A Very Hot Blonde
Elizabeth Hawes on working as a professional costumed character and navigating life, love, and tragedy in a fur suit.
You have to be friendly and welcoming to everyone. You can’t be stagnant or you look like you’re dead. It’s hot in the suit. There is little air, even with the rare fan in the head piece. In the suit, you’re always on.
Most costumed characters don’t speak, so you have to be physically expressive and make huge, exaggerated movements. You use your feet a lot—tapping to indicate impatience; skipping to indicate happiness. It’s a lot of dancing. You look out of a mesh screen (usually out of the character’s mouth) with limited visibility. If you don’t remember to wear a bandana, sweat drips in your eyes and there is nothing you can do.
I was Santa’s Elf at Macy’s. I spent over a decade as the Easter Bunny all over the Twin Cities. I became a Reading Bookworm at the Minnesota Zoo & Orchestra Hall, and at Dayton’s, a Mama Berenstain Bear, and a Santa Bear getting married to Mrs. Santa Bear (my friend Gwyneth) on Nicollet Mall during the Holidazzle Parade. I worked as the Warner Brothers’ Bugs Bunny at the Mall of America, and as a large pink pig at St. Paul’s Saints games. I spent a year as a Domino’s Pizza Noid at the Target Center, throwing out mini-pizzas to Timberwolves fans at half-time.
Costume character work is not a career. The pay is good but the work is spotty—there are few (if any) full-time costume character jobs. But if you could do it full time, would you really want to? The routine overheating can’t be good for one’s health. There’s no recognition—even if people love you, they don’t know it’s you. You will never get a Hey, weren’t you at the Minnesota Zoo last weekend playing a xylophone as a worm with glasses? My kid thought you were great.
You might be asking, Why? What would compel anyone to do this?
I have asked myself this very question on many occasions. Other questions I may or may not have asked myself in the line of duty: Would Meryl Streep ever moonlight as the Easter Bunny? Is this large child breaking my femur? Why didn’t I apply to Juilliard? What kind of child loves Barney anyway?
The simple answer to the why is this: costume work helped pay my rent. I was a dance/theatre major in college. I had good physicality. I had a lot of part-time jobs. I intentionally kept my schedule flexible so that I could audition for commercials or be in shows. But the real answer is: I love to make people happy.
And I was very good at it. I noticed the often-unseen people in the room. I had an excellent read on people and could readily assess who would benefit most from an interaction with a (usually) cute, inane animal.
Even if people love you, they don’t know it’s you. You will never get a Hey, weren’t you at the Minnesota Zoo last weekend playing a xylophone as a worm with glasses? My kid thought you were great.
In college, I was often irritated by the evergreen “What are you going to do with that?” people asked after discovering I was a dance/theatre major. No one asks a med student what they’re going to do. People act as if being a performer is not a real occupation.
It is the most precious thing in the world to see a sour-faced grandpa walking alone down the hall during a Timberwolves game and suddenly see his face light up when he sees you. To have a young child race at you with open arms, hug you, and whisper, I love you. I love you. To witness victory as a toddler hiding under a table—who loves the Easter bunny but is scared of the Easter bunny—raises up his little dyed-egg-holding-hand, and gives his special dyed egg to the bunny.
Our best performances have nothing to do with a paycheck or our names in lights, but are given just by helping people make it through the day.
Moments like these make the sweating worth it.
There is nothing better than giving people—especially children—a little joy.
Would Meryl Streep ever moonlight as the Easter Bunny? Is this large child breaking my femur? Why didn’t I apply to Juilliard? What kind of child loves Barney anyway?
I met my husband as a Noid. It was not a cute costume. Picture Star Wars’ Jar Jar Binks as a fuzzy red devil. I think Domino’s wanted to create an annoying mascot (hence the name), much like the silly rabbit in the “Trix are for kids!” commercials, but what they got was nightmare fuel. Instead of devil horns, I had red bunny-esque ears which stood akimbo on my huge, pear-shaped head. The face had crossed eyes and a jagged, gap-toothed grin. The body was pot-bellied, and I had big white soccer goalie gloves on my hands and oversized bunny feet.
I thought, in a bright red sort of way, that I resembled my Aunt Cindy.
