The “Everyday Halloween” costume trend, explained

As an adult, Halloween is inherently embarrassing. It doesn’t matter how much confidence you exude the other 364 days of the year, the feeling of throwing away your hard-earned money on a cheap pair of mouse ears or vampire fangs is a complete humiliation. We can all agree that trick-or-treating is best left to the kids, but there is still an open invitation for everyone, including adults, to dress up on and around October 31st – although it’s always a gamble, who’s actually participating and who When you get off the ship, you’ll be the only one in the office wearing a full set of homemade armor. (And don’t even get me started on the ridicule you’ll get on your way to work.)

No, Halloween is not very dignified. But does that mean those of us who are too proud shouldn’t participate? Absolutely not. It turns out that the best place for proud adults to seek Halloween solidarity is Japan – specifically the “Jimi” Halloween festival, which involves dressing up in the most banal and personable costumes possible you can imagine and require a lot of explanation. Otherwise Jimi costumes look like normal clothing. And that’s the point.

“Jimi” means “simple” or “unpretentious” in Japanese. With a Jimi Halloween costume, the inspiration is hidden at first glance. You could say, “Girl who started cleaning up but ended up on the phone” or “Person who tried to take off her mask but took off her glasses.” You could be a bingo champion or the archive footage of one Be karaoke music videos. The sky and the meager supplies you already have lying around the house are the limit.

According to Japanese culture blog Spoon and Tamago, Jimi Festival was started in 2014 by a group of adults from Japanese lifestyle website Daily Portal Z who “wanted to take part in the Halloween festivities, so to speak, but were too ashamed to go all out.” in witch or zombie costumes.”

But just because they don’t dabble in face paint and scary colored contact lenses doesn’t mean these Jimi Halloween fans don’t get creative with their costumes — or that their costumes aren’t spookily frightening. See: “Someone who spilled coffee on themselves” or “The clerk really tries to look away while you enter your PIN number.” Now that is maximum horror.

The everyday Halloween costume trend isn’t for those who like to dress up in elaborate cosplays of their favorite characters or go wild with classic Halloween horror characters like ghosts or clowns or other crazy tropes that people like to conjure up this time of year. I salute these Halloween purists, I really do. But everyday Halloween beckons with something entirely different: those of us with drier senses of humor who prefer a costume that might not look like much at first glance – a costume that won’t turn many heads on the subway or in the office drags – but… still quietly captures the hilarious truths about some of the micro-horror moments of everyday life. The terrible moments, the awkward encounters, the annoying yet endearing quirks of strangers on the street or in the supermarket.

Everyday Halloween costumes are also great for any lazy people who may have lost track of time this year and forgotten to put together something more elaborate. It’s a financially affordable option for those of us who don’t have a bunch of extra cash to splurge on the more traditional things. And it’s a reminder that Halloween can be fun without all that over-consumption – that the holiday doesn’t have to be about buying a bunch of low-quality crap that’ll only be worn once before sitting in the back of your closet and then in it a landfill rots for the rest of eternity.

Mundane Halloween reminds us that there’s a lot in our own lives (and wardrobes) worth playing with, and that you don’t even have to be particularly smart to put it all together.

Halloween is humiliating, yes. Everyone has chocolate on their teeth. Everyone just wants to get drunk and make out with a sexy pirate. The events and parties promise a lot of fun, but rarely deliver. And unless you’re a Broadway performer or a certain red-headed pop star, dressing up in a costume as an adult is deeply demeaning. But the secret truth about Halloween is that the shared humiliation is the best part. Adults don’t have many opportunities to be playful and creative with the way we dress. Participating in the shame of Halloween keeps us humble. I’m not a doctor (and I’m not going to dress up as one), but I think it’s important to humiliate ourselves at least once a year for the fun of it. You know, for our health.

So even if you refer to this Halloween as “girl who just ate Halloween candy and now has chocolate on her teeth,” just do it as something. Your inner child will thank you.

Emma Glassman-Hughes is an associate editor at PS Balance. Before joining PS, she worked as a freelancer and contributor in reporting, covering the entire lifestyle spectrum. She covered arts and culture for The Boston Globe, sex and relationships for Cosmopolitan, travel for Here Magazine, and food, climate and agriculture for Ambrook Research.