According to CNN, Halloween costumes from the first half of the 20th century focused on being scary as a way for people to ward off evil spirits or reconcile with death. Now they are worn for pure fun and games, mainly by adolescents dressing up to go trick or treating. This tradition has become very commonplace in America, and most houses in every neighborhood hand out candy. October 31 is a day when people can go out and get candy for the small fee of a costume. In recent years, many costumes have become boring, unoriginal or lacking any type of effort.
This is not to say that there aren’t creative and interesting costumes still out there, but it has become socially acceptable to be boring. There has been a strong polarization of costumes: there are really great costumes that took a lot of effort to make and look amazing and costumes where it is just a solid color t-shirt and a skirt. With this divide, it becomes apparent who actually has the spirit for Halloween.
Most costumes have devolved into plain old clothes like corsets, skirts, shorts and shirts. For example, I recently saw a TikTok showing off a group costume based on the Wizard of Oz, but their costumes were various colored corsets and skirts. Now, when people actually go all out for Halloween, they are out of place in a group setting among these low effort costumes. When there is such a wide divide, those who actually have love for the holiday get dirty looks.
I have felt this dissonance in group settings many times in my years of participating in Halloween. Every year, I enjoy the hunt for a good, unique Halloween costume. Of course, there are different trends every year, but it seems like the same costumes are becoming common. Last year when I was handing out candy, I saw the same costume at least six or seven times. This decline in creativity is a direct consequence of people slowly not being able to think for themselves. People nowadays don’t want to spend the hour it takes to actually sit down and find a costume. This causes last minute costumes to become more common, and lackluster costumes.
Finding a good, creative Halloween costume can be hard and time consuming, but overall, it takes minimal brainpower and time. While some people don’t have the time to find a good costume, if they used the time they spent doomscrolling on their phone to scroll through the thousands of Amazon Halloween costumes, they could find a creative costume. The costumes don’t even have to be original, but it has become clear that there is a lack of effort and imagination put into costumes. Every Halloween costume has potential, all it takes is a bit of effort, thought and creativity to stand out from the crowd.
