I like Halloween for the costumes. Not because I think they’re imaginative or innovative (last year I think there were more Spartans on the campus than in the movie), but because of what they say about the people wearing them.

Halloween in college is like Freud’s wet dream. Why have people lie down on a couch and work through their childhood to find out about their repressed desires when you could just as easily sit back and look around Route 1 every Oct. 31?

What’s so fantastic about it is people have the chance – with a good social excuse – to dress and act however they wish. Always wondered what it feels like to wear a skirt? Go for it! Kind of like the idea of being dressed fully in leather? No problem! Want to act like your costume? Why not? It’s Halloween! The only way you can really attract angry stares is not dressing up at all.

Halloween is our annual safety valve. Once a year, we have the opportunity to blow off all the steam that builds up in 364 days of conformist clothing and behavior. Halloween reveals that, when we throw off preconceived notions of appropriate dress and behavior, everyone has more fun. Also, there’s candy. And yet the real world seems to be colliding with my treasured day of apparel anarchy.

When we were young, it was simple and easy. We would all dress up as things we wanted to be or thought would look good. Those of us with liberal parents got a lot of leeway. My little sister dressed as a pirate (painted mustache and all), and I dressed as a purple unicorn. Whatever, I liked unicorns, and it was Halloween, so I was allowed to say so. Later on, kids got a little more creative. One year, my brother dressed as Wolfgang Puck (a wolf costume with a bandana and a hockey-puck necklace), another year as a bush (burlap sack and leaves). Groups of friends came up with their own themed costumes (in fifth grade, my friends and I went as cereal mascots). And then came high school.

With the advent of ninth grade came a total shift of Halloween norms. Almost everyone was comfortably past puberty, and so Halloween became about what everything becomes about in high school: sex. Don’t get me wrong: As a 15-year-old, having your school full of sexy nurses or sexy cowgirls or sexy unicorns (okay, not as many unicorns as I would have liked) seemed like a daydream. But as the years went on, before I noticed, I had stopped dressing up. Maybe it was the public school system killing my imagination, or maybe I was just distracted wondering how girls planned to skirt the dress code and still come to school as dominatrices, but I couldn’t come up with a good costume anymore.

Meanwhile, costumes got more and more similar. Boys dressed up as characters from the latest blockbuster (see last year’s 300 obsession), and girls stopped dressing up and started dressing down. I don’t know if it was because all women really hate clothes and are looking for any excuse to get out of them (doubt it) or if it was to get boys’ attention or, worst of all, just to fit in. I worry about my little sister going from pirate to prostitute-pirate, but most of all, I worry about our declining imaginations. If Halloween becomes more conformist than the rest of the year, we’ll all go insane by New Year’s.

So this year, try dressing as something you’re not supposed to. Play with gender; play with species; play with anything; just play. If you’re a young woman, don’t be content to be just another X-rated Disney princess. If you’re a young man, dress as an X-rated Disney princess. If you’re an acerbic columnist, write a puff-piece about a holiday. Once a year, give it a shot. I’ll see you out there; I’ll be the purple unicorn.

Malcolm Harris is a sophomore English and government and politics major. He can be reached at harrisdbk@gmail.com.