Halloween Identity Crises and Slutty Witches
By wchung | 22 Feb, 2025

I like having at least one day a year to get back in touch with the uncensored me.

With Halloween around the corner, I asked my little brother what he wanted to be. Instead of the concrete answer I was expecting, he sighed and muttered, “I don’t know” in a melodramatic desperation only an eight-year-old could pull off convincingly.

This certainly wasn’t the case in the past, when he blithely assumed the role of Indiana Jones, Spiderman and to the glee of my grandparents – a happy orange pumpkin, back in his more rotund and unassuming days. But now that he’s had sufficient peer interactions and drank from the fountain of pick-your-own-reputation, nothing is taken at face value anymore. He can’t just wear something because he thinks it looks nice. After all, what would the rest of his third grade class think? Suddenly, something as simple as choosing a Halloween costume has evolved into a full fledged prepubescent identity crisis.

Lately, Halloween has been getting a bad rep amongst conservative churchgoers who deem it a “devil’s holiday” and a shameful excuse for girls to dress slutty. Whether Halloween is a devil’s holiday or not is between God and Lucifer himself, but personally, when I see little trick-or-treaters dressed up as munchkins, Satan’s Followers isn’t the first thing that comes to mind.

And about those closet sluts who come out on Halloween, I can’t say I mind so much. In a culture that outwardly celebrates individuality but secretly thrives under uniformity, I find their presence refreshing. If it’s really that offensive when a girl is proud of her body and feels inclined to show it off one day out of the year, then why don’t you just look away?

I’m not just saying this because I’ve donned a slutty fill-in-the-bank, because I haven’t. Where I live, October doesn’t agree with skirts and I’m not keen on catching pneumonia. But if God came down and rearranged the seasons, I wouldn’t be opposed to it. You only have the body of a 23-year-old once and frankly, if someone were to write on my tombstone — “Here lies Susan Ye, wicked rack,” I think I would be flattered.

Point is, Halloween should be celebrated as a day of liberation, a day when we take back what society has taken away from us at a very young age, a day when we can shed our protective layers. Like Russian dolls. For those who are fortunate enough to know what they really want to be, that is. And brave enough to show it. As for the rest of you, all I can say is — let me know when you’ve graduated third grade.