Does a Halloween Costume Make You Braver, Hornier, or Both?
My Halloween costumes have gotten progressively less innocent in the decade or so since I came out. One year, I was Bubbles from The Powerpuff Girls; another year, I was roller-skating Ken from Barbie, complete with shorts I'd rolled up to make sure my bulge had a starring role that evening. Then came Spider-Man, which technically covered me from the neck down, though it wasn't concealing much either. And eventually, I ended up on all fours in a black latex BDSM get-up while someone else held my leash—though the real punishment was trying to pee in that thing.
Somewhere along the way, I got more comfortable with my body and with letting other people look at it. But the appeal wasn't always sexual. As someone who's naturally introverted, I liked having a costume that could start a conversation before I'd figured out how to introduce myself. Bubbles was a commitment to the bit, but if a hot guy appreciated Spider-Man for entirely different reasons, I wasn't about to correct him.
So does a Halloween costume actually make you hornier, or just brave enough to do something about it?
"The costume doesn't create the desire. It gives you permission to act on it," says Matthew Phillips, PhD, a licensed clinical social worker and certified sex therapist.
At a regular bar, you can spend 20 minutes eye-fucking a guy from across the room and still not find the nerve to say hello. On Halloween, there's already an opening. Ask about his costume. Tell him how good he looks in it. If he's flirting back, you can be considerably less subtle about which parts you've been admiring. And who knows? Maybe you'll end up seeing the rest of him later.
Getting laid isn't always the goal, though. Sometimes you just want to walk into a room looking sexy as hell and let people appreciate the view.
"It can feel hot and powerful," says Carol Queen, PhD, Good Vibes staff sexologist, "and a costume can be a fabulous shortcut to it."
For a guy who's always wanted to wear something as simple as a harness but hasn't quite worked up the nerve to wear one out, Halloween might be the perfect excuse. After all, everyone else is playing dress-up, too. And if the guy he's been eyeing all night likes what he sees, even better.
Still, the one guy you're hoping to take home might have other plans.
"When rejection happens, it is much easier to say they rejected the character, not you," says Nick Marzo, a licensed counselor and certified sex therapist.
But there's a difference between wanting someone to look and wanting them to touch. A guy wearing nothing but a jockstrap isn't automatically inviting you to grab his ass. And just because somebody's spent the evening shamelessly flirting with you doesn't mean he's promised you a hookup.
As Queen puts it, "A hot outfit is not a contract. You are not a public utility."
Even if you do end up going home with someone, you don't have to keep acting like the cockiest guy at the party once you're alone. Phillips points out that the pressure to maintain a sexually assertive persona can make an otherwise exciting hookup uncomfortable. It's fine to drop the act before anything else comes off.
And once Halloween is over, maybe you've learned something about yourself. Perhaps approaching strangers isn't quite as terrifying as you'd imagined, or you're more comfortable showing off your body than you used to be. Those are things you can embrace without waiting another year to dress up.
As for me, I don't think dressing as a web-slinging superhero is entirely responsible for how much more confident I've become. But I'm certainly willing to give the suit some credit.
