Entertainment
Halloween 2024 costumes embrace memes, DIY, and obscurity
All Hallow’s Eve is upon us, and who would have thought that this year’s biggest seasonal debate would be when exactly we should be celebrating Hallo-weekend?
While half of the country deals with the Halloween aftermath of last weekend and the other prepares for big plans at the end of this week, the holiday has already stoked a wide variety of clever and outlandish costumes, nods to one’s inner child, and viral TikTok trends. And though most of the chronically online costumes abided by today’s more careful social norms surrounding online posting, many continue to push the bounds what’s considered appropriate on the holiday.
Obscurity and memes dominate once again
Challengers trios and costumed salutes to brat summer conveyed one truth: Generic costumes remain out, with the most niche costumes commandeering attention away from even the most impressive celebrity ensembles. Modern Halloween is about being in on the joke, whether you like it or not.
The internet’s favorite reaction memes, like “sad ant” and “she’s so crazzzzzzy“, made iconic party appearances, and the internet’s favorite X posts, like “he wants that cookie so effing bad,” got transformed into iconic couple outfits.
The tongue-in-cheek “I hate gay Halloween” trend revived itself for another year, with an even greater flood of off-the-wall costumes than last season’s obscurities. Maybe you spotted one of the choir of French children playing tribute to music legend Serge Gainsbourg in a now viral video from 1988? Or a melancholy Oompa Loompa from the disastrous “Willy’s Chocolate Experience”? Perhaps you spotted a pair of horses, but not just any horses, the horses from Beyoncé’s duology album covers? Wait, maybe it was actually the carousel horse from Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield’s We Live in Time…
Everyone is in their DIY era
Whether it was an obscure meme only a select few would know or the year’s biggest Hollywood character, users online were going all out on their homemade outfits, esoteric props included.
Some of the most random entries: Figures on a crosswalk sign made with just blood, sweat, and a hefty amount of black poster board. The carefully crafted car passenger seat mentioned in the Chappell Roan song “Casual.” Multiple Dune sandworms made from sleeping bags, playtubes, and pipe cleaners capitalized on the franchise’s current popularity.
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Parents went all out for their children, as well, and documented the process, including lifesize Crocs sandas and alien abductions. Even dogs got in on the crafty action. Adults reinvigorated the spirit of their childhoods, too, from Spongebob and Webkinz characters to the Scooby Doo live action crew, iSpy Books, and Princess Diana Beanie Babies.
It suggests Spirit Halloween’s prepackaged outfits just aren’t serving the public’s needs anymore — In fact, the company may be pivoting to the Christmas market now.
The cultural appropriation conversation is more complicated
Still, Halloween season isn’t complete without some questionable costume choices. But where cultural appropriation was once a hotly debated faux-pas, its place in the cultural conversation has quelled. The nation’s political environment and celebrity obsession continue to complicate the matter.
On X, users quickly spread an image of a young couple dressed as Sean “Diddy” Combs and a bottle of Johnson’s baby oil — a reference to allegations of sexual abuse by the famous rapper, who is currently in prison, awaiting trial. The individual labelled “PDiddy” had painted his face dark brown, an egregious case of blackface. The baby oil theme was popular among others, as well.
When another user shared his costume from the previous Halloween season — a pun on the phrase “human trafficking” depicting him as a traffic light wearing a crown — a subset of users called out the post for making light of sex-based crimes.
Additionally, egregious instances of racism among Halloween posts enraged many online, reiterating to many that the holiday’s historic issues aren’t a thing of the past.
The environment is ripe for a renewed conversation about race and abuse as depicted in online media. Earlier this year, TikTok users went viral for resharing their old childhood costumes that were now deemed problematic, including Pocahantas and stereotypical “Indian” outfits. Years prior, users were ironically posting their “cancellable” costumes, most of which were clickbait posts to show off their favorite or funniest outfits.
While Indigenous “headdresses” are no longer the costume accessory of choice (despite the indie sleaze revival), some of the public’s popular Halloween choices still hark back to complicated, problematic eras in humanity’s history.
Earlier this month, TikTok user Chanci Culp, known as @allstyleschanceculp, stirred conversation about the ethics behind celebrity costumes, too.
“Oh God, I’m nervous,” she says to the camera in a now viral video, before explaining her hesitations about dressing up as a member of ’90s R&B group TLC. Culp asks her followers and Black women at large if dressing up as a famous Black celebrity would still be considered offensive. The video’s comment section was resoundingly, but not entirely, positive. In a follow up post generating more than 800,000 views, Culp explained her concerns further, pointing to her upbringing among overtly racist family members. “It’s not your burden to teach me what’s offensive and not offensive,” she tells the camera. “That’s my responsibility. I have to unlearn…” Halloween revelers, take note.
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BookCon 2026: Authors Rachel Reid, Stephanie Archer talk hockey romance and how it could change the sport for the better
With the fervor of Heated Rivalry, there’s a fierce desire among book readers for even more hockey. On Sunday, April 19, at BookCon, the “You Had Me at Hockey: A Look at One of Sports Romance’s Hottest Genres”, authors Rachel Reid (Heated Rivalry, Game Changer), Emily Rath (Pucking Around), Ngozi Ukazu (Check Please), Stephanie Archer (The Wild Card), and Kate Cochrane (Wake Up, Nat & Darcy) were joined by moderator and fellow author Bal Khabra (Collide) to discuss the rise and continued success of hockey romance.
Khabra kicked off the panel, asking just how hockey became so popular. Ukazu joked that it was as if the genre “escaped containment,” like when the Omegaverse went mainstream, while Reid described the mystery around hockey, saying, “what [the players] are doing seems impossible.” Archer also added that the sport itself is exceptionally hard on the body, and the celebrity around players, especially in Canada, is fun to play with.
But there’s more to the genre’s success than the tropes. “It has to be said,” Rath argued, “that the cornerstone of why this is so popular in publishing is racism.” She went on to say that straight, white women’s voices dominated the romance genre for so long, pointing out that hockey is also the whitest sport. Among major league sports, the NHL is the most predominantly white. In 2022, ESPN reported that 83.6% of league players and staff were white, compared to the NFL, where 25-27% of players are white, or the NBA, where white players make up 17.5% of the league.
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Zooming into the genre, the authors also spoke about the writing process. They dove into the deeper aspects of their work, even the smut. Rath said, “I think the least sexy thing you can ever do is write a sex scene.” A similar sentiment came up during Reid’s Saturday panel, where she described using the sex scenes to further the emotional arc. When readers ask authors if they can skip the spice, Archer says of her own books, “No, you can’t skip the sex scenes. You’re missing so much character development if you don’t go on the journey with them.”
The panel turned to the future, too. Many of the authors write BIPOC and queer representation into their novels, in a genre that often centers on whiteness and homophobia. “We’re writing the world as we want it to be,” Rath said.
Reid has found that there is progress toward a future that these authors and their readers want to see, saying that the NHL is interested in working with them. “People on the inside, they really want to work toward change and want to make this happen.”
With the hockey fandom at an all-time high, there’s a whole team behind these authors ready to drive change.
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MLB roundup: Chris Sale, Braves win pitchers' duel vs. scuffling Phils
