Halloween has lost its punch.
That’s according to pop culture expert Robert Thompson, trustee professor and founding director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University.
“The post-World War II years were the golden age of Halloween for kids,” Thompson told me when we first spoke in 2009, “a trend that continued into the 1980s. But in the early 1990s, Halloween was reclaimed by adults.”
Why the shift?
“Halloween became one of the last bastions of free expression for adults — the one day in which almost anything went,” said Thompson. “Adults could be a wise guy or do something outrageous they’d never do the other 364 days of the year.”
Thompson said adult costumes had generally satirized popular culture or current events.
In the 1990s, costumes mocked Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky; O.J. Simpson in his white Bronco; and figure skater Tonya Harding, who hired a thug to whack Nancy Kerrigan in the knee.
Women wore ultra-skimpy nurse, cop and Playboy Bunny outfits, while men cross-dressed as Britney Spears, Cher and Madonna in her cone-bra corset.
Outrageous costumes continued to be the rage until about 2013, when — with the dawn of social media and smartphones — a backlash began.
In that year, one woman who posted photos of herself dressed as a Boston Marathon bombing victim — torn clothes, fake blood and a race bib — got blasted across social media and fired from her job.
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Halloween’s “anything-goes” era began a rapid decline.
By 2017, Vox, The Atlantic and Good Housekeeping were scolding us for costumes that might “offend” someone, somewhere.
Dressing as a pregnant reality TV star was “body-shaming.”
Dressing as Hannibal Lecter wasn’t funny — straitjackets might “stigmatize mental illness.”
Dressing as a sexy nun, nurse or Playboy Bunny was called sexist and gross by Cosmopolitan — and don’t even think about dressing up as a geisha or a gypsy.
So what are the trends for 2025?
“We’ve entered a post-Halloween era,” Thompson told me last Wednesday. “When presidents, CEOs and influencers make daily headlines for doing things that would’ve been unthinkable a generation ago, every day feels like a costume party where someone’s blowing up a new norm.”
He pointed to the “No Kings” protests, where demonstrators dressed in inflatable frog and crown costumes to mock President Trump, showing that Halloween’s rebellious spirit is now routine.
“All the rules Halloween used to suspend for 24 hours are now broken 365 days a year,” he said. “The need for a single day of sanctioned transgression has vanished.”
This, combined with pop culture’s fragmentation, is driving a return to safer, more traditional costumes.
“If you dress up as Travis Kelce or Taylor Swift, half the room will love you and half will roll their eyes,” said Thompson. “But everyone knows Dracula.”
Indeed, 2025’s most popular costumes are nostalgic favorites — Superman, Batman, Spider-Man — from a time when we all shared the same stories.
Thompson warned that with transgression now part of daily life, Halloween has lost its role as a cultural pressure valve to release our darker impulses.
“When costumes, words and actions lose their power to shock,” he said, “some people feel they must escalate to violent extremes — stabbing, shooting or taking a life — just to get noticed.”
That’s the key takeaway from Halloween 2025: When every day is outrageous, nothing is.
Find Tom Purcell’s syndicated column, humor books and funny videos of his dog, Thurber, at TomPurcell.com. Email him at Tom@TomPurcell.com.
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