Happy November, everyone! Unfortunately, we have reached the end of the Spooky Season. However, that means we can now look through all of the Halloweekend(s) posts to see all of the fun and scary costumes everyone came up with.
These past couple of weeks, I have loved seeing all of the trends going around social media, especially the “I hate gay Halloween” trend and all of the costume transition videos. Unfortunately, I’ve also noticed some less favorable tendencies, particularly about some more traditional, basic or dare I say, lazy costumes. We may have to reflect and decide if this is the best we can do. Keeping this in mind, in this article, I’m going to walk you through a few Halloween costumes and accessories that I believe need to be left in 2024.
Sexy “_____” COstumes
I know Cady Heron’s Mean Girls quote, but sometimes these sexy “insert anything here” costumes go a bit too far.
I am always down for a concept costume or the niche-est reference that only you and approximately four other people will understand, but on the flip side, I saw FAR too many sexy renditions of basic costumes like sexy cop, sexy princess- especially sexy animals! Let’s take a second to think about that one.
The few sexy versions of Halloween costumes I can get behind are when people dress up the inflatable cow suits with lingerie, or I’ve even seen a variety of sexy Loraxes and Pitbulls (the artist, not the dog) which are honestly so funny and impressive. If you can’t already tell, I have a bias toward whatever costumes make me giggle over goggle.
No shade to anyone who just wants to have her “Hot Girl Halloween,” but I do believe the hyper-sexualization of basic costumes does allude to a larger issue of hyper-sexualization and objectification of women in American society. I’m not trying to yuck anyone’s yum, but it can be quite difficult for me to imagine feeling safe or secure in public, especially when there has been evidence of placing the blame onto women in specific circumstances for dressing a certain way and insinuating something by the way they dress.
Animal Costumes
Speaking of sexy animal costumes…
Just kidding! I am not referring to the little outfits you put on your pets when I say animal costumes. I am referring to people who put on a pair of animal ears and paint on a nose and whiskers and call it a costume.
If you are going to be an animal, commit to the bit! I have seen a few anatomically accurate “Three Blind Mice” and I’ve got to say, I’ve never laughed harder. Sometimes I feel like animal costumes should be left to small children in full-body dog or skunk costumes (totally not speaking from personal experience. My parents called me Stinker Butt).
Princess Costumes
The princess costume is a quick and easy pick for young women, but there is one common denominator I have detected in a majority of these costumes I saw this year. Everyone say it with me: “The Amazon corset!” Very good.
No judgment to the influencer in the photo, she was just one of the first of many that came up on Instagram after I searched “Amazon corset Halloween,” which displays the prevalence of this clothing item in today’s Halloween costumes. While, of course, this clothing item is cute, the extent to which people depend on it in their costumes is quite alarming.
The quality of this corset and the means that went into its production are most likely not of the utmost quality, which is one of my greatest concerns about this product. There are plenty more ethical avenues you may be able to source similar products such as in thrift stores or local costume shops in which you can rent or buy costume items. Also, there are countless tutorials online on how to make your own boned corsets, granting that you have the skill sets, materials and time to craft It—which I know is maybe less than achievable for all of us.
I know it can be an intimidating task to choose the best Halloween costumes, especially if you’re doing a costume every day for two weekends, but maybe we can consider preparing a little earlier and finding more ethical approaches for sourcing Halloween costume items like thrifting or DIYing parts of them. I want to give people the benefit of the doubt, but trust me when I say that we can tell when you took a last-minute trip to Spirit Halloween or overnight shipped your entire costume from Amazon.
These matters like the Amazon corset and needing a different costume for every day of the week are a reflection of some larger issues of American society as a whole, such as overconsumption and materialism. I am aware that this article will not solve any of these issues, however, I do want to encourage readers to take a second thought before they express ship six different costumes from Amazon or Shein just so they can have a larger variety of Halloween content to post on social media.
Hopefully this article helped you reconsider some past or future Halloween costume options, and I hope we can agree to leave some of these costumes in 2024. I can’t wait to see what everyone comes up with next year!