From the Vault: The Halloween Costume Made Me Do It

What happens when we slip into a costume? Be it a monster pelt, a sexy witch or a simple children's ghost mask, a psychological transformation takes place. Join Robert Lamb and Christian Sager for a fittingly seasonal look at enclothed cognition and deindividuation. (Originally published October 8, 2015)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And it's Saturday.
Time to venture into the vault. This time we're gonna
be going back to an old classic October episode that
you did with Christian a few years ago. Right, that's right.
This is the Halloween costume made me do it? Uh,
this is the This is basically a study of what
happens when we put on Halloween mask. How into what

(00:27):
extent does it change who we are and how we behave.
Is a child wearing a Halloween mask more likely to
get into mischief than one that is not wearing a mask? Uh?
It's a fascinating area of discussion. Gets into stuff like
in clothes, cognition, etcetera. This was originally published on October.
We hope you enjoy it today. Welcome to Stuff to

(00:52):
Blow your Mind from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hey,
welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is
Robert Lamb and I'm Christian Seger. Hey, it is October,
and we, if you haven't noticed, are covering a lot
of topics that are around kind of the October theme

(01:13):
of horror and Halloween but also things like being dead
or burials are for today, we're gonna get real literal
with it and talk about Halloween costumes. But we also
want to let you know that towards the end of
the month, we're going to be doing two kind of
special things that we want our audience to know about.
The first is that we're gonna be periscoping our listener
mail starting on October twenty three, which is a Friday.

(01:35):
So if you're on periscope or if you're not, sign
up for it and you can check us out responding
to our listener mail and kind of interacting with our
audience in real time on that platform. Yeah, and if
you don't know what periscope is, don't worry. I didn't
know till life a few weeks ago. So we'll put
up a blog post as well at some point here
that will give you the deats on what exactly what
we're talking about exactly. We'll be pushing the information out

(01:55):
on our social media channels as well, which include Facebook, Twitter,
and tumbler. On all of those platforms were known by
the handle blow the Mind, and we don't just post
our own stuff there. We curate content from all the
kind of weird science e stuff that we find across
the internet. Uh. And if you want to be included
in that listener mail, don't forget that. You can always
reach us at the email address blow the Mind at

(02:18):
how stuff Works dot com. The other thing that we
have coming up at the end of October is the
return of our video series Monster Science. Robert, you want
to tell him a little bit about this? Yeah? Join
uh Dr Anton Jessup, a kind of a daytime horror
host VHS era basement creep who's going to walk us
through the real world science behind us some rather outrageous

(02:42):
monster movie nasties. Can you give us a preview of
what kind of monsters we're gonna see in this? So yes,
we're gonna you're gonna look at shambling mushrooms, You're gonna
look at werewolves. We're gonna look into Big Trouble a
little China when the creatures from that as well. That's exciting,
as well as a certain character from Mortal Kombat. So cool. Cool.
So what's great about that is you've got a wear

(03:03):
Wolf episode coming up with that. We just published the
episode on wolf Spain and so you know, we're trying
to tie things together a little bit here. We also
have an episode coming out about Egyptian mummification, and we
have a mummy episode of Monster Science from the first season.
So October, you can see, is our favorite month, which
brings me to today's episode, Robert, what are you going

(03:24):
to be for Halloween this year? We'll see this is
a this is a complicated question, um with me, because
I have the boy. The boy's gonna dress up and
uh and and me and my wife have done kind
of like combo costumes in the past, but now we
have this, uh, this weird extra actor in the scenario.
So like last year we did a Twin Peaks thing

(03:45):
where remember that, Yeah, where I was the comic clock
and character lady. Yeah, my wife was a clog lady
and we dressed our son up as the dancing little guy.
Um and and my my father in law played the
tall man. Oh yeah, yeah, I do remember seeing that picture. Yeah,

(04:05):
that was a great idea. Yeah, so that one works.
But now he's he's a little more insistent, like he
wants to be a giraffe and like, you know how
it's hard to work a giraffe into a team cost
him ef. Yeah, absolutely, the only thing that comes to
mind is like, what's that elephant children's story? Bob are
Ye and like that. I don't want to dress up
like ar Yeah you're not. You don't strick me as

(04:26):
the book? Yeah I would. I would love to do
a mummy like com bo cost him where we all
dressed up as different takes on mummies. He could be
a giraffe mummy, he could. Yeah, there's no reason why
they wouldn't have mummified a giraffe. That would have been
an interesting process in bombing all those draft organs. Yeah,
I would think so. So yeah, maybe mommy giraffe. We'll see.
How about yourself. I haven't nailed it down yet, but

(04:47):
I have this old prison outfit that I used for
a video I shot one time. So I'm kind of
considering doing a Hannibal lecter thing. Uh, but it would
involve me having to be strapped down to a dolly
and being pushed around by somebody. And I don't think
I can talk anybody into being you know, the orderly
Barney from the from the Asylum that Animals. And that's
the thing about it's about certain combo costumes is they're

(05:11):
not all even handed. Sometimes they require somebody to be
something kind of boring. Yeah, well some people are into that.
I don't think My wife definitely wouldn't want to be Barney,
so we'll come up with something maybe she can be
Will Graham. Yeah. So the reason I ask is because
today we're gonna be talking about Halloween costumes and how
they relate to our culture but also to our identities

(05:32):
and how we form and change our our identities in
conjunction with what we're you know, costuming as Yeah, it hard,
it's a really it's a really fascinating topic because when
you put on a mask, when you put on a costume,
you're engaging in a in a very a very powerful act.
Here you are becoming somebody else, not only externally but internally,

(05:54):
as we'll discuss, and it's been a it's played a
vital role in traditional religions throughout history. It's uh, you
can you can see both positive and negative, very negative
aspects of mask and costume usage throughout time, and yet
today we often just relegate it to just sort of
childhood silliness. Right, Oh, the kids are gonna put on
masks and go around parading through the community. Well when

(06:18):
but if you stop and you think about it, it's
it's terrifying, you know. Yeah, And I think that there's
an argument to be made to that, and we're going
to get into this that it's definitely over the last
thirty years or so, maybe forty years or so, it's
started to become an adult thing, at least in American culture,
and that the rise of cosplay in sort of, I guess,

(06:38):
nerd culture, but you know, I think it's gotten to
the point where cosplay is is beyond nerd culture now.
I was in the grocery store the other day and
there's a magazine dedicated to cosplay that you can buy
at your local supermarket. So I feel like that's sort
of elevated past, you know, just just for geeks, when
you can buy it like on the shelf there. Yeah,
and it's great to hear that, especially looking back. I

(07:00):
definitely remember a time when I was still trigger treating,
but among my peers, I was probably too old for
such nonsense. And occasionally you would run, you would trigg
or treat at a house and you'd see somebody your
own age in there, not in costume, and they kind
of look at you like, what are you doing? But
then you know what they weren't doing having fun exactly. Yeah.

(07:21):
In fact, the dude in question I'm thinking about, it's
like I looked him up on Facebook and he's still
not having fun in this day. So I'm proud that
I wore my my Halloween customes. But you know, but
the thing is, is that guy and I'm sure, I'm
sure anybody listening to the episode right now can identify
with costuming and that sort of role play, identity change element.

