Oct31

hot stuff.

Posted on by
Standard

i loved wearing the costumes of my childhood era

and happily ‘suffered for my art.’

recent neighborhood nextdoor comments on the halloween costumes are wonderful:

They were so ugly but if you made your own costume, it wasn’t cool. We had to buy these things…jumpsuit tore easily, and elastic snapped off mask. And the sweat…and trying to breathe through the tiny mouth hole!

Those masks were so HOT! Didn’t hold us back tho! Was so safe then and went out by ourselves.

You couldn’t see out of them, sometimes the parts that touched your face were sharp, the elastic that held it on got tangled in hair. It is a wonder we survived Halloween in these masks!

then the elastic broke so your mom tied it and was even tighter and hotter! 

 and tangled it whatever hair was still left!

I’m surprised there weren’t thunderstorms inside the mask with all the condensation from breathing too. My favorite was my Hot Stuff costume. I still have a picture of me in it!


I totally had one of these costume with the mask…but this…this looks like a Pink Floyd video.

It was miserable wearing those masks, but we didn’t care, we wanted that candy !!

Looking back at those costumes, they were actually a little creepy!!  

How about the little tiny slit near the mouth so that you could attempt to get air? Your parents couldn’t understand why you had to take it off before you went up the steps of the next house. Your face would be drenched with sweat but you would wipe it off and keep going.

Made of suffocating plastic but we loved them anyway.

happy halloween!

—

“when you’re wearing an animal costume and something bad happens,

your facial expression doesn’t change. the animal is deadpan the whole time.

if you’re skiing in a gorilla suit and you fall, you just see a gorilla who has no emotion.

it’s just a stoic gorilla wildly falling down a hill, out of control.”

-dimitiri martin 

—

photo credit: vintage pinterest

73 responses »

  9. Half the fun at Halloween was the making of the costume. My mom made some incredible costumes over the years. We were also never allowed to wear masks because my mother worried about us seeing cars. Fond memories…

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply ↓

  11. I remember when I was in kindergarten my mother went through great effort to make me a clown costume for Halloween (and oh the time she and my grandmother took to make up my face!). The costume was such a hit (with her) that I wore it through several grades no matter how much I grew and my arms and legs stuck out, I recall, Beth.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply ↓

  14. Great! Lovely post Beth! Here in Spain we have been celebrating Halloween since last Friday because tomorrow is a big, national holiday, so tonight they are really going to enjoy the most horrifying night of the year, and I am too! Cheers!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply ↓

  15. Oddly enough, Beth, I can still smell the plastic masks of my youth. You are so correct about the plastic band and breathing in those things, but so worth the candy and caramel apples and cookies. That is a time gone by, never to be here again, but I’m sure the kids these days get plenty to feed their sugar high.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply ↓

  17. Those jumpsuits were literally like plastic bags! Nine times out of 10 it was ripped while we wore our costumes at school on Halloween and there was no way to fix them by the time we went out trick-or-treating that night! I agree with everything you said about the masks! One thing you forgot, but is very real to me is that in fourth grade I started wearing glasses…. There was absolutely no way to see because the glasses wouldn’t go over the mask

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply ↓

  20. We weren’t really a crafty family who could make our own costumes. Having said that, I remember being in the local parade with my Brownie troop in a homemade costume. My dad brought home a big appliance box from work, cut out the bottom, two arm holes and holes for my eyes. My mom wrapped it in aluminum foil, then wrapped every part of me body that wasn’t covered by the box in aluminum foil as well. That was the year I marched in the parade as the Tin Man from the Wizard of Oz. Thanks for making me recall that very, very, VERY old but fond memory!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply ↓

  22. You have just prompted some incredibly fond, and not so fond, memories. My favorite mask was the plastic gypsy mask. With mom’s colorful flared print skirt safety-pinned around my waist and bangles on my wrists, I felt every part the gypsy. Thanks for the memories this Halloween morning.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply ↓

  29. So many good memories of trick-or-treating on Halloween. After I thought those days were done, a bunch of us got together in high school to go as a millipede.🤣

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply ↓

Leave a comment