HALLOWEEN (and the fear of embracing your true self)

Welcome to Trans Tuesday!  It’s time for spooky spoops, costumes, and candy. So we’re gonna talk about HALLOWEEN, but what this is really about is THE FEAR OF EMBRACING YOUR TRUE SELF (when your entire life has been a costume).

Halloween was always a weird time for me. I love the holiday and autumn (such as it is in Los Angeles) and the spooky stuff, and I love costumes. But there’s a caveat with that last one.

Because I also didn’t love them, and I never knew why. As a kid you (probably) love Halloween because people give you candy and you get to dress up as a monster or something scary or, as it’s now mostly morphed to, a character you love from popular media.

And there was certainly always media I loved. I don’t remember most of my costumes from childhood, sadly. And I have almost no photos of my life before I moved out to live on my own, so it’s not like I can go back and look.

I know I was Spider-Man one year. Another I was a ghost, the awful kind that’s just a sheet with eye holes cut in it. I always saw that in cartoons or comics and thought it must be fun since it appeared all the time. Spoiler: it is not. It is in fact very bad. But easy to draw!

The best costumes I ever had were Calvin (I even had a little stuffed Hobbes, though not as cool as the one Susan made for me a couple years back), and Wakko Warner. I won a $75 prize from my local comic shop for that last one. It ruled. You’ll have to trust me (again, I have no photos).

I don’t know how familiar you are with Animaniacs, but the characters have black bodies and white faces, in that old-timey cartoon style. The black I handled with a simple black sweatsuit, and I had cartoony gloves from a Disney World trip as a kid. Those all worked great. I had a light blue t-shirt to put over the black sweatshirt, and the red cap. And even a red clown nose!

And I made the ears, and tail, and even feet. But I didn’t do anything to my face, which probably made it look incomplete (but I still won a prize for it, so who knows), and you’re probably wondering why I’d go to all that trouble and not complete it.

It’s because I was terrified to put makeup on. This is also partly what kept me as part of the tech crew in my high school drama club, rather than branching out and trying acting. 

Feeling like I didn’t fit in my own body definitely made me hate being seen by people, so going on stage wasn’t a choice I made willingly. Then they’d all be looking at me but not seeing me, just seeing the shell of a boy costume I was wearing. And that was ungood and spiked my GENDER DYSPHORIA.

But in all honesty, I was just as scared of having to put makeup on, which of course even high school actors need under all the lights in a stage play. I was just as terrified of any kind of hair dye, even including the temporary stuff that washes out. 

Even the baby powder they’d put in a kid’s hair to make it look gray, if they were playing an older character, made me nope right out. I never, ever examined why this was, I just thought it wasn’t something I was interested in. Ha ha ha, it is to laugh.

Even as a pre-transition adult, I would try not to let my wife Susan kiss me when she had lipstick (or even lip balm!) on, because some would invariably get on me, and it provided the exact feeling of fear I’ve been talking about. I couldn’t handle it! I had to get it off! Now now now! AAAHH! It made me panic.

Brief aside, I felt that panic and fear for so long that just remembering it and writing about it above makes me feel it all over again… even now after self-accepting and transitioning, and liking and wearing lipstick all the time! I’m wearing it as I write this. It’s bananas.

In fact, you can, uh… see some of that in action in THE SIGNS WERE ALWAYS THERE (that we’re trans).

Anyway the lipstick fear was exactly the same with Halloween and costumes, where I never put any kind of makeup or hair dye on for any reason. It was just not an option, no matter how much better it would have made my costume.

Looking back at all of it now, I can clearly identify it as fear. And it was intense fear, the kind where if I felt I were going to be forced into one of those things… I would have uttered a horrid quick excuse and literally ran away and never gone back.

Which seems kind of severe, until you realize I wasn’t afraid to do, or wear, or have those things, I was afraid I would like it. And then what would that say about me? Therein lies the problem.

In my high school in a podunk midwestern town, I still didn’t know that “transgender” was a thing people could be, much less what it meant. Boys who dyed their hair and wore makeup? Well we were told they were gay and to be shunned (even though I thought the shunning was bullshit).

But! I wasn’t at all worried that if I liked the hair dye or makeup it would mean I was gay. Because I knew I wasn’t. Ladies ladies ladies, they’re the ones for me. 

