When I was a kid, you either had to make your own Halloween costume or buy one of those old '80s costumes from Kmart that pretty much amounted to wearing a printed garbage bag that came with a horrific plastic mask. I remember my mom being kind of "anti" plastic costumes because 1) they were a waste of money when you could just make your own, and 2) I had a grandma who loved to sew things. (Although I do remember one year, my brother insisted on an Oscar the Grouch store-bought costume and he loved that thing. He'd wear it even when it wasn't Halloween.) And looking at photos from back in the day, I always wonder why in the world we wore those things, they were so very bad. But hey, we were kids and everyone else was doing it.
These days, store-bought costumes have gotten a little more sophisticated, probably due to how easy it is to mass-produce them overseas. The holiday aisles at any Walmart or Target are filled with so many more choices and cool accessories than I ever had as a kid. I remember being blissfully happy to find some cool face paint at the store for Halloween, but now there are whole pop-up stores dedicated to any kind of holiday need you could possibly think of, plus things you didn't even know you needed at all. Sometimes I'm just so overwhelmed with all the stuff. There's just so much of it. So much stuff! And you only give a shit about it for about a month, then it's time to fill up the aisles with Christmas stuff, then Valentine's Day stuff, then Mardi Gras stuff, until it comes right back around to Halloween stuff. And all the candy stays the same, just different packaging for different holidays. I generally stay away from holiday aisles for this reason.
Anyways. When you live in New Orleans the bar for costumes is raised. There are events around here all the time where it would be appropriate to show up in costume, so everyone really takes the art of costuming seriously. And Halloween is taken seriously.
For this year I kind of wanted to get back to my roots with a Disney character. When I was little I was obsessed with Cinderella and I went as her for a couple of years. My grandma made me the coolest blue dress and I loved it because it was poofy and looked really cool when you spun around in a circle. Little girls love that kind of stuff. So in doing some research for a good Halloween Disney character, I looked around online for ideas and at a few stores and found that things have gotten pretty weird in the world of store-bought costumes.
Here are some of the more ridiculous Halloween costumes I have found:
Sexy Ursula the Sea Witch
I get that if you're looking for a women's costume, it's usually a "sexy" costume, because God forbid a girl might want to be fully-clothed to stay warm on a chilly October evening, but a sexy Ursula the Sea Witch? Ursula is supposed to be some kind of octopus or squid. She's not sexy. She's probably the least sexy Disney villain I can think of besides the queen in Snow White when she was the old crone. I just don't get it.
Sexy Rick Grimes
Okay, so Rick Grimes is a male character on "The Walking Dead" and I think it's pretty cool to be a character from that show for Halloween. And hey, even if you're a girl, why not be a male character if that's what floats your fancy… But Rick Grimes doesn't wear a short skirt. He wears pants. A sheriff's uniform to be exact. He also doesn't wear heels to kill zombies nor does he wear a skin-tight shirt. Why in the world would you wear these things to kill zombies? Also, he doesn't use a sword. Am I over-thinking this?
Offensive Couple’s Costume
This costume combo is offensive for two reasons: 1) If you're going as a person from a different culture in order to have a laugh at that culture, it's not cool. NOT COOL. 2) Why does the man get to be fully clothed while wearing comfortable shoes and the woman is wearing a skin-tight short dress and heels?
Pepper Potts from Iron Man
This is a costume I saw at Walmart a few weeks ago. If the package didn't say Iron Man 3 I probably wouldn't recognize what the costume is. The colors are right I guess, but this is not how an Iron Man suit works. It's by nature, a suit. It covers the whole body! It has a mask! There is no skirt, there are no heels! If you wanted to change the colors a bit and call it a Wonder Woman costume, fine. But I don't get how it's an Iron Man costume or even a Pepper Potts costume.
"Smart" Black Cat
This is another one from Walmart. I thought it was funny because at first glance, I didn't understand why this cat was "smart." What about this costume says "cat who is also intelligent"? Is it because the skirt doesn't stop at the upper thigh? No plunging neckline? And then I looked at the translation. It says "elegante." Elegant = Smart. It's a little lost in translation.
I feel like there's a great group costume that could be inspired by all of this, stemming from that Rick Grimes catastrophe. I think I'll try to convince my girlfriends to be AMC main characters, sexy adult women's-style. There will be a Sexy Walter White (skin-tight button-down, underwear, heels), Sexy Jesse Pinkman (skin-tight hoodie that only zips up half-way to reveal cleavage, heels), Sexy Don Draper (60's era skin-tight suit with a short skirt, heels, cigarette, glass of whiskey) and a Sexy Roger Sterling (same thing as Don Draper with a white wig).
They make just about as much sense as Rick Grimes in a short skirt.
