Everyone’s favourite part of Halloween is dressing up, but every year the costume choices seem to get worse and worse. Dressing up is all about being the characters and personalities you love, or expressing yourself and what you like. Although Halloween is a time to be whomever you want to be, dressing up with poor taste as a sexy fireman or a sexy maid is not appropriate.

Dressing up as a persona and altering it to fit your style is alright, but when it becomes borderline offensive it is not suitable when you go out trick or treating. Dressing up as Minnie Mouse is fun, but giving her sexy attire is not fitting, especially for young girls. Wearing a Nazi uniform or a terrorist outfit is offensive and a sensitive issue for many groups of people. Even dressing up as a deceased celebrity back as a zombie is tacky. With your friends you might get out a few laughs at the party, but in the general eyes of the public it is tasteless.

While you can express yourself however you want on these couple days, blatantly mocking people through a costume is offensive. Recently, Caitlyn Jenner costumes have been going around on social media, and it is disrespectful to the transgender community. It simplifies many of the struggles transgender people have and doesn’t celebrate the community.  All it takes to stop these from going around is to get costume companies to stop selling them. These costumes get spread around when people see them in stores, take a picture, and upload it to social media.

On Halloween the topic of costumes sexualizing young girls resurfaces every year, and it’s still a problem. There are way too many costumes for young girls that are viewed as hot or sexy. Police officers and nurses are jobs young girls are taught to aspire to, but these costumes are designed to be provocative for teens, kids and even preschoolers. It’s also demeaning and sexist to girls if you change a traditional work uniform to a dress with the same pattern. It changes what many feminists are working towards with equal positions and pay in the work force. This includes the sexy adult women occupation costumes too, not just the young girls. The outfits seen in stores are causing the problem, not the people seeing the costume as sexy. Click here to see an article about what one mother did to fix this issue

It takes common sense to know if a costume is offensive or just plain tacky, so avoid buying them or creating them yourselves. We are undermining the issues that appear in our society by ignoring them on this one day. Go as someone who suits you, expresses your interests, or displays your favourite character from media. It’s possible to be creative without being rude and offensive too.  And while jokes can be ridiculous and funny, it ruins the spirit of Halloween for everyone.