Editorial: Halloween can be fun without being harmful

Halloween at UNC is a treasured time. Late nights on Franklin Street call for students to dream up the most creative — or sometimes the most accessible — costumes to either fit in with the atmosphere that Halloween night creates or to impress all those who take part in this Chapel Hill tradition. 

These Halloween traditions, while entertaining, also invite a lot of negativity, especially in regard to costumes. This Tuesday, keep in mind some of the following ideas when assessing other people’s costumes, as well as picking out your own.

Costume choice during Halloween can be stressful, from coordinating with bigger groups to gathering the right materials for last-minute ensembles. Yet the process is overall meant to be lighthearted. 

Men have a wide range of costumes to choose from. Gaston from Beauty and the Beast? Great. A dragon? Why not. Even a baby? Of course, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with men showing skin. 

But what about if a woman wanted to dress up as, say, a vampire? 

That sounds fine, but there are many qualifications that need to be checked whilst putting together the costume. How busty is her top? A little skin is okay, vampires aren’t prudes, but she can’t be showing too much, otherwise she’d just be “asking for it.” Pants or skirt? Pants would be perfectly acceptable, not too showy, appropriate. What about a skirt? How short is it? If she’s wearing tights, what kind are they? Fishnets might suggest promiscuity, while solid black tights might serve to create a harmless, schoolgirl look. 

The planning behind a woman’s costume involves a great deal of outside factors, due to the social pressures that are a given on Halloween night. 

Obviously if a woman is wearing a risqué outfit, she’s setting a bad example for children, distracting the men around her and disgusting any parent in sight, right? 

Truthfully, she might get some looks from nosy passersby, but no one is actively thinking about how someone’s costume choice is affecting their night. If a man can show as much skin as he wants, then so can a woman. A woman’s body is not naturally sexualized. It takes a conscious effort to really look at someone’s costume and think, “Yeah, that’s definitely inappropriate. My night is ruined now because of it.”

Although people should not be concerned with how much skin a woman is showing in her costume, there is a concern that is largely overlooked a lot of the time. 

Cultural appropriation is still an ongoing problem with Halloween costumes. Want to wear dreads? Blackface? Feathers on your head to look Native American? Go right ahead and do it, just know that wearing a costume version of someone else’s culture is not celebrating them, it is tokenizing them. 

“Dressing up” as a Black person, Asian person, Latinx person, or any general ethnicity other than your own is dehumanizing anyone who comes from that culture.

Using a culture as a costume shows zero regard for the value that people hold to their own culture, and also implies that the person wearing the costume feels that they are superior enough to treat other human beings as characters. 

If you have to defend the appropriateness of your costume to someone who genuinely feels hurt by it, maybe you should have a different costume. It’s as simple as that.

When venturing out on Halloween this year, please be mindful of your drinking, of your treatment towards others and of your overall attitude.

A costume isn’t an invitation for unwanted advances. A mask isn’t an excuse for anonymous misconduct. Alcohol is a tricky variable in the discussion surrounding consent. How do we learn our limits without first pushing them? If you see someone struggling to stand on Tuesday night, make an effort to get them somewhere safe. 

We all look forward to Oct. 31 as a night of excitement in the midst of mind-crushing midterms. Let loose, but know that regardless of the day of the year, we should be respectful of one another.

Halloween is supposed to be fun, but can be easily ruined by lack of judgement, or too much of it.