While our friends were experimenting with embodying their sexualities openly, we were often left behind, trying to maintain a façade of normality. Many LGBT+ people spend their youth suppressing their sexuality and trying to fit in with the crowd. With a 28 per cent rise in anti-LGBT+ hate crime and 68 per cent of same-sex couples still avoiding holding hands in public, it’s easy to see why.
Queer people are often weary of visually expressing their sexuality or dressing too flamboyantly on a day-to-day basis. But there has also been much academic discourse surrounding coded queer desire in classic tales such as Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Frankenstein, viewing them through a subversive homoerotic lens.
Lady Gaga referring to her fans as “little monsters” and trans pop icon Kim Petras’s Halloween-themed EP Turn Off the Light are two contemporary examples of the close relationship between ghoulishness and LGBT+ cultural production. A celebration of all things dramatic and camp, it merges the gothic with the tragic, allowing people to honour the popular culture icons that provide them with strength, sanctuary and entertainment as they negotiate their subcultural identities within the wider world. Makeup aside, it should surprise no one that Halloween is regularly described as “gay Christmas”, because it combines so many elements that are deeply woven into the tapestry of queer culture. Events and Offers Sign up to receive information regarding NS events, subscription offers & product updates. Ideas and Letters A newsletter showcasing the finest writing from the ideas section and the NS archive, covering political ideas, philosophy, criticism and intellectual history - sent every Wednesday. Weekly Highlights A weekly round-up of some of the best articles featured in the most recent issue of the New Statesman, sent each Saturday. The Culture Edit Our weekly culture newsletter – from books and art to pop culture and memes – sent every Friday. This Week in Business A handy, three-minute glance at the week ahead in companies, markets, regulation and investment, landing in your inbox every Monday morning. Green Times The New Statesman’s weekly environment email on the politics, business and culture of the climate and nature crises - in your inbox every Thursday. The New Statesman Daily The best of the New Statesman, delivered to your inbox every weekday morning.
World Review The New Statesman’s global affairs newsletter, every Monday and Friday. Morning Call Quick and essential guide to domestic and global politics from the New Statesman's politics team. Sign up for The New Statesman’s newsletters Tick the boxes of the newsletters you would like to receive. There was no costume too gruesome, no face paint design too dramatic and going all-out to look fabulous was – for once – encouraged. For one day every year, all bets were off. This is partly why, from a young age, I have loved Halloween. So before the school week started it was an understanding that the lid would go back on the dressing up box. It gradually became clear to me that fashion and certainly makeup were not ways that boys were encouraged to express themselves. Now, of course, I do – she was protecting me. I still remember not quite grasping why my mum insisted I take my nail polish off on a Sunday evening, because it “didn’t go with school uniform”, even though girls would wear nail varnish to school all the time. After painting my nails all different colours, sometimes I’d even prise open the red velvet box, hidden in mum’s sock drawer, where she kept all her most precious jewellery – sorry mum.īut this playful game, which was so freeing, wasn’t to be shouted about from the rooftops. It was the Nineties, before every child had iPads, mobile phones and social media accounts, so venturing into the dressing up box was a source of endless entertainment. As a young effeminate boy, I used to love dressing up in my mum’s clothes.