(07:41):
And there's a science to this too. This isn't just
gonna be us riffing about what it's like to wear
Halloween costumes. There's been a ton of studies on this way,
more than I thought we would find. Actually, Yeah, there's
a like I knew there would be a tie to
the topic of in clothed cognition that we'll talk about,
and a long time listeners to the show might remember
an episode in the past that dealt a little bit
within closed cognition. But there's there are a number of

(08:03):
studies that deal specifically with Halloween costumes and how Halloween
costumes impact both children and adults. Yeah, so there are
two specific things that I want to sort of start
off with us maybe like thesis statements for this episode,
and we'll see if they're approved by the evidence that
we go through throughout the episode. The first is that
there's this idea that Halloween is a and the costumes

(08:24):
that we see in the acts that we see during
it are a reflection of what's happening in our culture
at that point in time, and that it's sort of,
uh is also a transgressive element, right, that there are
boundaries within our society that are some of them are
asking to be pushed, and Halloween is the time when
that happens. And you know, in some degrees that can

(08:46):
lead to social change and other degrees, as we'll talk about,
it's maybe a kind of social regression as well. But
so I want us to keep that in mind that
it it seems to be this period of time that
reflects kind of I hate using this term, but the
zeitgeist of what's going on in American culture at the time.
And I understand that it's becoming more popular in some

(09:09):
European nations as well, so um, you know, perhaps they're
seeing that as well. Well. You know, just over the
past ten years, you can look to one particular Halloween
costume is playing a significant role in uh in social movements.
That being, of course, the V for Vendetta mask, which
is Halloween costume mask based on the motion picture. That's
always fascinated me from the perspective of you know, and

(09:33):
I'll talk about this later, but you know, in my
outside life, I write comic books, and I attend a
lot of comic book conventions throughout the year, and so
I see a lot of costumes. And when the movie
came out and all of a sudden, I started seeing
a lot of people both at these shows and at
Halloween wearing the Guy Fox mask, it really struck me
as being ironic because there's such a um as you

(09:56):
just brought up, there's such an association and symbolism of
bellion associated with that that mask that I don't know
necessarily that the customers themselves even knew it necessarily, even
though the movie sort of presents that as a as
a symbolic point. Yeah. Yeah, it's been. It's been a
fascinating transformation with that particular man of the particular character. Yeah.

(10:19):
So before we start talking about these studies, which you know,
we're gonna be working our way from nineteen seventies six
up until present day, there's been so many studies. Uh,
I want to just throw out this fact for you.
In one point four billion dollars were spent on Halloween
costumes in America alone. And that's according to the National

(10:43):
Retail Federation. That is a tremendous sum of money. And
I guess I never really stopped to think about it before.
But of course, like I don't know what it's like
in other parts of the country, but here in Atlanta
we have these these like pop up halloween stores where
like there used to be uh, you know, like a
department store like a Macy's or something, and it's since left.

(11:03):
And for just the month of October, these halloween stores
move in and all they sell their costumes and Halloween
knickknacks and things like that. Uh. And I always it
always struck me as like, wow, like can you turn
a profit just in a month like that? And obviously
you can if there's that much money going into it.
And it's especially interesting to see that it's doing that

(11:24):
kind of business. After all those kids melted in the
Silver Shamrock mass That was a shame. That was a shame.
I was young when that happened, But yeah, I can't
believe in the snakes came out of their eyes. And
we are, of course referring to Halloween three colon Season
of the Witch, one of our favorite movies. Here' stuff
to blow your mind. In fact, last year, Uh Joe,

(11:47):
super producer Noel and myself got together with our partners
and watched that movie. I don't know if it was
on Halloween, but it was like the week of Halloween
and it was great fun. Yeah, I think I watched
it for the first time last year as well at
night by myself the family was sleeping. But yeah, I
think it's it's a very flawed film, but it has

(12:07):
some it has some very just fantastic elements in it,
from the just wonderful soundtrack by John Carpenter now and
worth to uh the weird mix of like androids and
occult magic and big scary corporations like on paper, it's
it's a fabulous film, right. We were saying before the
taping that it would be it's right for a remake,

(12:29):
but it probably will never get remade. Like the idea
of so the central conceit of the movie is that
there's an evil magical corporation that is producing is it
three Halloween masks? It's three. Yeah, it's like a witch
a skull and I don't jack o lantern? Is that
the other one? Uh? And and their children's masks And
if these children wear their Halloween masks and watch a

(12:52):
like evil magical commercial simultaneously, they will all die. Yeah,
they will die and serve as some sort of a
child sack five and they ancient ritual. It's a bizarre movie,
but it's this was before Basically the idea I think
was that the Halloween movies, before they were dominated by
Michael Myers, were supposed to be like an anthology series.

(13:13):
This is going to kickstart anthology Halloween. So each year
we'd get a different Halloween film on the different plot.
And sadly that didn't happen because nobody liked Halloween three
until it had time to uh, you know, to cure
and sure over over the years. It's like a fine one.
It is. It is a fine one that not everyone's
palate is going to be susceptible to. But at heart

(13:37):
Halloween three season of the which is about masks changing
children absolutely now in the movie, it changes them into
a pile of goo and snakes and whatnot. But in
reality it does seem to change our children into something else. Yeah.
I wonder if, well, I wonder if those screenwriters of
Halloween three were inspired by this first study, or maybe

(14:00):
the first two studies we're going to talk about, because
the first was in seventy six, the next one was
in seventies seventy nine. Yeah, so the whole time when
I'm reading these, I'm picturing the uh, the sort of
idyllic uh nineteen late nineteen seventies setting of the at
least the first two Halloween phrase. Um. So this is
in nineteen seventy six, Steady effects of d individualization variables

(14:20):
on stealing among Halloween trigger treaters. This was published in
the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology again in seventy
six February. So, well, this is what happened. The psychologist
involved covertly observed the behavior of a about a thousand
trigger treaters at twenty seven different Seattle homes. So each

(14:41):
each house has the same setup, one bowl filled with
candy and an additional bowl filled with pennies and nickels.
Because you know you're going triggar treating, you want to
get some pennies. And nickels. Yeah, that's that strike struck
me as weird. But I was also born a year
after the study is conducted, so maybe it's something I
missed out on. So um. The researcher answer the door
when the Halloween trick or peters show up, and sometimes

(15:04):
the researcher asks the matt the costume children what their
names are. Oh, you're a de life looking which what's
your name? Oh it's Susie. Other times they let the
children retain their anonymity. They can continue to just be
werewolves and mummies and witches. Right, And that's important because
it helps to reinforce the identity. Right, Okay, are no
longer Susan? Yeah, instead they are you know, broom Hill

(15:28):
to the Witch and uh, you know Oscar the money
or whatever. Um. So at this point the researchers say,
all right, I have to go deal with something else
inside the house. One shut the door. Only take one
piece of candy, and then they shut the door. But
they're they're watching through the peephole the whole time. Nice
scientific use of the people. Yeah, they didn't have like

(15:48):
a nest thing that they could mount on their wall
and watched through their smartphone. Yeah, they're just going around
like peeking through a curtain and scribbling on a notepad.
The results, though, were kids who are allowed to remain
anonymous stole money and extra candy roughly three times as
often as those who gave up their names, and kids
who came in groups, so just a complete pack of

(16:10):
you know, short little gremlins. Um, those who came in
groups both named and anonymous were more than twice as
likely to steal as those who came alone. Wow, Okay,
so I don't I guess the study The findings of
this aren't all that surprising, knowing what I know, just
from living life and having costume before and knowing other

(16:32):
human beings. So that the the idea of the anonymity
this is pre social media too, so I think that
that has something to do with it as well. Right
that we now know that anonymity leads to people doing
things that they think that they won't have repercussions for it. Right. Um,
But then that the group factor as well as is
the really interesting one. So how the pennies come into play?

