Halloween Kid Costumes = EPIC Pwnage

Since national Dress-Like-A-Slut Day is coming soon, I said to myself months before that if I managed to lose enough weight, I would dress myself in any costume that I wanted. I had contemplated such beauties as Candy Corn Witch and Hatsune Miku before deciding on the blue dress that Belle wears in the Disney version of Beauty and the Beast.

Well, months have passed and I haven't met my goal. I feel that dressing up as a thunder-thighed and bingo-winged version of the trim princess would be utterly ridiculous, too. Rather than skipping Halloween entirely, I will opt to wear this t-shirt with some black cat ears.

Image courtesy of I Can Has Cheezburger's Lolmart

After I ordered the shirt, it suddenly hit me of how ironic it was that now, as an adult, I wanted to dress up as a princess when it never occurred to me to be one as a child. It was at that point which I started to remember how as a kid I just didn't care what my body looked like. Even though, as a second-grader, it was obvious that I weighed a little more than what I should have for my age and height, I still had not developed the self-consciousness of my body that comes from aging, puberty and bullying. My kid self relished being "me" and knew exactly what she wanted to dress up as because when you're a kid, you ARE your costume.

And I wanted to be Catwoman!

Yes, you read that correctly: Catwoman! Why such a costume? Because my 8-year-old self had recently watched Batman Returns on video cassette with Dad and concluded that a vengeful Selina Kyle was that best thing to have graced Gotham's streets. Despite being a villain, she was a woman who knew exactly what she wanted and she wasn't going to let anyone, not her murderous boss, not a Danny Devito Penguin, heck, not even Michael Keaton's Batman, deter her from it. (Plus, the scene in which she plays "tic-tac-toe" with the thief's face is just freakin' awesome.)

My poor parents. They never knew what was coming to them.








I remind you of the time frame: 1995. This was prior to my family owning a computer and taking advantage of using AOL dial-up connections and ordering things on Amazon.com. Back in those days, if you wanted something, you had to drive in a car, go to a physical store and ask for a product. It couldn't just be done sitting on a chair in the comfort of your own home. I was asking for a costume that was roughly outdated by 3 years since the movie came out in 1992. I could only imagine the ordeal they went through to find that damn costume.

Alas, if it were only that simple. My poor mother had to contend with another factor:

One store eventually pulled through and I came home from school one day to try on my very own Catwoman costume. I remember that it felt like Christmas had come early that year.

It was very tight-fitting and the black ensemble went very well with my white sneakers and chubby tummy. It was painfully obvious that did not have the slim figure to actually look good in the disguise.

But you know what? I didn't care. I was Catwoman.

So, this Halloween, if you have kids come up to your door, give 'em the good chocolate. That's all they really want, anyway.

Barb the French Bean