Memory Monday: Playing Dress-Up

I can remember every dress-up costume I ever wore as a child. There were three. That is, if you don’t count the various pathetic Halloween costumes I had (and trashed and abandoned every November 1). Or the outfits my friends (boys) and I would put together to be “Beach Bums” (our favorite pretend game): ragged shorts and shirts we had outgrown, flip-flops, and “stubble” scribbled on with my mother’s eyebrow pencil.

One of the costumes was a light brown skirt with African animals on it, each animal having a little straw tail. The second was my favorite, a satiny, iridescent midnight-blue skirt with a blue-black mesh over it – very glamorous. Both of these skirts were my mother’s, and on my five-to-seven-year-old frame, they swept the ground, just like a formal dress. Mom must have let me wear them because she no longer did at that point. I can understand why she might have tired of the first one, but the blue one – incomprehensible! It was absolutely fabulous.

Once I tried on a pair of her high heels with one of the skirts. That was the beginning and end of my history with high heels.

The third outfit consisted of a grass skirt that my Uncle Bill brought back from Hawaii combined with a paper punch-out crown.

There are no pictures of me in any of these outfits or in any of my Halloween costumes.

Of my daughters, however, almost every third picture in our albums shows them in dress-up or a costume of some kind, or at least a funny hat or silly glasses. Halloween costumes were never retired, just passed down and reinvented. When our daughters were younger, Halloween for the entire neighborhood was a major holiday. Almost every kid on our half of the block assembled into a huge, churning mass of princesses, Power Rangers, animals, and characters out of history and fiction. This inaugurated Dress-Up Season, which lasted through Christmas and all the way through winter. Actually, it went year round, but Halloween and Christmas supplied new costumes, which always signaled a change in fantasy games.

Not all dress-up required dedicated costumes: towels or underwear worn on their heads, underpants worn on the outside, towels tied on with a belt, a toy bucket or potty training toilet seat on the head for a hat – we have ample photographic evidence of all these original creations.

When my older daughter was three years old, our next door neighbor gave her a Christmas present that launched a major tradition: the dress-up box. Over the next few years I would add to it by combing the local thrift stores for scarves, skirts, belts, and hats that only cost a dollar or two apiece. Each year’s ballet recital costumes also got added to the mix. It was a rare day of play with friends that did not include a dress-up session. There were even things that the boys could wear, such as pirate outfits and firefighter’s hats.

Not more than a few years ago some old neighborhood friends who had moved to Michigan returned to visit. The girls, all in their teens, dressed up in some of the same long dresses that had engulfed them when there were little, and proceeded to prance around and dance, totally unself-conscious. Just like the good old days….


A few pictures from my daughters’ dress-up days, representing only a tiny fraction of the pictures featuring them in costume:


My daughters were crazy about Peter Pan, particularly Tiger Lily. In fact, they had a major obsession with the very politically incorrect Ugg-a-Wuggs, as they referred to the Indians. We had to play the “Ugg-a-Wugg” song roughly a million times during their childhood.


“I a Ugg-a-Wugg. I on a warpaff.”



Here the girls stare in fascination as “People Peter Pan” (as opposed to “Cartoon Peter Pan,” which they also loved, but not quite as much) plays on the TV screen. The Indian girl costumes were probably the most often-worn costumes of all.



Big people’s clothes




One of many animal-themed costumes




Witches are not just for Halloween – you can be one all year long




A ballet costume. She’s not sad; that’s just her “drama” face.




Creations from the Dress-Up Box








From a neighborhood dress-up session




Every day is Talk (and Scowl and Dress) Like a Pirate Day




The crew gathers for the yearly Neighborhood Halloween Extravaganza




“We’re King Tut’s Sisters.”




Renaissance Festival maidens