(16:52):
Do they steal those as well? Nichols? Okay, And and
my my reading of this, the study they didn't even
say okay, also, you can take a amount of coins
the right of the coins. They just left him there.
It was like, yeah, this is just for decorations, and
these kids just grab Yeah. It's it's also interesting to
read this thinking about my own interactions with grantities are

(17:13):
like three year olds, but watching them feed off of
each other's energy. Like you get to three year olds
in a room and they'll suddenly just start feeding off
each other and displaying behavior that individually they wouldn't do,
but they just they're just like there's a heightened susceptibility
to group think and uh like you know, imaginative, uh,

(17:34):
the association. It's it's interesting. Well we're going to talk
about this throughout this episode, and there's a study that
it's coming up that specifically refers to it. But that
is like that zone that age around between three and
five is sort of that zone where you're still you
understand sort of you know when people say like you're
a boy, or you know, you're um, you're from Atlanta,

(17:59):
George jar or whatever, like you understand those words, but
the actual identity part hasn't really like all glamed together yet.
So the group think kind of thing seems to happen
a little easier at that age. I mean, you are
observing it right now. Oh yeah. Like my my son
and his friend Leo, they had a time at the
playground the other day where all they did is just
marched around and chanted we are Daddy elephants the whole time.

(18:23):
So yeah, and they don't do that on their own,
but together they engage in that. So I feel like
it's the same sort of energy at work now. I
miss that. We need to we need to bring that back.
We'll have after this. We're gonna have a weird Daddy
Elephants session in office. Now. There's a nineteen seventy nine
study that followed this up and and and indeed the
researchers here set out to replicate the results of the

(18:46):
seventy eight study. Uh. And this one is titled Halloween
Masks and d Individualization. Uh And this was published in
Psychology Reports April nineteen seventy nine. So this time they
looked at fifty eight costume kids ages nine through thirteen,
and all of them in this cases are unaccompanied by adults,
so there are no adults there to, you know, to

(19:08):
to inflict rules and regulations on the Halloween traditions. They
This time, the researchers tell the children to take two
and only two pieces of candy from a bowl. Uh,
and then they shut the door. The same situation takes place.
They peek around the corner through the people. This is
what they found. Mass children were significantly more likely to
violate the instructions grabbing a healthy fistful of candy sixty

(19:32):
two percent of the time versus thirty seven percent for
unmasked counterparts. That's interesting, especially because the age difference, so
we're talking nine to thirteen year olds here instead of
the much younger children in the first study. Also that
what I'm noticing is that they're completely different authors for
both studies. So this wasn't um the first team trying

(19:52):
to replicate their efforts. It was an entirely different team,
probably in a different part of the country. Well, and
I think it's worth us explaining what they mean when
they say d individual ation here, right, So that is
a psychological process by which a person's identity is subsumed.
This is the This isn't my language, obviously, Obviously I

(20:15):
don't throw subsumed around a lot. But it's subsumed by
the identity of a larger group, and in this case,
the mask thing can can play into it. Right. Uh,
I wonder if the kids were masked and they were
by themselves, if this you know how this would play out? Well?
In this uh, this is a particular study. They were

(20:36):
they were unaccompanied by adults, so there were no adults. No,
I mean no other children too. I guess, like, what
creepy kid goes around all by themselves trick or treating
at nine years old. Well, in the first study, they
did find that kids who came in groups were more
than twice as likely to steal what's those who came along.
So yeah, there's definitely uh, you know, one is potentially

(20:59):
a problem, but you can two together and they're just
going to fall into that that group identity of the
trick or treating fiends. So okay, So all right. The
first thing that we're establishing here is that, uh, costuming,
especially during Halloween, provides a certain amount of anonymity, and
that within a group, it provides the potential for this

(21:20):
d individual ation in which you divorce yourself from your
day to day identity and allow yourself to be absorbed
into the identity of this larger group. It's almost like
a cult type. Yeah, I mean it's instantly. It makes
me think of various and often vile scenarios where you
have hooded individuals creating about and doing things. It's it's

(21:41):
the same energy, it's the same mechanism, but entrusted to
children as opposed to taken on by adults. Well, let's
let's speed it forward a little bit, uh to maybe
maybe a period of time that I'm sure everybody can
relate to the being a child and dressing up in
costume and maybe grabbing a fistful of candy. But there

(22:01):
was a study, uh, and this was cited. I don't
know if you noticed this, but this particular study was
cited across the board and all the studies afterwards as
like a sort of foundational source studies studies. Yeah. Uh
so it's called dressing in costume and the use of alcohol, marijuana,
and other drugs by college students. So no surprise. Uh,

(22:22):
they did this study looking at twelve hundred college students.
I don't remember what area of the country it is
they might have they might have split it up, actually, uh,
and no doubt they found that those that were in
costumes were more likely to consume alcohol than those that
weren't right, and they were also more likely to use
drugs over the course of the night. Now, anybody who

(22:44):
you don't even have to have gone to college, anybody
who's been over the age of eighteen and has gone
to an adult Halloween party where people are in costume,
I think this will probably be a common experience. Yeah,
I have to admit that deer in college and and
uh the time period following college, the most hungover I
ever managed to get. Both times it resulted from a

(23:09):
Halloween party. Oh yeah, yeah, I definitely saw some crazy
stuff at Halloween parties when I was living in the
Boston area. One time I went to a Halloween party.
These people lived on the grounds of It was an
abandoned This is going to sound made up, but it's
a real thing. It was an abandoned mental institution on
the grounds of a cemetery just outside of Boston, on

(23:32):
top of an Indian area ground. I don't know if
there was an Imperial ground, but they definitely had a
Potter's field next door where you could you could see
you know what I mean by Potter's field. But they
just had like the bricks with numbers on them and
things like that. Uh. And the people that I knew
who lived there, Uh, they were basically paying rent to
the town to live in this thing and make sure

(23:52):
that people didn't come by and vandalize it. Um. So
they threw this crazy Halloween party, and I mean you
could you went into the base into this place and
they had gurneys and strange jackets and like all the
files on the patients were still there. That was the
weird part to me was that the like the privacy
element was not at all thought about, so essentially had

(24:12):
a Session nine thing. It was very much like that. Yeah. Yeah,
and I decided to go as a f X twin.
That was which incarnation of it was the window Liquor twin.
I had. You know, they actually made masks or that
you could print out that we're that face. I was
going to ask how you maintained that smile. Yeah, I

(24:33):
had the mask and I had a white suit on
the whole time. But uh, yeah, I saw some crazy
stuff at that at that abandoned mental asylum. So I
believe this study, I think most of us do. I
wouldn't qualify this as a study that would blow your mind.
This isn't stuff to blow your mind, but this definitely
adds more fodder to our principle here, right, that like