So if I liked wearing makeup, but I wasn’t gay, what the hell would that mean? In my ignorant, inexperienced, uneducated mind (uneducated in the ways of gender beyond the false cisgender binary matrix)… something would have to be wrong with me.

Seriously wrong.

Because those were the only options ever presented to me. You liked makeup? You’re a woman, or a gay man, end of story. That’s it. It’s the horrid FALSE DICHOTOMY of our society rearing its head again.

But just as much as the fear of what it would mean if I liked those things that were Not For Boys, I felt the fear of having to pretend to be someone else. Because you have to understand:

I was pretending to be someone else every waking moment of my entire life.

That’s what being trans and not knowing it is: acting the part of the cis person you were told you are and had no choice but to be. Sometimes we have to do that even after knowing who we really are (see BOYMODING/GIRLMODING).

And it’s not just that you don’t know how to be the person you’re told you have to be. I mean… it’s hard to explain. I didn’t want to be that person, but I was told that’s who I was, and I believed what I was told (see TRANS TRAUMA 2: SOCIETAL GASLIGHTING to learn about that particular poop nugget).

I tried so damned hard, for my entire life, to be that person.

Even though it repulsed me on an atomic level. 

So the thought of dropping that cis boy facade, to replace it with another (like a character in a play), seemed… insurmountable. And uncomfortable. 

Because I didn’t know how you’d adopt a fake persona on top of the fake persona you were already using all your energy to try to project. I was constantly stressed and worried about it, and had to wear it for every damned moment of my entire life.

It meant I’d have to drop the original fake persona. Ideally that’s a good thing, right? But it was also… all I had. I’d be open. Exposed. More vulnerable and out as myself to the world, in acting the part of a character in a play, than I would be as “myself.” Does that make sense?

But unlike acting in a play, Halloween didn’t come with the “persona problem,” because everyone knew you weren’t who you were dressed up as. Nobody expected you to act like that character. You were just… you, in a costume.

That I could (mostly) do and enjoy. And my favorite part about it was masks.

I mean, how much more obvious could it be, right? Are you laughing? It’s okay. I am too. How trite! If this were a script I’d be working on a rewrite right now. (anyway, see THE SIGNS WERE ALWAYS THERE (that we’re trans) for more)

In a mask, I didn’t have to pretend to be the boy people thought I was. I didn’t have to pretend to be anything. Masks were a shield. They protected me, kept me wrapped up safe inside, hid the true me from the world.

And myself.

And would you believe this carried over into other parts of my life, in ways I didn’t realize for a long time? It really does creep in all over, when the true you is forcefully hidden from you for your entire life. Tying right in with Halloween and makeup and masks… are the toys I had as a kid.

As a (seeming) boy, the only toys I was really allowed were action figures. I had them for all sorts of cartoons and tv shows and movies I loved. And I still dig action figures even though they’re just small dolls, and yes it’s okay to say that. Get over yourself, my dudes.

Screw the stupid gender binary, let kids play with what they want (see GENDERED CHILDHOODS). Anyway, my favorites were always any character that came with a removable helmet or mask. 

I’d put it on them, take it off, put it back on.

I’d pretend while they had it on that none of the other characters knew who they were. They’d later take it off and reveal their true identity and everyone would be surprised. 

LOOK I SAID IT WAS REALLY OBVIOUS ONCE I NOTICED IT, OKAY?!?

It was only in the years I spent examining myself and my life, and trying to figure this all out, that I realized my affinity for masks and helmets tied into the feeling of safety they gave me. 

And taking a mask or helmet off an action figure to reveal their true selves was pure subconscious wish fulfillment. I wanted to be able to do that with the people I cared about, as my real self.

But I couldn’t. Not in the environment I was in, and not for a long time after until I undid all the damage and INTERNALIZED TRANSPHOBIA society had wormed into me.

There’s also a sadness that comes with thinking of past Halloweens, especially in high school… because it was somewhat regular for some of the jocks to come to school in terrible wigs and their mom’s dresses.

That was, of course, played for laughs. Oh ho ho, you see they’re men but they’re dressed like women and isn’t that silly because it’s so bad and wrong?? (this still permeates our media to no end, mind you, see my 2022, 2023, and 2024 TRANS REP IN MEDIA reports)

Homophobia and transphobia are of course baked right into all of that. It’s terrible. And yet.

