Teens across the nation are mourning how 2020’s circumstances have waisted a seemingly perfect Halloween. Falling on a beautiful Saturday, gaining an hour for daylight savings, and a full moon, this year could have been the perfect Halloween for partying. Even though it is a perfect Halloween, Halloween itself is the worst holiday to celebrate during a global pandemic. Think about it, the premise of the day is to get food from as many strangers you can and/or partying as hard as you can until nausea is more prominent than party fun. Now, there are ways to celebrate Halloween from quarantine where you can still have fun, and I can spend a whole day listing them. But for your sake I won’t. What I will talk about is costumes, more specifically, the basic ones that for some reason people just keep on wearing.
In a survey of about 15 Franklin students, 85% of students said that they were planning on wearing a costume on Halloween despite the corona conflict, with the residual 15% deciding not to partake in costume festivities. So what are the 85% percent wearing? When students were asked what they were planning on wearing for Halloween, 36% of costume-wearing students said that they are planning on dressing as characters from movies they like (such as Jack Torrance from The Shining, Kiki from Kiki’s Delivery Service, and Beetlejuice from Beetlejuice). In second place, 25% students said they were going to dress as pirates;and the third most popular costume based on Franklin student responses at 13%, is generational costume (meaning you dress like a person from the 90’s, 80’s, 70’s, ect.). I would’ve thought that generational costumes ranked higher but maybe it was only cool to dress like it was the 80’s when Stranger Things was still good. The remaining 26% responded with various miscellaneous costume ideas. One student said that they might dress as Trisha Paytas, there was also a response that said they were just gonna do something with fake blood and, not to put a damper on your idea, but in my opinion that is the slightly messier version of normal black clothes and cat ears. Lastly, when students were asked what they thought was the most popular/basic costume idea, sexy cats and vampires were tied 50/50.
In my humble opinion, there is a top five chart of the most basic Halloween costumes that gets switched up every five or so years. I will elaborate on my top five most basic of Halloween 2020 and maybe we can also talk about some of the less basic but mentionable attempts at costumes.
Need I really say what we’re all thinking already? The number one most basic, most fundamental, most pivotal costume known to people across the nation (if not the World) is the “sexy insert literally anything in the entire freaking world regardless of any cultural insensitivity because no one cares if you look sexy” costume. But it is also known by its other even more basic form: the sexy cat, which stands to be a crowd favorite for past generations and probably generations to come until we all die. Of course when thinking of the sexy whatever the heck costume one must look back on the iconic words of Miss Cady Heron: “The hardcore girls just wear lingerie and some form of animal ears,” thus promoting this look for eternity.
Although they come in a variety of shapes and colors, the last minute DIY costume look is in itself a basic costume. Don’t get me wrong, there are DIY costumes that can be cool, but the majority of DIY costumes look like you have become the human embodiment of 5 minute craft without the ill fitting background music. Which leads us to this year’s addition to the charts and my prediction for the number two spot in the charts is: The bed sheet ghost. It’s quick! It’s fun! And it does not in any way resemble an official outfit of a certain group that was founded by David Duke! The Tik Tok trend has skyrocketed the simple and easy costume of holes in a bed sheet, and if you wanna mix it up, be a little quirky, a little zany, you can add some sunglasses to that crazy idea. I mean. Wow. The ambiance. The creativity. I’m just, I’m blown away.
Coming in hot at number three is: dressing up like your favorite character of a show or movie that exclusively stars white people. In other words wearing normal clothes but calling it a costume, which is the main reason for its popularity because you either don’t have to buy anything or you have to buy one or two things but it’s ok because they’re just normal clothes so you can wear them whenever. I like to think of it as a justification for shopping during October when you’re broke. This category is also dangerously close to a generational costume; for instance if you dress up as Rachel Green or Monica Geller from Friends you can tell people you are dressed as so but you could also say that you are dressed as you were in the 90’s and people wouldn’t question it. And on the other end of that scale if you were to dress as Cher from Clueless in the classic yellow plaid set or Fred Jones from any of the Scooby-Doo franchises it would be hard to mix you with any other character or category.
For the costume ranked at fourth, (I thought a lot about if it should be higher or lower on the scale and honestly there’s a good argument for both) is: vampires. They’re very iconic and you can do lots of variations on it, you can go victorian and really get into it, you can go with the sparkling Robert Pattinson Twilight, or you could go with the Vanessa Morgan’s My Babysitter’s a Vampire and dress like a 2013 baddie with or without fangs. Vampires could easily be ranked a number one because it fits into so many classic costume categories; you can be from a show, you can be a sexy vampire, you can mix it with a generational costume and be a 2000’s vampire. Vampires are one of the classic monsters like Frankenstein, werewolves, zombies, and witches that are trademarked almost synonymously with Halloween as a holiday. The reason I put vampires here is the same reason it’s so basic, it’s been done to death, the vampire costume is mainstream it has lost most of its appeal to teens today. If I was referring to all Halloween celebrators this list would be almost entirely different, but I’m mostly referring to young adults and the pop culture trends that dictate our lives.
Our number five spot will be secured by Hogwarts uniforms, mostly likely Slytherin house. And it is with regret and deep and divine confusion that I rank this, but once again due to Tik Tok’s incessant need to create trends and content that no one anticipated or asked for: yes that’s right, it’s the Draco Malfoy stan. And to them I say: Why? Why have you chosen this path? I do not mean to insult you in any way, I just am very confused and I don’t understand. All I know is that it’s popular and Tom Felton made a Tik Tok of himself reacting to other people’s edits and it’s quite funny (check it out @t22felton). There are always a few Hogwarts uniforms because Harry Potter is amazing and he formed most of our childhoods. But this year, the franchise has gained additional relevance because of a certain pasty white boy in a Slytherin house.
This isn’t as mainstream and I hope this doesn’t give you any ideas, but I feel as though it should be addressed. Under no circumstances should you dress up as sexy Dwight Schrute from The Office, or maybe anyone from The Office, but especially not Dwight like….. what?? It makes no sense to me. Also I can’t decide if I like the idea of dressing as Three Hole Punch Jim in season two, episode five. I’ve seen people doing this and I can’t tell if it’s cool or if they’re trying too hard.
I would like to end by stating that it was not my intention in any way to offend anybody and I am in no way telling you what you can and can’t wear as a Halloween costume or any time of the year in general. If you want to be a sexy cat, be a sexy cat! Don’t let me stop you, do what you want.
Unless you want to be sexy Dwight then I am sort of, slightly, a tiny bit, strongly asking/advising/begging you not to do so. #nosexydwight.