(24:55):
the costuming element, uh allows your identity to sort of
be more fluid and flexible. Yeah. And I mean, you know,
studies like this, they're not necessarily saying, hey, here's this
crazy thing about your life that you never noticed before,
but saying, hey, here's some science to back up that
thing that we've all noticed. Because sometimes the thing that
we think we know when you apply the rigors of science,

(25:18):
who you realize, all right, this doesn't actually work the
way we were thinking on surface level. So I've studies
like this are just as important. Yeah. And so there's
also this is when things start to get dark too.
So um and no surprise, you know, I think that
the older that we get that the costuming element brings along,

(25:38):
Like I said at the top, right, it's a pushing
of boundaries, so it brings along some taboo elements to it.
So there's a study done in two thousand seven about um,
basically race and mother ing in Halloween costumes, and it
was specifically focused on college students. So again this is
a you know, isolated to the college student area, although
a lot of the examples that they can him up

(26:00):
with were not necessarily isolated to that group. So this
study is called Unmasking Racism Halloween Costuming and Engagement of
the Racial Other and it was published in Qualitative Sociology.
And basically the authors of this piece they present at
the top in their abstract, they say that they think

(26:20):
of Halloween as being a constructive space where people have
the opportunity to engage in different identities, which includes racial concepts,
and that there are some people who argue not necessarily
these authors, although I think there's something to this, that
Halloween is what we would think of as a tension
management holiday. It's different from you know, Christmas or Thanksgiving,

(26:43):
which probably create more attention. Uh. And they compare it
to like New Year's or Mardi Gras, and that it
allows it sort of frees us up from societal mores
and gives us, you know, an opportunity for rebellion. It's
they call it a ritual of rebellion that permits possible
countercultural feelings, right. Uh. And in this case, you know,

(27:04):
they say, well, you know, usually these holidays or the
idea behind this is it's a reversal of social roles. Um. So,
for instance, like subjugated groups, groups in a lower position
are able to assume positions of power. And they connect
this too. And I'll explain this theory a little bit
more later. But um, there's a Russian theorist named Michael

(27:25):
back Team and he has the kind of the big
thing that he's known for theory wise is the carnival
esque and they connected up to that theory, this idea
of medieval europe carnivals, the same kind of thing people
are in mass parading about creating mischief, the the the
shift of power that takes place where often you have

(27:45):
a fool king or the fool leader of the festival. Yeah,
yep uh. But they also say, you know, there's this
idea about Halloween in particular that's connected to this. The
reason why in the US we give it such a
national status, uh, is because it fosters that kind of
social inversion. Right. So, Um, while holidays like Christmas and Thanksgiving,

(28:07):
for instance, are more institutionalized and focused on tradition and
family and things like that, Halloween people think of Halloween
as being that one night of the year where they
can let go and they can enjoy a degree of
license that they could that would otherwise never be attainable. Right, Um,
basically they can get away with things that they wouldn't
be able to get away with normally. So these the

(28:31):
authors of this piece, though, they say, Okay, that's good
and fine, but there's a racial element that's coming into
play here that's displaying some some disturbing patterns of how
white costumers are using that opportunity to uh not identify
with other races, but to sort of uh make fun

(28:55):
of and and sort of reinforce stereotypes of other races
that they have. Yeah, and in this I think you
you see varying levels of this. So so it's easy
to imagine a straight up racially offensive costume, you know,
where you're just you're just basically dressing up like the
worst kind of stereotype for a particular racial group. But
then on the other hand, you see, and I've definitely

(29:17):
seen people do this before, where you're you're going after
certain cultural icons. You want to you want to be
that cultural icon, and you either don't realize or you're
a little numb to the to the realization that to
try to become that icon as a as a white individual. Um,
you're you're engaging at least in some light racism, you know,

(29:40):
like if you you decide, oh, well, you know, I'm
a big hip hop fan and I really like this
particular artist. That doesn't mean you can necessarily dress up
as as him or her. In fact, that they noted
that stuff like that happened at such parties. UM. One
example that they had was there were apparently in the
way the they studied this was that they had six

(30:01):
hundred and sixty three college students across I believe it
was Southeastern America collect journal entries about their costuming experience
over the course of Halloween. And this isn't just what
they costumed as, but what they saw at the parties
that they went to. UH. And what was reported that
there were two white men who went in black face

(30:22):
as Venus and Serena Williams. And so this is two
thousand seven, so not that long ago. UH. And then
there was um, there were three women, all of different
ethnicities who wanted to do the Charlie's Angels, the movie
version of Charlie's Angels, and so UM, a Caucasian woman
ended up doing the Lucy Luke character and was you know,

(30:45):
like painting on makeup to make her self location and
like you said, not really understanding it. But on the
reverse side, they reported that there was a black male
college student who went as eminem. So there's a lot
of this playing around with race, gender and sort of
you know, trying to explore identity. But at the same time,
like some of some of these instances uh is identified

(31:11):
by the authors weren't necessarily experimental, but we're more reinforcing
ideas that they already had. Yeah, and an implicit racial
bias definitely playing into a lot of these where it's
it's not even happening at a at a you know,
a conscious level, you're not you're not really thinking about it,
but then these these various um um implicit biases rise

(31:34):
to the surface. Yeah. I think this would be one
of those situations if and they talked about it a
little bit in this study, but that like, if you
called out somebody for something like this, they would probably
be shocked, right, they would go, oh, well, I no,
I'm not racist. That's not what I was intending at all, Right,
And in fact, they the whole idea here is that
they thought of Halloween as being a safe context for

(31:55):
exploring this kind of thing, but also that it's, uh,
it's a time when the potential for any kind of
insult is completely suspended, right, Like I think I just
saw like not that this would be insulting, but it's
just kind of stupid, like, uh, like a week or
two ago that like one of the most popular costumes
this year is a sexy Donald Trump, Like you can

(32:15):
you can buy that off the rack, um, you know.
So it's like I think that that's the kind of
thing going on here, but at the same time as
the authors are arguing that it's reinforcing racial bias and stereotypes. Yeah,
it reminds me too of I believe it was the
first Halloween immediately following nine eleven in which a picture

(32:35):
made the rounds of a couple who had dressed like
somebody addresses the twin Hours and the other person addressed
as an airplane. And it's funny that you say this
go ahead because I have a personal story. I'm just
saying it made the rounds, And quite clearly they were
approaching this from the standpoint of it's a safe halloweens
a safe zone and an outrageous costume is allowed, even

(32:57):
if it is really too soon for that particular joke
at that at that given point, and this was this
was the month afterward, right, yeah, this was very very soon.
So I uh specifically remember that Halloween right afterward, a
guy who I knew went to a Halloween party as
a dead pilot, uh, and he thought it was the

(33:19):
funniest thing ever, and that he was you know, he
wasn't he was trying to be offensive, but he was
also just trying to kind of like again like push
the boundaries people's buttons, get right, get a rise out
of people. Um. And I remember him thinking it was
like this super clever, funny thing and it just did
it fell real flat with with everybody at the party. Yeah.

(33:41):
Now on the racial side of the situation, I have
to admit that I'm I'm a big fan of some
terrible movies, and one terrible movie that I really enjoy
is Nothing but Trouble. I know what you're talking, really
really bad film with all sorts of really will like
horror elements, sort of tales from the crypt type elements

(34:03):
thrown throughout. And then there's a great scene where Digital
Underground performs so it's humpty hump. Uh, you know, get out,
And so part of me has always wanted to be
humpty hump. Yeh, but but I but I can never
be humpty Hump. I can never take that on as
a costume because of the racial aspects of doing it.
And I'm comfortable with that. I'm not complaining about it.

