Lately, when it comes to Halloween, it seems like the only conversation people want to have is about the ubiquitous sexy costume that women across America have adopted as their trick-or-treat uniform du jour. While I do agree that the whole sexy nurse/sexy grandma/sexy heroin junky trend has gotten a little out of hand, I do think it’s unfair that women are getting all the flack for abandoning creativity and just throwing on a water bra and some glitter eyeliner. Seriously, has no one the strength to comment on what some of the dudes are wearing?
That said, here’s my thoughts on some of the banal costumes that I see year after year on a generation of XY-chromosomed idiots:
Pimp: What does this say to you? I know what it says to me: “Hey guys! I know that by day I’m just another white-collar turd surfing Match.com on company time, but put me in some purple velvet and all my impotence issues just melt away!” It doesn’t matter that dressing as someone who exploits sex workers is more degrading than women dressing as sluts, and it doesn’t matter that you’re not fooling anyone at the after-hours office mixer because they all saw the Marmaduke comic strips you hung up in your cubicle. Obviously what matters is that you banish any remaining memory of that time you got dumped at the prom circa 1987.
Superhero: Just before writing this, I came upon a Halloween Web site that wrote on their men’s page: “Men have to be manly, so for a costume something like a real Spider-Man costume, an Iron Man costume, or an X-Men costume is needed.” I don’t know about you guys, but that makes sense to me! What could possibly be more awesome than dressing up as a man with commitment issues and colored tights? Could anything be more manly than dressing up as a superhero who, underneath that leotard, is essentially Tobey McGuire? I rest my case.
Zombie: What – are you that unimaginative? Yes, we get it already: You ate bugs as a kid and grew up hoping someone would see through your closed-off exterior to the passionate and creative soul hidden beneath. You identified with the alienated kids but wrote love letters to the popular girl nonetheless, simply because you had heard she owned “The Living Dead.” Though you secretly never stopped pining for a battle between the living and the undead to break out, somewhere in between the first time you went as a Zombie and the 10th time you went as a Zombie, the camp factor stopped outweighing the overkill factor and voila! You became the guy who stopped being cool because Target ripped off your costume 10 years ago.
Trailer Trash: “Yo! I’m only here because they paid me to play hockey and I have a free ride on my parent’s money train. I would work, but five credits is cramping my party anyway. Check out my sweet costume! I just threw on this mullet and man, people don’t even recognize me. I know I’m a privileged white kid from the ‘burbs but could anything be funnier than a stereotypically stale mockery of someone who is socio-economically less fortunate? I THINK NOT BRO!”
Kat Hargreaves welcomes comments at [email protected].
