Shirley.
As in "Shirley Guacamole," one of the first characters I ever created. Shirley was a hooker with a heart of gold. Of course, I was only twelve, so what did I know about hookers? Only what I'd seen in movies and TV.
I knew they had big hair and wore gaudy clothes, high heels, lots of makeup and lots of jewelry. They usually had bra straps hanging down their arms.
I started off doodling drawings of Shirley in my sketch pad. At Halloween I decided to bring her to life for Trick-or-Treating.
That's right, I dressed my YOUNGER sister up as a street walker. I think my parents thought it was a gypsy costume. Lord knows what they would have thought if they'd known she was supposed to be a HOOKER!
My sister gamely went along. I picked out her costume (consisting of my mom's old clothes that she'd given us to play dress up) applied her make-up, and fitted one of my mom's old wigs on her head for the big hair. Man, she looked GREAT!
My mom quit buying store bought Halloween costumes for us when my sibs and I were ages 10, 7, and 4, respectively. We were tasked with creating our own costumes, and I have to say, I had so much more fun developing costumes and make-up than buying ones ready made.
I am wracking up quite a number of old photos to find and post, but I do have a short slideshow of my sister and me when we weren't dressed up for Halloween.
They have big fake fangs and big blue hair (like Marge Simpson--the hair, not the fangs), but I can partially credit their existence to Shirley Guacamole.