(34:23):
But like that's an area where like the voice that says,
wouldn't it be cool to address this humpty hump, and
the other the other part of me has to say,
theoretically it would be cool, but you would probably be
you would probably be crossing a line, and ultimately it
would not be a comfortable scenario. Well exactly. So I
think that what the authors of this study would argue then, right,
is that like your preconception of race is that you

(34:46):
understand that that would be crossing a line that you
know is not necessarily appropriate. Whereas the Caucasian male who
is in college and decides to go as Humpty Hump
maybe already has some pre conceptions about what that means. Right,
In fact, like that's the the kind of rapper outfit
or like the other one that they talked a lot

(35:07):
about was that you can buy prepackage sort of like
ethnic thug outfits from these Halloween stores, or at least
you could at the time they were doing this. Um.
That that enhances your perceptions, your stereotypes of things, right, UM,
And that it doesn't necessarily allow them to have the
opportunity to to find the new beliefs or to learn
and change. I don't know. I'm kind of interested, Like

(35:29):
I wonder if if you do something like that and
then you're sort of performing this other, this imaginary other
that you have of like what it would be like
to be in digital underground, Like like, uh, does that
afford you the opportunity to sort of like put yourself
in somebody else's shoes? I don't know. Yeah, it's um.

(35:49):
The authors of this piece certainly didn't think so. But
like the Digital Underground example, I can. The thing is,
I can definitely imagine someone approaching that instead not even
thinking about how d hump as an African American man
and thinking, well, it's just as a ridiculous character with
a funny nose and big for a coat and he
talks in a funny voice and he got busy in
a backstage bathroom. Yeah and yeah, lost his nose in

(36:12):
a horrible accident. But um, yeah, but but but but
in doing that, you you glide right over the racial connotation.
So yeah, absolutely, so, I mean, like I'm sure, like
I know, I've definitely seen stuff like this at parties
I've gone to before. I'm sure a lot of people have.
But they provided some very concrete examples outside of the

(36:33):
six hundred and sixty three college students who reported for
this study. Um, and one of them was I didn't
know about this. Apparently in two thousand three, Louisiana State
District Judge Timothy Ellender went to a Halloween party in
blackface and he had an afro wig on and a
prison jumpsuit. I think I remember seeing when they called
him out on and he said, oh what, It's just

(36:54):
a harmless joke, you know. And then you think about
the connotation of like, well, this is a guy whose
job it is is is to decide whether or not
people go to jail or stay free, Like this is
like hugely inappropriate. Um. But then um, there's also, like
you know, just dominated in the media reports of people

(37:15):
wearing black face at Halloween parties, in such outfits enacting
images of police brutality, cotton picking, and even lynching. Um.
So I mean that again too, it's like clearly showing that,
like you don't really have all that much of an
understanding for what it means to be of a different ethnicity.

(37:36):
You know, those are the things that you associate with
it like like uh So, anyways, that the third thing
that I thought was really interesting where they they talked
about these prepackaged costumes. There's two in particular they pointed
out from two thousand to One was called the Vato Loco,
which was this stereotyped mask of a Latino thug. And

(37:57):
then the other one was called the Kung Fool uh.
And it was like a caricature outfit, like a kind
of like a karate um, what do you call him?
Gu like outfit? Um. But that also included like a
mask that made your eyes look slanted and like buck
teeth that you would insert in your mouth. So it
was like this real like racial physical stereotype of being Asian.

(38:20):
And this is two thousand two. This isn't like nineteen
sixty two. This is this is just like thirteen years ago. Um.
So you know, they point out like that they think
that the Halloween has sort of been thought of as
a cultural space in which they can they being the

(38:40):
people wearing these costumes, can sort of let this racist
ghost out of the box. That's how they put it,
not me, Uh, it's there. They get a little metaphorical
with their language and the Halloween themes and stuff of
this article. I wonder it would racist ghost be an
appropriate Halloween costume, though it maybe if it were carried
out with enough ghost of a racist Wasn't it thought out?
You know? Em on American Horror Story and the which

(39:02):
one I didn't watch that season, I think it was
if I remember correctly, I think like one of the
witches was was black, and she was able to use
some kind of spell that summoned, um, the zombies of
like racist farmers from around the area or something. Somebody
correct me out there if I'm wrong on this, but
I remember there being a very strange Halloween themed episode

(39:25):
where they did this. It was like the punishment for
these guys being slave owners, I think was that she
was able to like summon their their spirits up again later.
So I mean think about that, right, Like that's on
national television, and um, that's not reinforcing stereotypes necessarily, but
but you know what I mean, like there's these kind
of like roles and identities that people are trying out

(39:46):
and trying to understand things that are different from themselves, mothering,
you know, they all kind of play hand in hand.
I have to admit that I after reading enough, researching
enough about witchcraft persecution, I'm I'm I'm a little weird
about when I see like um which costumes, but also
like you know, the new Vin Diesel which Hunter movie

(40:08):
is the hero of this picture, and and it's it's
kind of unsettling when you think of witchcraft persecution and
and and and the and how these these stereotypes were
used to send so many innocent people to their torture
and death. Yeah. Absolutely, I mean, I yeah, I agree

(40:29):
with you, And especially when you think about it in
the context that like these prefabricated which costumes are being
sold and you know, people are making what what did
I say, one point for billion dollars off of this
costuming industry, Uh, celebrating the persecution and torture and death

(40:50):
of this Again, it's a subjugated group, right, Yeah, I mean,
you know it's not it's certainly not one to one
with some of the racial issues we're talking about earlier.
In it's still a lot more complicated because you have,
you know, you have various you know, myths and folk
tales weaving their way in their um popular media, springing
up out of equal parts of fiction and history. So

(41:13):
it's it's a convoluted topic. But I I have to
admit some of the witch costumes at least, you know,
causele light to go on for me. Yeah, yeah, well,
you know, maybe that's it's again back to that whole
taboo thing, that the symbol of the witch, both in
the guilt that we kind of feel when we look
back at the history of it, and also the witches

(41:36):
being like outside of the community, right is like the
perfect kind of boundary pushing taboo for Halloween. In fact,
one of the articles that I'm about to get into
talked about how during Victorian time, Victorian time, you know
those all of times, the American women, specifically withou dreps
dress either as Egyptians or Gypsies because those were the

(41:58):
two like most tab who kind of uh exotic other
costumes that they could wear. And I guess you still
see people of varying races dressing up as ancient Egyptians,
Like maybe enough time has passed that there's like less
people don't think of ancient Egyptians as being a contemporary race.
But it's more of a like almost like dressing as

(42:18):
an elf, right right, right, dressing as a character from
a movie or something. Yeah, exactly, Alright, We're gonna take
a quick break, but we'll be right back. All right,
we're back, So okay. We've we've spotlighted that the masks

(42:41):
and the costumes allow children to sort of feel like
they can get away with certain things that they get
subsumed into a group. We've spotlighted how it sort of
can change how we think about identity and race, and
and how it can also serve for us to get
more drunk and to do a lot of drugs during Halloween.
But then there's obvious slay a gendered element to it
as well. Right, Um, any buddy who's seen over the