I was standing near the front doors of the arena, giving high-fives to children who were entering. It was snowing. He was standing about forty feet down the sidewalk, trying to get rid of his basketball tickets. Unbeknownst to him, I had been thinking about dating again because I had recently read an article in Cosmopolitan about having great sex in your eighties (I don’t know why this was a concern of mine—I was 24). The article stated that in order to have great sex in your eighties, you should pair up with someone you now viewed as attractive. Go out with “your type.” The theory was, you would always see them as you met them, even if they were now falling apart and wrinkled.
My problem: I had never contemplated what “my type” actually was.
A few days earlier, I’d decided that I preferred men that looked like men, not youthful boys. I preferred smart, tall, progressive men with dark hair, dark eyes, and athletic builds, who didn’t hunt and liked cats.
I went up to him and started talking.
—I bet you are a hot blonde.
—I am blonde and I am very, very hot.
We met up a few days later for dinner and a drink. I learned that he did not hunt animals and liked cats. He was a cyclist, training for an Olympic bid. I was juggling three jobs and auditioning for everything I could. He wanted to ride his bike and retire by the age of forty. I wanted to be a comic and change the world.
I am in hundreds of photo albums.
I’ve been hugged and sat on by thousands of people.
I’ve had my picture taken with children, elders, veterans, dogs.
I’d laugh at myself because when I’d lean in to take a picture with someone, I’d always smile. Alone in a dark suit where no one could see me, I smiled every time someone snapped a photo.
The scariest thing was when people tried to place their recently born babies in my gloved or large-mitted hands. There is little grip. Babies are slippery. I have low visibility.
DO NOT HAND OVER YOUR BABY.
HOLD YOUR BABY AND HAVE SOMEONE TAKE A PICTURE OF YOU HOLDING YOUR BABY NEXT TO A COSTUMED CHARACTER.
Around this time, I also did singing telegrams, which really sucked because I am not a great singer, horrible with directions, and get lost all the time. And you can’t very well drive around in a Barney suit. I had to get dressed in my truck before skipping into someone’s party.
My friend Carl and I both worked for the telegram service. I would be a large-headed teddy bear, wearing a bowtie and striped vest. Carl would be a clown. This work division was good—I was a subpar clown. With balloons, I could make: a light saber, peas-in-a-pod, a wiener dog, a poodle, and a giraffe, which was basically a long-necked wiener dog. Carl could make a freaking zoo. And a light saber, peas-in-a-pod, and reindeer antlers.
One night we were driving to rural Wisconsin, about two hours out from Minneapolis. It was dark and snowing hard. Carl was at the wheel. We were tired from working our day jobs and being in rehearsal. We discussed our game plan for the night.
We were performing at a children’s funeral.
Moments like these make the sweating worth it.
There is nothing better than giving people—especially children—a little joy.
Neither of us had ever been to a child’s funeral, much less worked at one. Usually, a non-talking character is for a meet & greet. You wave, shake a hand or high five, take a few photos, give a hug, and move on. Tonight we were going to be milling around a reception area for two hours. As a clown, Carl would talk. As a bear, I would not. I tentatively planned on a lot of circle dances and holding/rocking children on my lap. We were going to wing it.
Several months earlier, there had been a fire in a trailer. A mother and her three children.
The fire happened late at night. The mother awoke to smoke and flames. She grabbed the baby closest to her, broke a window and jumped. The jump broke her leg. She went back in through the flames to save the other two.
They didn’t make it. One child was pronounced dead at the scene, and the other was hospitalized with severe burns, later dying. The baby survived but had breathed in a lot of smoke. The mother was hospitalized for months, much of it in a coma, mending a broken femur, getting skin grafts.
The funeral was postponed until she was out of the hospital and rehabilitation.
She hired us because she didn’t want the children attending to remember only sadness.
There were two small caskets.
I hugged a lot of children that night. I sat with children who just wanted to be held. It was the first time I ever silently cried in a suit. Carl danced jigs and made a menagerie. There were little kids wearing reindeer antlers, balloon sword fighting, carrying armfuls of animals.
After we were done and back in our regular clothes, I introduced myself, red faced and steaming, to the mother. I hugged her. I was stunned at how young she looked. I was 25. She looked to be the same.
Carl and I didn’t say much on the way home. The windshield wipers were working hard and the heater was on full blast. Carl was looking straight ahead. I looked out the side window, watching the snow fly past us.
Elizabeth Hawes is an award-winning prison writer and former editor of Reflector, the prison news magazine at Minnesota Correctional Institution (MCI)-Shakopee, where Hawes is incarcerated. She is a winner of the 2023 Keeley Schenwar Memorial Essay Prize.
This is a fabulous piece of writing. 💗