Some adults, for example, might shy away from wearing a costume that emphasized their need to loose a few pounds. Such an adult might want to put on a sheet and become a ghost. While ghost outfits raise a safety issue with children, they pose less of a danger when used as adult Halloween costumes.
Sometimes a wise adult will not try to hide a physical characteristic, but will incorporate it into the costume. After all, the goal of adult Halloween costumes is not always that of playing a trick on friends. The wearers of adult Halloween costumes frequently use those costumes to send a message.
Take, for example, the costume worn by one young adult at a Halloween party in Maryland. That party took place in October of 1980, during the time when the American hostages remained confined somewhere in the country of Iran. One young man at that party dressed like an executioner. In his hand he held a head, a head with a face that resembled the face of Khomeini.
In the mid-1990s, one woman at a biotechnology plant in Los Angeles had become passionate about the need to promote literacy among families. She displayed her passion in one of the adult Halloween costumes that she wore while working at that facility. One year she learned that “Family Literacy Day” would be on November 1st. She dressed as a character from a children’s book, and she pinned to her costume the information about “Family Literacy Day.”
Another year an interest in literacy led some adults in L.A. County to look for adult fairy costumes. Those adults, many of them authority figures in a small town, wanted adult fairy costumes for a special program. It was a program designed to encourage children to read Peter Pan.
The term “adult Halloween costumes” does not always refer to the attire at a Halloween gathering for adults. Sometimes children decide to share their Halloween fun with the older adults at a Retirement Home or a Senior Center. In that case, the Halloween costumes would be intended for viewing by the adults. In that case, too, both the adults and the children might want to think about a post-Halloween health issue.
During Halloween children collect a lot of candy. Adults at a Retirement Home or a Senior Center might be given a good deal of candy. Any adult who is a diabetic should not be allowed to eat candy with lots of sugar. Visitors to such adults should make sure that any Halloween candy is removed from a location where the elderly resident could reach it with ease.
For adults who are not diabetic and for children as well, it is advisable to develop a procedure for apportioning the Halloween candy. Neither adults nor children can stay healthy for long if they insist on eating all of their Halloween candy during one sitting. For an older adult, such behavior is not a prescription for the wearing of many future adult Halloween costumes.