(43:04):
last again, like thirty or forty years, there's definitely been
an element of sexiness that's been brought into female attire.
And in fact, I do want to point out like
one of those um sources that I'm going to use
when we're talking about this is from our sister podcast,
Stuff Mom Never Told You. Kristen and Caroline have done
at least two episodes on this topic, and Kristen has

(43:25):
a really great post on the term slut oweing uh
and what that means in the history behind it, and
I don't really want to bring that into it, but
that there's there's things connected to it in that post
that I think have to do with our conceit in
this episode, which is that costumes allow you to perform

(43:46):
a different identity. Okay, I mean it matches up with
a lot of what we've been talking about already and
that you you take on this uh, this costume, you
take on this different identity, and you have a little
more licensed to be uh, sexier than normal, more revealing
than normal, and more amorous than normal. Yeah. Absolutely, And
in fact, um, there's a history professor uh that is

(44:07):
named Nicholas is named his name is Nicholas Rogers uh
and he actually says you know this, The costuming tradition
of hallow Mass goes all the way back to being
both a prayer for the dead as we sort of
think of it um with the Halloween connotation, but also
a prayer for fertile marriages. So there was already an

(44:27):
element of kind of gendered sexiness to it. Um, not
as such, not as we would think of it today,
but like for instance, boys inquire used to dress as
female virgins for Hallow mass. So cross dressing and sex
and virginity and fertility were all elements from the start. Okay, well,

(44:48):
that's good for anybody that is planning a kind of
sexy costume this year. And if somebody calls you on
it at all parts, why aren't you a zombie? Why
aren't you dressed up as a sexy Egyptian or something,
you can say, well, actually, I'm tying into some of
the I'm doing some history. This is my history project. Um.

(45:10):
So he talks also, this is where I got the
thing about the Victorian costumes. Was also this Nicholas Rogers guy,
and he said that that at that point in time,
just like as we were just talking about, the Halloween
was thought of as a knight to do something that
they wouldn't ordinarily do and to have people look at them, right,
So that's why they're dressing as Egyptians or gypsies. Then

(45:30):
in the nineties seventies, this interesting thing happens where the
sexy costume both for men and women emerged. Uh, and
Christian's research and then this article that I found in
Time called the Definitive History of the Sexy Halloween Costume
both points to this that there were a lot of
Halloween parades and gay neighborhoods in New York, West Hollywood

(45:51):
and San Francisco, and out of these big, kind of
raucous bacchanalia parties came the sort of genesis for what
we think of now is like the modern sexy girl costume. Right. Um,
so you get that, that event happens, and then, just
like with anything, businessmen and marketers see that and they say, well,

(46:15):
that seems like it's something that would make a lot
of money. So they start designing these costumes, selling them
and targeting adults. And so that's when we start to
see sort of towards the late seventies, this emergence of
the adult Halloween experience coming back. It's not just for
kids anymore. And so you and I were just talking
about this earlier, like when we were kids in the

(46:37):
early eighties. Uh, there was sort of that weird stigma
of like, well, at a certain point you shouldn't be
out trick or treating anymore, you know. Like I definitely
remember there was a point where like I was out
and like a parent would answer the door and say like,
aren't you a little old for this? You know, And
I'd come up with some excuse like what you were

(46:57):
in costume? Right? I was, Yeah, that's the thing. I mean,
if you're if you're older kid and you're showing up
at the doorstep and you have no when you're asking
for candy, Yeah, and thin, that's you're kind of breaking
the rules here exactly. I don't care how old you are,
but you put them put some sort of mask on,
so you you find that. So there's a two thousand
six study on children's costumes done by sociologists named Addy Nelson,

(47:18):
and she found that not only were they distinctly gendered,
but that for women, the costumes that you know, these
are off the rat costumes, not necessarily what people are
coming up with on their own. They're usually princesses or
beauty queens for the girls choices. Uh. And then there's
also in two thousand and six, there was a New
York Times article quoting a costume merchant, and he said

(47:41):
that since the early two thousand's, the sexy iterations of
costumes have compromised nine of the female costumes that he
sells at his store. So Kristen, our colleague, basically makes
the point, Okay, well, what's the reason behind the sexy
costume boom. It's because they're popular because both women and

(48:01):
girls are buying them. Uh and you know the there's
marketing behind it. There's money to be had there. So yes,
it's a cultured identity thing, but it's also an economic
thing as well. Uh. And I'll also point this out
for Christian because if any of you out there I've
ever watched Kristen's video series for stuff mom never told you,
you know that she likes to get into costume and characters. Uh.

(48:24):
And she speculates that we're moving now from a period
of just the sexy Halloween costumes to the ironic sexy costumes.
So I think what she means by that is, like,
I see this a lot when I go to like
pop culture conventions, uh, like like sexy Darth Vader. Yeah,
I've definitely seen people sexifying characters or costumes that you

(48:48):
wouldn't traditionally think of as being sexy. I saw a
sexy version of what's the name of the main villain
from Fury Road. Oh god, I know what you're talking about. Yeah,
it's a thank you super producer Noel just told us
that it was a Morton Joe. Yeah. I saw a
picture of that. Yeah. He and and of course that
on its own is an interesting character to see so

(49:10):
embraced among costumers and cosplay because he said, it's a
horrible guy. He's just a horrible individual that I mean
to embody any aspect of him. Um, I can think
if you're thinking, you know, deep about it is troubling.
I can top that. My wife just showed me the
other day that a friend of a friend got a

(49:31):
sleeve tattoo of a Morton Joe on her arm. I
think consider this. That movie just came out like what
three months ago. Uh, great movie, But like, what are
you saying about the idea that you're like, I really
like that warlord rapist who like keeps women locked up
as like a concubine snastically And that's not just for

(49:51):
those of you haven't read it. That's not just uh,
you know, subjective read of the film like that is
that's the plot of the plot of the movie. It
portrays him as such, the the the harem that he keeps.
These are not you know, sexy doll eyed individuals. These
are abused and traumatized individuals based on their treatment. I'll
add to that. Another thing that I see very often

(50:13):
at conventions that I don't understand, and you know, forgive me, Uh,
maybe you have an alternate reading on this is um
Watchman costplay when people costplay as the comedian and the
Golden Age Silk Specter together. So if you've seen, if
you've read the book, or if you've seen the movie,
you know, I guess spoilers for it, but like those

(50:36):
two have an abusive domestic relationship that involves sexual violence. Uh.
And you you know, I see that a lot. I
see a lot of people, couples wearing those costumes together
and kind of, you know, walking around like, isn't this fun?
Isn't this cool? And I don't I don't get it,
but clearly it has something to do with with what's

(50:58):
going on here. I mean, this costuming and experiences outside
of just Halloween, right, So, um, I imagine, and I'm
sure there's studies that if they haven't been published already
are being written right now furiously by some graduate student
about pop culture conventions and costplay that they also allow
for exploration of identity for other ing, for all these

(51:19):
kinds of things that we're talking about here, right, So
what do we have next? What what's up next on
the plate study? So sticking with the gender theme, there's
two more studies I want to talk about. In There
was a study published in the Journal of Psychology called
Age and Gender Difference in Children's Halloween Costumes. So we're
bringing it back to kids, but we're sticking with the
gender thing here. Uh, and it the people who wrote

