Costume Drama

A few weeks ago I was discussing Halloween with a random father at the Tot Lot. I told him that Steven was initially against dressing Milo up, since he wouldn't understand the whole thing anyway.

"But to me," I said, "it seems like the whole point of having kids is to get to celebrate Halloween, right? Isn't that why you have kids? So you can get a few more years of Trick-or-Treating?"

The father gave me a bemused smile.

"Anyway, he's going as a tiger," I said. "What's Will going as?"

"Frida Kahlo's monkey," said the father. And then he asked me if Milo was eating only organic food. So yeah, that's Park Slope.

In any event, yesterday we put Milo into his tiger costumer (technically it was a Tigger costume, but I prefered to think of it as the more generic tiger) and went to the Halloween festivities at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Where we discovered that apparently there had been a run on tiger/Tigger costumes, because there were at least 5 other little tigers wandering around the cherry esplanade. None as cute as Milo, of course, who has recently learned to walk holding on to only one hand, and who, as a result, was extremely interested in wobbling his way over to whatever sparkly piece of litter or pink stroller (he is obsessed with pink strollers) he could find.

As the afternoon wore on Milo banged a drum and played the triangle and eventually it was time for the dance contest. Since walking is still new, dancing isn't really in the realm of things one might reasonably expect Milo to do, so we just held him and watched the other dancers. A group of kids got up and danced around, and then the band leader announced a winner.

"Where's the boy in the tights?" he said. "He's my winner."

A shriek went up from one corner of the dance floor and you could see the boy in neon pink tights and a cape jumping up and down.

"What's your name?" asked the band leader.

"This is Supergirl," said the boy's father.

The band leader, and pretty much the entire crowd, did a double take. Nope, we all agreed. Definitely a boy.

"Okay Supergirl," said the band leader. "You're our winner."

The kid was obviously thrilled to death, and it reminded me of a short exchange I'd caught the other day on the Urban Baby message boards, about whether one would allow one's kindergarten-aged son to dress up as Princess Leah.

"Depends," someone had replied. "If he wants to wear the white bikini costume, definitely no."

By the end of the dance contest Milo was tired, so we stuffed him into the stroller and made our way home. We passed a bevvy of Spidermans, two girls dressed as American Indians, which seemed a little impolitic, and a whole host of infants too young to even sit up dressed as bumblebees and lobsters.

Costume technology has come a long way in the past 20 years or so, when most people wore homemade costumes, or if you got one from the store it was basically just a plastic sheet that you tied around your neck. And a plastic mask with a solitary rubber band and a little air hole cut out where your mouth was. By the end of the day the mask was always all soggy and gross from trapped breath, and the rubber band usually broke.

Today's costumes are full body affairs that look like real clothing. The superhero costumes come with muscles. Masks seem to be out; hoods are in. on the one hand these costumes look like more fun, but on the other I always liked seeing what I could cobble together out of my own clothing. As though if I could rearrange my wardrobe in just the right way I might become someone else.