I felt pangs in my chest. I didn’t want to look like those cis dude jocks in a costume, I didn’t want to make fun of people, but at the same time… they got to wear dresses all day long, and nobody made fun of them for it.

And my god, what must that be like? I was already fantasizing about this, in a “socially acceptable” way, without even consciously realizing that’s what I was doing, mind you… see TRANS TABLETOP ROLEPLAYING GAMES.

Younger me was… well, this is going to sound very self-aggrandizing, but I’m going to go ahead and aggrandize myself (because it’s my essay and you can’t stop me). That kid was always incredibly self-reflective, often to her own detriment.

Except in this area, because I had been so blinded to even the hint of transgender people not only existing, but it being totally fine and acceptable for us to exist.

So I never examined why I felt that way about burly football players stuffed into too-small dresses, lumbering down the school halls. I just figured it’s because I was… weird. I’ve always been weird. I’ll always be weird.

Guess that’s just part of it! Huh. Yep, makes sense. No need to examine that any further, you weirdo! Glad we settled that. And she hoped to never think about it again.

I wish I’d grown up in a supportive environment where I’d have been encouraged to explore that side of myself, through Halloween, through the drama club, through all the untold stories and adventures I put my action figures through.

I’m sure the latter is a big part of what made me a writer. I was always creating stories for my toys to play out. If only I’d been able to imagine a story half as good for myself.

But we all go at our own pace, which is all we can do. Just… don’t run from what scares you.

One of the first things I did after being sure I was transgender but not knowing if I would transition was… book an appointment with a Hollywood makeup artist who specializes in makeovers for trans women. I’ve mentioned that in multiple essays, and even fairly recently in the one on COMING OUT (as it was a big part of my push to do it).

I’d not talked to a doctor at that point, not begun socially transitioning in any real way. Nobody knew but Susan. And it took me months to work up the courage to do it, because that fear still remained. And now that I knew why I was scared, it made me even more scared.

But I had to know. I had to go and have her put makeup on me and see how it looked. And I did. And if you were ever wondering what this post was about…

I let the makeup artist do whatever she wanted, because I had no idea what I liked or what I’d want. I was there for about three hours. The first time I looked in the mirror when she was done was… amazing and heartbreaking all at once. It was so great. And it hurt so much.

Because I knew. Even though the colors and style she used aren’t something I’d choose for myself now, I knew. I knew I knew I knew. That was me. Not all of me, not wholly me… but she was in there. I was in there.

It was the first time I ever saw even a hint of me. I almost cried, but I didn’t want to ruin the makeup!

Which of course was exhilarating! But it also meant… my entire life was going to change, because I had to transition. And it meant so much of my life, trapped in the wrong body with gender dysphoria, could have been so different.

For the first couple Halloweens after coming out, I didn’t have a costume. I didn’t have anywhere to wear one to regardless, but even if I did I was still too unsure of putting a facade on top of the old facade I was still working on fully breaking out of.

A couple years back I threw together an “80s chick” just based on stuff I already owned (yes I owned those things, including hot pink legwarmers, because they’re totally rad).

The year after that, I really wanted to dress up, but I put all this pressure on myself because if it was going to be my first real costume, I wanted it to be something that was important to me.

But that resulted in me being too indecisive until I was basically out of time, so I just bought this cute Halloween dress and headband.

But last year… I finally settled on something. On a character that was really important to me, even though basically nobody recognized it when they saw me! But it’s from a forty year old movie so I guess that makes sense. But it’s a great movie, okay? And one of my favorites of all time.

My first real costume was… Sarah Connor. And not the badass Sarah Connor from T2, but the in-over-her-head Sarah Connor from The Terminator.

Because this is where Sarah Connor becomes a badass. 

Where fate stares her in the eye and she says no.

NO.

There is no fate but what we make.

And that’s such a trans affirmation of life. Fate made us trans, but we decide what to do about it. We decide, when it’s safe for us to do so, that we can change everything and live a better life.

Don’t run from fear. Find the courage, no matter how long it takes. You can do it. 

Embrace it. Run toward it. Experience that fear and see what you learn about yourself when you come out the other side.

It might just be a revelation.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com