The Great Wonder Woman Costume Fiasco
Halloween 1977 was supposed to be a wonderful time.
By “wonderful”, I mean that my most beloved and hoped-for costume would grace the neighborhood and make me the envy of all around: I was going to be Wonder Woman, which was enjoying its heyday on TV and leading me to fight fierce battles against evil men on the playground, which I usually won.
My grandma, who never lived outside Alabama, was a seamstress and was making the costume. Growing up (and until I was nearly 30) is was a given that either she, my mom or both always had my current measurements, in case I saw something in a catalog I liked, which they would then make for me. (Ask me about the taffeta dress which suddenly materialized for my seventh-grade Christmas dance!)
So it was with my super hero costume. I eagerly watched for the UPS guy to show up, and daily was disappointed. I was getting scared when, a few days before The Big Day, I had nothing to wear. Visions of having to don “the sheet” and be a ghost haunted me.
Halloween arrived and at 3 p.m. I still had no costume. My granny had failed me. I waited another two hours, crying. Finally...HE ARRIVED! The truck pulled up, and my second-grade eyes glowed with adoration as the man brought the box to the front door, where Mom whisked it inside. We ripped it open with only an hour left before sundown, pulled it out of the box to admire the gold fabric paint on the bottom, and….
THERE WERE LUMPS.
BOOBS. TITS. BREASTS.
On this costume specifically made for a seven-year-old child.
I was so far beyond appalled I burst into tears again. How in the hell could I possibly wear this monstrosity that made me look like a grown woman? I was a kid who wanted bullet-repelling wristbands, not nose cone-looking breasts.
The choice of “tits or ghost” was upon me, and weighed on me like Nixon’s choice to lie or face up. I did what any people-pleasing little girl of the 70’s would do, mainly because I hadn’t been taught any better: I wore that costume in all its glory, tits and all, with my shoe coverings and my headband and my amazingly soft gold wristbands. I trick-or-treated in that costume come Hell or high water (or the surprise of neighbors, which is what did come.)
I can’t remember which of my parents had the sad duty of dragging my humiliated ass out there that year, and I have no clue what behind-the-scenes discussions occurred. Did Mom and Dad have the “oh she’s so cute” vs “What the fuck do you mean-she looks like a stripper!” talk? Did my mom castigate my grandma for adding those two mounds of surprise into the costume?
I have no idea. All I know is I made the candy haul of a lifetime, and had my first experience with being uncomfortable in a costume meant to be silly.
The next year, Mom made my costume herself: I was a Sneetch, and had that damn star of conformity on my belly. I also had a bill which tied on and nearly broke my nose. But I was happy, because I got to be me, not an adult’s twisted perception of me-in-costume-portraying-an-adult.
As I got older, there would be Halloweens full of dressing as old women, animals and whatnot, until I was 16 and my then-boyfriend and I dressed as ourselves: the punks we were. My parents were out of town, and my grandparents were in town “watching the house”, which meant they were there to rein in my rebellious self. Granny invited my cute, mohawked boyfriend over for dinner, which in Southern style meant All the BLT’s You Can Eat. I know this because Grandaddy told my boyfriend that “a growin’ boy needs more food”. During dinner Granny apologized in her own way, subtly acknowledging that maybe tits were a bad idea for a kid’s costume. The boyfriend and I then giggled our way through the neighborhood as we celebrated our last year as candy-hopefuls, talking about how we would make sure that never happened to *our* kids.
I don’t know what happened to that boyfriend, but once I had my own kids, I never once even offered anything remotely close to “sexy” anything as an option, *because children are not meant to be sexy*. Ever. They’re meant to be kids, to enjoy creatively embracing the Darkest Night of the Year, to spend time with their friends goofing off.