a costume party as it could get and the most fun thing ever.

This kind of drama isn’t for everyone, though, when it comes putting together a costume; since I’m too lazy, I’d rather to walk around on Halloween night sporting a pork pie hat and a ginger beard, telling anyone who wouldn’t recognize my costume, “I am the one who knocks.” Pop culture personalities, whether real or fictional, are fun sources of ideas and a lot of them are easy to execute. Plus, it’s a hipster kind of cool to pay tribute to an admired figure by aping them; we want to laugh with people as they laugh at us.

There are also those who prefer to look less like a nightmare and more of a fantasy come to life. Lots of girls, especially, want to look “pretty” and/or “sexy” on Halloween night, the grown-up version of Disney Princess dressing: Cleopatra, Marilyn Monroe, Britney Spears (from any era pre-2007), a cheerleader, a teacher, a butcher, a baker, a candlestick maker…basically any character that can be fetishized and sexualized. Even non-human creatures and non-living stuff are fair game; see: pizza. The degree varies only in the amount of effort put into the outfit. Some opt for the Karen Smith way of topping off a skimpy dress with a pair of animal ears. “I’m a mouse, duh!” (And now we’ve filled our Mean Girls Halloween reference quota.)

As it is with any kind of mask we put on, our costume preferences say a lot about who we are. They’re an amplification of how we see ourselves, and Halloween serves as an excuse to make people look at us the way we want them to without getting branded as attention-seekers. On Halloween night, everyone’s hungry for attention. And that is A-OK.