Fancy Dress?

As well as writing one  I like to read blogs, one of the things about the blogosphere is that it is truly international.   I read blogs from Canada, USA, Australia, Europe and of course here in the UK.   It does seem that today is one of the days when the UK, well maybe more England, is separated from the rest of the world.   Although interest is growing we still don't generally really "do" Halloween.   Yeh sure a few kids will be out trick or treating and there will be a few parties, but it is as nothing to next weeks celebrations of Guy Faulk's.

Now the bit of Halloween that seems to attract most attention on the blogs I read is the fancy dress aspect, if I understand this right it started out with people dressing up as pixies and other Celtic spirits and has progressed through "Goolies and Ghosties and Long Leggedy Beasties and Things that go Bump in the Night" to pretty much anything you choose.   At least one Australian Blogger does a very good Tinkerbell.

I am sure that a little more than one or two of you have attended work this day as your "Other" self, taking advantage of the license that Halloween gives to dress how you like, to dress how you like.   This year I am hearing something new, I hear girls saying that they will not be doing this as being transgendered is not fancy dress, the clothes are the outward expression of what is going on inside.   This then leaves the problem of what to wear when fancy dress is pretty much expected.   Go as your girl and it is not fancy dress, go as another girl and you risk being too good, go as another bloke and you miss the fun.

A band I sometimes play with had a concert last Saturday playing a selection of music from film and TV, they were all invited (instructed!) to wear fancy dress as characters from film or TV.

I'm not going to be doing fancy dress today, or at an time in the foreseeable future, but if I were I could fancy some serious gender bending, we have a tradition of Pantomine where the "Leading Boy" is always played by a girl, the essentials for the roll are a good pair of legs and being "easy on the eye" this is sort of balanced out by the "Dame" usually played by a male comic as a caricature of an older woman ~ the classic is Widow Twanky in Aladdin but they can be fitted into any of the stories.   My idea for fancy dress would be to go as a leading boy, so I could be a man dressed as a woman dressed as a man, let them pick bits out of that!