Long Live Halloween

I'll be posting some pics on here later, but I wanted to link on some interesting Halloween articles. Here is one on the alarming trends in costumes that children are seen wearing. This is an op-ed piece that is really a smart indictment on the holiday. Sorry for those of you who have already read these pieces.

There is no doubt that the celebration has gotten evermore slutty and just plain old offensive. A party over in Huntington last night inspired a comment by a girl who just moved down here to say that she couldn't believe that that was a Mormon party. I didn't go to that particular one, but knowing some of the people involved with that party, I have no doubt that it was every bit as trashy as she purported. A good friend of the girl who hosted the party who I know pretty well told me in a brief IM conversation that her costumes were slutty. In the 27 line conversation that we had she described her outfits as "slutty" several times, but it's cool because this is going to be her last one before she receives her endowment in the near future.

This has been a common Dia de Los Muertos/All Saints Day/Post Halloween topic of conversation for many people, I'm sure. There is the joke from the movie Mean Girls that goes, "Halloween is the one night a year when girls can dress like a total slut, and no other girls can say anything about it." Quite obviously, this is something that a lot of people talk about and then leave alone until next Dia de Los Muertos/All Saints Day/Post Halloween when we're all somehow shock/surprised/appalled about the kinds of costumes that people don on this most wonderful of holidays.

This got me thinking about the question of who is at fault with this trend - is it the manufacturers who target ever younger consumers? or the people buying the products? Basically, the people supplying or those who are demanding it? Although manufacturers should be responsible and sensible in the decision making that goes into what they produce, it seems that it would behoove us, the consumers, to curb our own demand for such products. It starts with ourselves, and then projects to those who are within the immediate sphere of our influence, i.e. families, friends, etc.

I think this is a similar problem to pornography and its distribution. There is only so much you can do to stifle the supply, but in the end some idiot is always going to be dumb and just go for the profits. In any case, if you limit the supply then you artificially create a scarcity and the equilibrium price increases and the incentive to produce goes up as well. So you've got to curb demand, and that means changing the desires of the people. And how does that start? Through your own efforts on a personal level, then your family, friends, etc. I believe the ultimate vehicle for that is the gospel, but that's another topic for another day.

This also got me thinking about my own observance of the prescribed standards of modesty. And like most people, I realize that I can improve in my own response to the burgeoning epidemic of slutty Halloween. It's hard not to compare myself with other people and think, well, I'm better off than that guy/girl, but hopefully I hold myself up to loftier heights than the next guy/girl who can be just as dumb as I can be. I just hate the transition point of realizing that you probably could have made a smarter decision about something and knowing that's probably the right course of action, but your behavioral pattern is still that of the person who wants to do the thing that you just realized you probably should avoid. It's like a tug-of-war between knowing what's right, but still having old habits in place that prevent you from actually following through.

Anyway, have you seen that episode of Scrubs where Dr. Kelso is giving a lecture to Dr. Cox about how sometimes you just have to love the people your friends do because that is just part of the deal? And JD is listening to their conversation and rhetorically asks Dr. Kelso if he really believed in what he was saying, and then answers his own question, and tickles Dr. Kelso and walks away. What's funny about the scene is that they both aren't paying any attention at all to what JD is talking about, and he's off to the side having this big epiphany that only really matters to him, but the observing parties are just indifferent to the realization that he came to. That's kind of how I feel like this post is - I'm JD, and you guys are Cox and Kelso. Not that you don't care, but that I'm just kind of thinking out loud and some of these realizations I'm having aren't as significant to you as they are to me. But I guess that might just be a nice way of saying that really you don't care. Oh well, I tried.