(51:41):
it predicted, uh that Halloween costumes for first and second
graders would be less gender stereotyped than those for preschoolers
and children in kindergarten. So again, remember when I was
talking earlier about that that zone of three to five,
the zone that your son is in right now. Uh,
that this is an area of mine that the authors

(52:01):
speculate is when identity is still in flux, right, And
so there's an idea that gender really needs to be reinforced.
So this scenario where the toddler or not the toddler
really but they the young child three four year old,
they say they want to dress as a princess, and
you say, like, hell you are, You're dressing as a

(52:22):
cowboy because I have a lot of expectations for your
your your gender preference here, Yeah, exactly, And their findings
confirmed this. Uh So they found actually the older boys,
so when they're talking older boys, they're talking about like
I think, over the age of eight, uh, they tended
to prefer less masculine and more feminine costumes than the

(52:42):
younger boys did. And the older girls preferred more masculine
and less feminine costumes than the younger girls did. So
there definitely was like a between the ages of three
and five, there's that like reinforcing gender thing, and then
there's like a period of time where they play, uh
or maybe not play. I don't think there's like cross

(53:03):
dressing as much as it's sort of like they're less
concerned by that, right, But then it evolves by the
time when we get into high school and college, as
we've seen, into the sexy costume stereotype all right, you know,
and that makes more you know sense that you can
imagine a either a boy or a girl, and they're
having a lot of expectations placed on them in the

(53:24):
way that they dress every day, as well as some
of these specialty costumes. Like there comes a point where
you're gonna say, you know, I would like to maybe
wear something that's not pink or you know, I would
like to wear something that's colorful and flowing and um,
you know, without and engage in that possibility without all
of the adult baggage that the parents are are are
possibly exactly how much of it is the parents saying

(53:47):
I think you should be whatever, you know what I mean,
Like in your case, bastion giraffe, Really, how about leather face? Yeah, yeah,
it's a it's not gendered. You want him to yeah, yeah, yeah,
but but no, I mean, like I do see that
this kind of you know, gender openness and curiosity. Even

(54:07):
in my own son, you know, where he likes ses
somebody playing in address and it's like I'd like to
run around address. And of course, without the adult baggage
we place on that scenario, why not I totally remember
that period of time. There was a point when I
and my you know, upbringing wasn't particularly like conservative or
I think of it as not being gendered, but of
course it was um, and and saying like, you know,

(54:31):
I wanted a Barbie doll to play with because the
the girls in my kindergarten class all have these Barbie dolls,
so of course I wanted one. Uh And I was
discouraged from that and and and it was really like
I couldn't make sense of it at that age because
I was you know, they couldn't explain to me, well,
if you do that, that's going to say a certain
thing about you, and people are gonna make fun of you,
and that's going to subsequently reflect back on me. Right.

(54:54):
Uh So it was it was an interesting kind of
thing to look back on that NoDEA with any siblings
I do, Yeah, there ten years younger than me. Okay,
so because I I have younger sisters, so they were
always Barbie dolls in the house. So like they were
they were there, and you know, I would play with
the Barbie house. Sometimes they had a lot of cool stuff. Yeah, sure, everything,
but a toilet in there. Well right exactly. And if

(55:15):
you you know, as a as a kid of that age,
if you're using your imagination with your toys, the gender
element is probably not something you're even thinking of, right.
But anyways, so so that ties back into what we
were talking about earlier with the sort of preschooler Halloween mentality.
So it's it's gendered, and then it's not gendered, and
then don't forget. It also encourages you to steal or

(55:37):
take a lot of candy. There's one more study, uh,
that is called the Pink Dragon is Female, and it
was published in two thousand in the Psychology of Women,
Cord Quarterly. And basically what they did was a content
analysis of all the children's Halloween costumes that they could
find that were available, and they saw it as a categorization.

(55:58):
They broke up into three categories, Heroes, villains, and fools,
and they wanted to see whether or not these these costumes,
you know, very very much like the last study we
were talking about, reproduce or reiterate conventional messages of gender.
And what they found was the yes, the female costumes
were clustered around examples of femininity like we talked about
earlier with the princesses and the beauty queens. But also, uh,

(56:21):
there was a higher ratio of animal costumes for girls.
And maybe I just never noticed this, or maybe it's
because of my age. Food stuff costumes. So if girls
didn't want to have gendered costumes, they could, I guess,
be a strawberry or something or what would well this
one at one of the costumes from Killen Mockingberg, right,

(56:42):
was it addressed as food items? I don't remember that.
You know, even with animals, you have these gender stereotypes,
even we've encountered with my my son's favorite UH animal
is the giraffe. And then you go in you try
and find UH shirts for boys with giraffes. You don't
find them. You find that the boys shirts have tigers
and lions. Boys are not supposed to like herbivores for

(57:02):
some reason. That's funny, because traps can be pretty brutal
and tough when they want, draft can look after after itself. Yeah,
bringing that neck around and throwing in an odd kick. Well, okay,
so we've got the So the animals and food stuff
seemed to be the compromise for young girls. For young males,
the costumes are likely to feature villains, especially those that

(57:25):
are symbols of death, which I don't know necessarily that
how much I would read into that, given Halloween and
the symbology of death that that you know, floats around
that holiday and anything. But um, they did find in
this content analysis that less than less than ten per
cent of the costumes in two thousand were gender neutral,

(57:47):
So the food stuff items, I'm assuming, h those were
the only ones, you know, And that more often that
male costumes had occupational roles, right like I'm a doctor,
I'm a welder, or whatever, I'm a podcaster, uh, And
that the female costumes were usually based on what their
appearance was in their relationships. So all right, So to summarize,

(58:09):
we've got, uh, the Halloween costumes build gender. They are
a way that we construct race and identity. And then
there's also a moral element that we've talked about, including
both stealing and intoxication, allowing you to engage in behavior
that you otherwise, uh, wouldn't engage in or wouldn't engage
to that degree, you know. And one of the crazy

(58:32):
things about this topic is that it's it's not just
at Halloween. It's not just when we actually actively engage
in the wearing of masks, be it for fun or
as part of a religious ritual or or what have you.
But any time we put on clothing we're in we're
engaging in this kind of powerful rebecoming. Oh yeah, it's uh,

(58:54):
you know, a form of communication. Yeah, how we dress,
the things that we own, the things that we wear,
even down to like what kind of car you drive,
or what kind of pencil you use or whatever, Like
all those things, whether we're conscious of it or not,
are us communicating something about ourselves and identity to other people. Yeah.
One observation that I keep coming back to whenever I

(59:15):
dip my toe into this h This topic, uh, comes
from a fatuleus book by Virginia Smith titled Clean A
History of Personal Hygiene Impurity, which deals mostly with with
that very concept, the idea that there's there's physical cleanliness,
and there's societea of spiritual cleanliness, and the to just
become irreversibly interwoven throughout history and many you know, I'm

(59:37):
amazing and and sometimes very uh you know, missible ways.
But she points out that modern cultural sociologists describe the
human body as an unfinished body, a body created by
nature but finished by humans. And so each of us
called upon various bodies at various times. So there's there's
a you know, there's a cybernetic element to this. You know,

(01:00:00):
here we're inherently augmented by our technology, be that wristwatch
or an implant, or just the clothing we wear, to
tweak who we physically are and therefore tweak who we
are inside. Yeah, that's interesting, especially because, like, you know,
a topic that comes up on this show a lot
is transhumanism or post humanism, and just thinking about it

