Yes, We Once Dressed Up as a Teabag

Well, it's that time of year again when we're forced to ask the quintessential question in the 'mo fight for equal rights: What, to the American slave gay, is the Fourth of July Halloween?

You can feel the excitement build as the day grows closer.  For the past week, I haven't had a single conversation with a fellow OUTLaw in which the topic "OMG what are you dressing as for Halloween" hasn't come up.  Even our friends on the New Jersey Supreme Court got involved, dressing up our cute friend "marriage" in a hilariously slutty "legally-cognizable-relationships-that-will-probably-get-called-civil-unions" costume.  (We're not witty enough come up with that one on our own).

And, to be sure, the straights get excited about dressing up, too.  But nothing compares to the fervor of the gays.  Yesterday we were talking with one of our 3L friends, who is going as Trailor Trash (apparently to commemorate our midwestern, trailor park roots).  "I'm buying a mullet wig and carrying a six pack of Natty Light, but I don't think that will cut it," he told me.  I suggested adding a moustache.  "Are you kidding?  Halloween isn't about getting ir right; it's about looking fabulous."  And let's face it, Trailor Trash is pretty tame in comparison to most gay halloween costumes that really show our inner sluts.  Another friend is going as Wonder Woman, and he's desperate to find someone to join him as Bat Girl.  Whether it's Nina Garcia, fashion director of Elle Magazine, Princess Di, Blanche Deveraux or Maria Sharapova, give us a stunning (or middle-aged) woman and we'll give you a Halloween costume. 

Fishwatch said it best in his post titled: "When Our Mom Helped Us Move She Found Our Wigs from Past Halloweens and Immediately Started to Cry..."  When we came out, clearly all our mothers had the same fear Mrs. Fishwatch had when she found Fishwatch's wigs: that to be gay meant to abandon - instead of to find - our sexual identities as men (or women, in the case of lesbians, who I'm pretty sure don't read this blog). 

So, what does Halloween mean to us gays?  Why do we use the opportunity to dress up as -- fabulous divas?  Are we just masquerading as the dolls we were laughed at for playing with in kindergarden middle school as a high school senior?  Why do we love putting on trashy eyeliner (ok maybe some of our friends wear this out regularly anyway), pumps, and cheap jewelry?  Do our costumes represent who we'd like to be, or who the world sees us as?  And for those of us not going in drag, is it because we're too heteronormative or because our idea for a costume is better than yours?  Since we spent so much of our adolescence "Covering" who we were, do the gays use Halloween, when most people hide behind a costume, as a chance to reveal a little more? 

Don't get us wrong: We like drag.  We like drag queens.  But we also like men.  A lot.  Even so, for  some reason I have the feeling that my campaign to get my friends to dress up as He-Man or Ian Somerhalder just isn't going to take off.

Comments

[Aatom]

nicely done. but i tend to eschew the dark art of exploring my inner drag queen - my bone structure just doesn't do it justice. i think Marilyn Manson's take on the holiday resonates the most for me. Halloween is for amateurs, he said recently. I'm scary all the fucking time.