It’s that time of year again – the leaves are changing color, the temperature is gradually dropping, Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts have started offering Pumpkin flavored items, and big packages of candy are on sale; it’s fall, and Halloween is right around the corner.
The Problem: Finding costumes for Halloween.
If you’ve ever flipped through a teen costume catalogue, you’ll understand what I mean when I say that trying to find Halloween costumes can be a real struggle for both girls and guys, but it’s a lot worse for girls. First of all, getting a costume that is school-appropriate is close to impossible because the majority of costumes don’t cover a lot of skin. The structure of teenage girl costumes is generally the same: mini-skirt and some form of a tank-top or short sleeve shirt. If you feel comfortable and you enjoy wearing those types of things, be my guest. I have nothing against it. In fact, if I could get away with wearing one of those kind of outfits, I might; but it’s hard to wear so little clothing this time of year when it is supposed to be 48 degrees this Halloween night. On top of that, many of these costumes break the school dress code. You don’t want to risk being the “sexy police officer” wearing gym shorts.
Guys have their own issues. Every costume is stereotypical and gender-specific, which makes it hard to find something original to wear. If you take a look at Party City’s Halloween website, there’s an entire section filled with pages of teenage girl costumes and only one page for teenage boy costumes.
But both guys’ and girls’ costumes share a huge problem, which is cost. The average price of costumes on Party City’s website ranges between $35 and $50, excluding accessories or anything additional.
The Solution: Make your own costume!!!
After scouring the Internet for Halloween costumes, I decided to make a Halloween costume of my own. And just by asking around, I get the sense that the majority of my friends plan to do the same. I’m sure many of you are currently thinking, “How am I supposed to find the time to actually make my own costume?” And based on my experience so far in BSGE, I totally get that. I get the fact that most of us barely find the time to sleep, let alone time to sit down and create our own costumes. I have good news for you, though: it’s easier than you think. Since I happen to be a huge fan of books and dystopian fiction, I came up with the idea of being “Divergent” for Halloween. And when I say Divergent, I mean it literally. I plan on dressing up using the different colors that represent each faction (black for Dauntless, gray for Abnegation, etc; and if you have no idea what I’m talking about then please do yourself a favor and find a copy of Divergent so you can read it). I ordered the tattoos online, and I’m wearing clothes that I already own, so my total amount spent on Halloween comes up to about $13 (including shipping).
The point I’m trying to make here is that making your own costume does not have to be hard or time consuming. You can’t go wrong with being your favorite fictional character. If you wanted to be anyone from the Mortal Instrument series, all you would really need are jeans, a casual shirt, a leather or jean jacket (or fancy dress for girls-whatever you have) and some rune tattoos which can be bought online. Or if you wanted to be someone from the Percy Jackson series, you would need a Camp Halfblood shirt and some jeans. You can get a Camp Halfblood t-shirt online, or you could make it by printing out the design and ironing it onto an orange shirt using transfer paper, which is considerably cheaper. It’s as simple as that. I know that those aren’t that many ideas, and many of you probably don’t like these books anyways, but hey. You’re in BSGE for a reason. Put your creativity to good use.
The BACC Rag 