(01:00:23):
that way, like like we think of that as being
a very kind of sci fi thing that's coming down
the road, But just think about it, Like, my dog
doesn't wear clothes other than the color that I put
around his neck so I can walk him, right, he
doesn't need to express his identity within clothing. Uh, We're
not the kind of people to do this, but some
people put their dogs in little outfits right in order

(01:00:45):
to sort of do that same thing, to project identity
through that. Well, I mean, you look at the most
primal example possible and imagine, you know, some sort of
a cave person prehistory kills a wolf skins, it wears
the wolf hide. It's on several different levels, Like on
one level, it's it's an augmentation of the body for
just purely to stay warm or even to provide some

(01:01:07):
level of protection in combat. And then on on a
on another level though, that individual is taking on the
hide of the beast, the being of the beast, which
you know we touched on a little bit in our
Wolf Spain episode. That's one of the models for wear
wolf transformation. Is you wear a magical hide, yeah, or
or the right exactly like the kind of barbarian wearing

(01:01:28):
like wolf hides, or or even like wearing like the
fur over their head or something like in taking on
the role of the beast in combat. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.
So when this we get into the idea of embodied cognition,
which is a philosophical model in which an agent's cognition,
the way you think, the way you engage, the way
you interpret the world, is strongly influenced by aspects of

(01:01:48):
an agent's body beyond the brain itself. So you know
that entails not only how you feel about your body
and how you appear, but then how you augment it
through clothing. And to iterate too, there is an episode
of Stuff to Blow your Mind from a couple of
years ago that that you guys did specifically about in
clothed cognition. So if you know we're going to touch

(01:02:11):
on it here, but if you really want to take
a deep dive, go back and check that out, and
I'm sure we'll link to it and we'll have a
link to that one on the landing page for this
this episode. But yeah, you see this idea of the
body as a constraint, like your body is holding you
back from being who you are inside. The body is
a regulator, so in this case, the the body's functions

(01:02:31):
are are regulating cognitive activity. You can get into this
whole mind body problem with it pretty pretty quickly. And
this leads into an additional take on embodiment that deals
particularly with garments, and this is in clothed cognition. And
this stems from three initial studies by Hajo Adam and
Adam Glanski from Northwestern University, and they've been examining the

(01:02:54):
psychological and performance related effects that wearing specific articles of
clothing have on the person wearing them. And they actually
coined this term in clothed cognition. Okay, and this is
where we get the sort of doctor cosplay experiment, right, yeah, yeah,
So in fact, they're their primary experiments dealt with this.
So in in one experiment, they they found that people

(01:03:17):
physic physically wearing a lap coat, and that's key, not
just looking at and at it, not just thinking about it.
If they physically put it on, it increases selective attention
compared to when they're not wearing a lap coat. Right.
So it's like putting on a thinking cap, but thinking
cap powered entirely by the symbolic nature of the cap.
We think of the doctors being who serious and an observant,
And then when we put it on, even though we

(01:03:38):
have no illusions that we are becoming a doctor, but
we are. It's like we're wearing the hide of that wolf.
We're wearing the hide of that doctor and in doing so,
becoming them a little bit cognitively. Yeah, there's a lot
going on there, just in that one small experiment, in
that it speaks to the kind of human nature. Uh.

(01:03:59):
And he rants to cultural narratives and imagination. And again,
you know, thinking back on Halloween and this idea of
like is it for kids is it for adults? It's
like we as adults every day are imagining and playing
out these games scenarios in our head as we dress
up the way we do. Yeah, And they found in
some follow up experiments that it specifically had to be

(01:04:21):
a doctor's coat. If they told it was the same
lab coat and they said, oh, it's a painter's coat,
didn't have the same effect. And in all cases it
was the symbolic meaning of the the outfit plus the
physical experience of wearing it. And so I think that's
key to pretty much every model we've looked at here
that you're taking on not just the appearance of the

(01:04:41):
monster or the sexy Egyptian or what have you. You
were taking on some aspect of at least what you
presume to be the mind of that individual, of that
racial group, of that type of person, or that just
straight up monster. Yeah. And again I think that that,
you know, explains the surge and popularity of costuming and

(01:05:05):
cosplay in American popular culture right now. It's that has
a lot to do with it. And maybe Halloween that
one day year isn't enough for that kind of experimentation.
People want to have more occasions in which they can
do that and not have it be taboo, right, So,
and I mean that's why you see more and more
of that these days. You see like just here in Atlanta, Um,

(01:05:29):
we were going to talk about Crampus a little bit,
maybe we'll do a cramp this episode. Later on there
there's a local crampus uh pub crawl situation that goes on.
People dress up like this horned um Germanic monster and
parade about. They've got this thing here in Atlanta too.
It's like they probably have it in other cities now
as well. But it's a zombie walk and it doesn't

(01:05:53):
really I mean, I think it's during October maybe, but
I think it has more to do with that the
Walking Dead is shot here than it has to do
with Halloween necessarily. But I mean they get like five
people like all marching down the street through the city
in zombie garb. So the rest of the year you
go to you go to various carnival situations, go to
New Orleans, you go to various cons and dress up

(01:06:16):
as these individuals. So so yeah, we're kind of creating
more and more opportunities for UH, for adults to engage
in costume play and in costume recreation. Yeah, I think
it speaks to UH. Like I said at the top, again,
like so Halloween is like a way to sort of
reflect back what's going on in culture at the time

(01:06:37):
and our sort of need for more opportunities to costume
and uh play around with these identities. Seems to be
a reflection of that as well, right, that there's more
fluidity and flexibility, uh and acceptance of playing around with
identity than the baby was when we were kids. Yeah yeah,
back back then there they were still into you know,

(01:06:58):
you're taking on a particular idea, nity, but it was
the one you had to keep for the rest of
your life, right and everything else. Yeah yeah, so so yeah,
I'm all in favor of donning those costumes. Yeah. Well,
that's why October is my favorite month of the year.
You know, I love I love October, not just for Halloween,
but for all the things that kind of come along
with it, the the autumn, the corn mazes, uh, hay rides,

(01:07:23):
all that stuff, Apple bobbing, and the podcast episodes and
the related blog post. Absolutely nice segue. So again to
remind you, we're gonna be doing uh podcasts all month
that are fairly tied into the month of October and
to Halloween themes. But also we've got coming up at
the end of October, we'll be answering your listener mail.

(01:07:45):
On ten twenty three during our first periscope session. Uh
And and you know, as I've said before, we haven't
periscoped yet, but I believe you can interact directly with
us there too. You can type in questions for us
and you know we'll try to answer them. Uh And
moster Science. So we're big monster fans around here, and
we've got four brand new episodes of Monster Science coming

(01:08:06):
up at the end of the month. All through the month,
we're gonna be posting the first two seasons of Monster
Science to our social media accounts Facebook, Twitter, and Tumbler,
where you can find us with the handle blow the Mind.
And finally, if people want to reach out to us
and let us know about their costuming experience and whether
what kind of effects it's had on their identity or

(01:08:28):
what they've seen with other people's identity, where can they
reach out to us at and maybe we can respond
to that during the periscope session. Oh, we just reach
out to us at Blow the Mind at how stuff
works dot com for more on this and thousands of
other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com