New York, NY —
Holiday stress— it doesn’t just start at Thanksgiving anymore. Halloween may be one of the most beloved days of the year for children, but can be a real labor of love for parents. Kate Hinds talks to a few moms who managed to pull it off.
REPORTER: Rose Ann Watson Ansty is a Manhattan mom who generally spends her time caring for her three children, taking an active role in her oldest child’s parent-teacher association, and being a potter. Right now, though, one of her more pressing concerns is putting together her three year old son’s Halloween costume. And Fitzhugh Ansty wants to be:
ANTSY: Luke Skywalker.
REPORTER: His mother explains.
WATSON: My husband introduced the kids to Star Wars, the old one, the 70s version, so he’s seen it and now he wants to be Luke Skywalker. So now we have to find the white part of the costume.
REPORTER: What would happen if she tried to substitute the more easily acquired Anakin Skywalker outfit, which happens to be black?
ANTSY: Hah. That’s gonna be weird.
REPORTER: Rose Ann is hopeful that she can cobble something together, perhaps from a tae kwon do robe and khaki pants. It doesn’t have to be perfect. But why is it that even though Halloween’s date is fixed, it always seems to sneak up on parents? Hilary Danziger is another Manhattan mom.
DANZIGER: The time pressure is more than the perfection pressure, because once you hit the last week, it’s hard to find the perfect costume.
REPORTER: But being behind the eight ball of time is just one of many Halloween costume pitfalls. Another big one is cost.
DANZIGER: Costumes are either too cheaply made and too expensive, or too expensive for well-made.
REPORTER: It’s something that Christina, a mother of two, can relate to. Standing in the aisle at an upper west side branch of Ricky’s, the beauty supply and costume store, she debates the merits of making versus buying. She ponders a ready-made costume hanging nearby while holding a cape in her hands.
CHRISTINA: The packaged version, it’s like 30 bucks, this is 4 dollars. So I don’t know, I don’t know.
REPORTER: She may buy the cape and make the logo herself. Now if only she can keep her superheroes straight.
CHRISTINA: My three and a half- year old wants to be Spider—no, Super—no, Batman. Batman, Batman.
REPORTER: Another issue, particularly for parents of younger children, is what constitutes an appropriate costume. Some parents don’t want their sons to emulate aggressive or violent characters. And parents of girls may struggle against a tide of stereotypes that are too, well, girly, as Rose Ann Ansty’s five year old daughter, Ludy, discovered. Her mother did give her a certain amount of latitude in choosing a costume.
ANTSY: She really didn’t want me to be this, um, like, girl, with pink everything. Right, Mommy?
REPORTER: And so now Ludy is a vampire.
It doesn’t necessarily get easier when children get older. Vicki Winer has an eighteen year old daughter at Harvard University. Winer stepped up to the plate after her daughter struck out on the internet. And Winer has had it.
WINER: This is her fourth go around. She did two online, the first time I guess it was like a bogus site, the second time they took her order and then she got an email yesterday it’s not in stock, so then you’re frantically running around trying to see what you can pull together and then you end up with something quasi-lame, because, you know, it’s just too time consuming. This is it, this is the end of the line, I’m not doing any more.
REPORTER: At least she can be sure her daughter will get her witch’s costume on time, as Winer is traveling to hand deliver it to Cambridge.
WINER: I hope they let me on the plane with a broomstick. Should be interesting.
REPORTER: Because isn’t that what parents do on Halloween? Isn’t that why I myself spent hours trolling eBay, looking for the right purple dress so that my three year old daughter could be Kiki, the title character of a Hayao Miyazaki film? But then, as Winer reminds us, there’s always the real payoff.
WINER: Candy! I just love that candy. I buy it and whatever’s left over, pour moi.
REPORTER: For WNYC, I’m Kate Hinds.