Cool Girl Halloween, Weird Girl Halloween, and the Pressure to Be Something
When did Halloween stop being about dressing up and start being about proving what kind of girl you are?
Somewhere between Pinterest boards, TikTok trends, and Instagram photo dumps, Halloween became less about the costume and more about the aesthetic. Now we have “Cool Girl Halloween,” “Weird Girl Halloween,” “Niche Halloween,” and of course, the classic expectation that Halloween is the one night a year when girls are supposed to dress sexy.
But seriously, what happened?
Halloween used to be about throwing on a ridiculous costume, going out with your friends, and having fun. Now it feels like there’s an unspoken competition to be the girl who thought of something no one else did, but somehow everyone still gets the reference.
The irony of “Niche Halloween” is that once something becomes a trend, its not really niche anymore. We’re all trying so hard to be different that we’re starting to look the same.
Social media has turned Halloween into another opportunity to brand ourselves. Your costume isn’t just a costume anymore. It’s supposed to communicate your personality, your humor, your attractiveness, and how culturally aware you are. Are you the effortlessly cool girl who doesn’t look like she tried? The weird girl who references an obscure movie character? Or the sexy girl who somehow makes a firefighter costume fashionable?
And don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to look good, dressing sexy, or putting together a clever costume. The problem isn’t the costume. It’s the pressure to feel like you need to fit into a category.
What bothers me is how even our attempts at individuality have become something we need to label and address to our followers. We’re constantly being told to find our aesthetic, what is in and what is out, and ways to make ourselves recognizable. Halloween, a holiday literally about pretending to be someone else, has somehow become another night where we worry about how people perceive us.
Maybe social media hasn’t ruined Halloween fully, but it has changed what we expect from it. Instead of asking ourselves, “what would be fun to dress up as?” we’re asking, “what would people think of this?”
I think we’ve forgotten that being interesting doesn’t require being niche, being confident doesn’t require being sexy, and being cool doesn’t require looking effortless.
So this Halloween, be the obscure movie character, the basic black cat without needing a latex body suit, or put on something you pulled together 20 minutes before leaving the house.
Not everything needs an aesthetic. Sometimes a costume can just be a costume.
I mean, I was a football player one year!
xx, KJ
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