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“Save Me, Scene!”: Don’t wanna be another basic witch
With Halloween (a.k.a. the most important holiday in a college student’s life) just around the corner, I’m feeling concerned about my costume. Distressed about my disfraz. In the wise words of Tina Fey, “In Girl World, Halloween is the one day a year when a girl can dress up like a total slut and no other girls can say anything else about it.” Do I pull a Karen Smith and dress sexy, or go scary like Cady? Funny? Pop culture-referencing? Layered, or exposed to the elements? This is not to mention the cost of all of this. Because students tend to go out multiple nights over the course of the week, I feel like I need to come up with more than one costume, which adds to my creative and financial stress. What’s a girl to do? – Naked and Afraid
Dear Naked and Afraid,
Oh, you hit the nail on the head. Though monsters and masked-up killers may lurk in every corner, the spookiest part of All Hallows’ Eve is deciding what to wear. Halloweekend is our one chance to dazzle our friends with our clever pop culture repertoire while looking our best. Truthfully, Halloweekend is the most important college holiday since it combines every vice young adults could possibly want to indulge in while giving us the rare opportunity to get in costume.
Well, dear reader, I can sympathize with your dilemma. Spooky season is my favorite one, but procrastination always gets the better of me, and I am left panicked and costumeless at the very last minute. I can think of a few good costumes of years past: the Heathers with our color-coded croquet sets or Magic Mike with our visible branded underwear. Yet, my first-year Halloweekend pics will always haunt me: the uncreative trio of “kiss, marry, or kill,” and a last-minute cowboy getup. Also, costumes can be expensive or time-consuming to source, adding to the average college student’s endless list of worries and woes.
The path toward a solution to your problem is not as scary as it seems (though your fears are not unfounded). For the average student, Halloweekend requires you to have at least three costumes in mind, but they are not equally important. Now, the first costume you will plan should be worn to your most exciting Halloween activity. You can choose something culturally relevant and particular to current popular media — “brat”-related costumes are bound to be a success this year, with everything from a green apple to a Troye Sivan and Charli xcx duo costume falling under this category. Memes, though fleeting in relevancy, can be the best costumes of the night (i.e., JD Vance and a couch for a couples’ costume or JoJo Siwa’s “Karma” music video outfit). As always, you can go with a classic, like a movie character or a horror favorite (ghosts, ghouls, zombies, etc).
Your main costume should be your primary Halloween endeavor, but that doesn’t mean it has to be expensive or labor-intensive. You can always kill two birds with one stone and choose your costume based on what you can build from your closet. Find a good base and buy the extra. You can pick your all-green athleisure and dress up as Raygun or find a nightgown at the thrift store and go as Ethel Cain. Sometimes the best costumes are hidden in your closet or the back of Avalon Exchange.
The truth is that most costumes are just regular outfits with one thing that makes them unique. It could be a mask, a cape, a cloak, or a lot of red paint that looks like pig’s blood (looking forward to this year’s Carries). It might take a couple of hours of doom-scrolling TikTok and looking for inspiration in the strangest corners of the internet, but you will find your missing piece. However, I do encourage creativity and effort with your Halloween costumes. If you want to, you can glue coins and cigarettes on a shirt to make it look like the Chicago rat-hole, go ahead (someone please do this).
Your secondary costumes can be less mentally draining. Putting on a pink cowboy hat and calling it a day (or a Chappell Roan costume) is perfectly acceptable. Use the bunny ears you bought and wear your sexiest dress without overthinking it. One life-changing and brilliant costume is more than enough for this Halloweekend. If you are really scraping at the bottom of the barrel of ideas, just buy a bright, matching tracksuit and call yourself Sue Sylvester (if the suit is orange, you can be Vector from Despicable Me), or get a group and call yourselves the Royal Tenenbaums.
Finally, don’t pressure yourself into creating the world’s best group (couple, trio, etc.) costume. Pick a movie or T.V. show, and you can each be one character from it. Getting people to agree on one thing is hard, and coordinating outfits is even more complicated. Of course, if your friends are all willing to spend $50 each to get Prime delivery on an Inflatable Lederhosen Costume, be my guest. Otherwise, just relax and pick a theme everyone can adjust to with their preferences and limitations. Themes can range from simple things like “Seinfeld” characters to cameos in the “Bad Blood” music video to slutty founding fathers (or slutty WashU donors, though I’m not sure how to pull off a sexy Donald Schnuck costume).
Halloween is undeniably iconic, and college students want to make it spectacular every year, but taking a step back and enjoying the holiday without pressure is important. You don’t have to make the best costume or go to the most fabulous party; just relax and make the most of this spooky season. Dress up, be trendy, creative, or scary, and make this Halloween one you will remember fondly.
Have a very spooky October.
Your ghostly friends,
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