April 29, 2009

How the skag stole Halloween

Back before parents began panicking about their children existing in an unsupervised state, Halloween was mainly a kids' holiday -- at least back to the 1940s when trick-or-treating had become pretty common in the US. My brothers and I went trick-or-treating every Halloween when we were kids, and so did every other pre-pubescent kid in the neighborhood. Furthermore, we started late, around 7:30 or 8, and stayed out awhile, getting back well after dark. With so much time, we traveled all over, to parts of the neighborhood we'd never normally visit.

When I dressed up to hand out candy in high school, mid-late-1990s, kids had basically stopped going out like that. Only a few would show up, none in big groups of friends -- just accompanied (all the way to the door) by their parents -- and they started very early, around 4 or 5pm, and were done before dark. And these were only the kids within a roughly 3 or 4-block radius. None of this has changed since.

Because our culture has become steadily more geared to adults, rather than children or adolescents, it was only a matter of time before adults decided to take Halloween for themselves, as a sort of Carnival. This was underfoot at least as early as 1994, when the Halloween episode of My So-Called Life featured the two Baby Boomer parents renting pirate and sexy princess costumes, which helps them re-invigorate their flaccid sex life. The streets are still filled with little kids, though, so this must have been a transition year.

To put some numbers on how much things have changed, I did a Google search for "halloween costumes" and went through the first page of results. Five sites had numbers available. Here is a table of the number of costumes available for boys, girls, men, and women, followed by a list of the adult : young ratio and the female : male ratio.

site boy girl man woman
buycostumes 767 719 1109 1556
halloweenexpress 358 330 597 648
halloweencostumes 252 196 329 433
costumes4less 974 813 1762 2577
incostume 121 145 120 315

Adult : Young

1.79
1.81
1.70
2.43
1.64

Female : Male
1.21
1.02
1.08
1.24
1.91

No matter which high-traffic site we look at, adult women are by far the target audience for Halloween costumes. Regardless of age, females are buying more than males -- "look at meee!" -- but age is a much stronger predictor, and not in the direction you'd think, i.e., exhibitionistic youth. You might argue that it's just a return to the masked ball tradition, but those men didn't look like queers, nor the women like skanks. No, this is just old people annoyingly and embarrassingly clinging to the spotlight for attention when they should bow out and go where they'll do well (politics, running a business, etc.).

It's yet another example of how young people today are in many ways more mature than the irresponsible adults. For instance, STDs among young people have plummeted in recent years, while among the middle-aged they have shot up. Of course, all we hear from the morons with megaphones is how kids these days don't want to grow up, and if only they behaved as responsibly as we do. Given how few privileges and how little opportunities for fun kids have today, and given how many entertainment and leisure outlets are geared toward adults, there has never been any time in history when young people have wanted so badly to become adults -- so they can have something to do.

I'd melt my eyeballs before I took a long look at the typical over-25 woman in a barely-there costume. Almost every woman that age is too old to have much worth showing off, especially in the legs (which is why they abandon short-shorts around 25). By then their skin's succumbed to too much sun exposure, and their collagen has been zapped to hell by all the glycation that their high-carb diet has brought about. And sorry, but no one with an increasingly masculine face can pretend to be Snow White.

But at least the high schoolers still get dressed up for Halloween. If only you could freeze them at 17, like this one from the teen dance club (who I mentioned here). Now that'll put lead in yer pencil.

6 comments:

  1. Given how few privileges and how little opportunities for fun kids have today, and given how many entertainment and leisure outlets are geared toward adultsNot when it comes to sports. Children have an almost unlimited selection of organized sports: school teams, Little League, midget football, soccer, lacrosse, and on and on. What about those of us on the dead side of 21? We have God-damned cartball, and that's about it.

    Peter

    ReplyDelete
  2. "For instance, STDs among young people have plummeted in recent years, while among the middle-aged they have shot up."


    The people born from about 1965-1975 were effectively propagandized by the left because they still believed the media and their professors intristically as the evidence against them wasn't as legion as it is now. I also think, like myself, that they just didn't want to believe what they saw happening in the 90s and kept wishing it would go away. Promiscious women in their 30's and 40's (and 50's!) really are disgusting creatures as they should have children and grandchildren to occupy them by then.



    That pic of that hot babe is an exact example of why the younger gals below 23 or so have such an enormous advantage over the ones who are 28-32 (when so many of them finally start looking hard to get married). Its like trying to sell beer 8 months past its freshness date and being shocked it can't compete with what just came out of the factory. Stale potato chips aren't as good as fresh ones.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Actually, we had quite a few kids come to our door last Halloween. Most of them were in large groups, but had an adult with them. I think trick or treating is coming back.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Man, I remember running around with a gang of other boys from my grade school, completely unsupervised. We didn't leave until dark (what was the point?) and got back home around 10:00 - 10:30 (even when Halloween fell on a school night!) and then would be sorting and trading candy until 10:30-11:00 before leaving to go to our separate homes and going to bed. None of those lame plastic pumpkin buckets or premade candy bags, it was old pillowcases all the way. The goal was the haul.

    I've seen the same thing you have, kids going out with their parents. It's a damn shame. You certainly can't try and use apples to dent the siding of the guy's house who thought he was being helpful by giving out apples if your parents are with you.

    "Promiscuous women in their 30's and 40's (and 50's!) really are disgusting creatures as they should have children and grandchildren to occupy them by then."

    I fucking hate these hags. They're the most sexually aggressive women by orders of magnitude, and the least desirable, which is a shitty, shitty combination. One of these women came over and licked my forehead at a bar last weekend (a kiss would have been bad enough). That's how she started things off. My friend and I were in the middle of chatting up women our own age at the time. Just stumbles in drunk, interrupts, and licks my forehead.

    Yes, at 27 I'm going to abandon the other twenty-something girls my friend and I have been joking and laughing with for the past half hour so I can jump all over a smashed 40-plus, probably divorced with kids, wrinkled old battle axe. Yuck, yuck, yuck.

    This happens all the time. Especially at the upscale bars in the heart of downtown. Put on a shirt with a collar and a sport coat and some old, drunk hag thinks it's an invitation to run her hands all over your chest.

    Feminists: Can you imagine how this stuff would be perceived and what the repercussions would be if the gender roles were reversed: old, drunk, undesirable men licking and groping twenty-something women at bars? At least most establishments have bouncers in place to shut this type of behavior down, right quick.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Gross. I read the licking-the-forehead thing from someone else too... Roosh maybe. Hopefully the trend doesn't spread -- although you can avoid it altogether by only going where college girls or younger hang out.

    I had something similar happen when I went to a club that was mixed 20-somethings and 30-somethings, average age being about 30.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Perhaps we should not assume that all 30, 40, or 50-something year-old women are sex-starved maniacs, just on the basis of a few drunk wierd-os out there? I've forgiven the male gender far stranger offenses...
    A lesson in logic maybe? Forehead lickers are wierd, whether male or female. A woman licked your forehead, therefore she is wierd. Her age is not relevant. RF -Your comments imply that if a 22year old had licked your forehead, you would have been fine with it?

    ReplyDelete

You MUST enter a nickname with the "Name/URL" option if you're not signed in. We can't follow who is saying what if everyone is "Anonymous."