The best and the worst of the competitors’ band names for BoB 2009.
The Yorker gives you the rundown of what's Hot and what's Not in Freshers' Fortnight.
From fabulous to frightening; frivolous praise and scorn for what’s hot (picnics) and what’s not (exams).
Why and how you might ask?
Because the 31st October sees a great proportion of the population donning whatever they please in the name of Halloween.
The majority of those choosing to celebrate this pagan ritual will be unashamedly unaware of what "Halloween" means, just as a great deal of us feel the bizarre need to put our lives on hold on the 25th December to engage in festivities that celebrate the birth of a leader of a religion that we might not even believe in, let alone know a great deal about.
As a whishy-washy Agnostic who attaches no specific significance to Halloween, it is not so much the reasons for celebrating or what is being celebrated that bothers me. Rather, why on earth do people choose the costumes that they do? Halloween provides an opportunity to dress as whatever you want, as long as it can in some way be considered "scary." Whilst some seize this window of creative opportunity by making a costume from scratch, others buy the usual witches outfit or Hannibal lectre costume from a store, the lazy don’t bother and the strange dress in as little as possible.
Admittedly, my decision to dress-up this year has been heavily influenced by the fact that this is my final year as a student - a label that I’ve found to be sufficiently riddled with prejudice that there’s little I can do to loose the respect of the average person. How much respect I’ll be able to govern in 10 years time if I’m still prancing around a town centre screaming “Accio alco-mo-hol” I do not know, but definitely more than the people who use Halloween as an excuse to dress like prostitutes.
As terrifying as the sex trade can be, I’d wager that those in their bunny-girl outfits, or man-thongs are not making an ironic statement, but are just so desperate to be noticed by a potential sexual partner that they’ll risk pneumonia.
Now that is scary!
But it’s not just the scantily-clad that are worried about impressing; a 3rd year English student is worried that his hand-made costume won’t be understood saying “I’m worried because it’s trial by popularity.” It’s clearly not just a matter then of dressing as whatever you or others find ‘scary.’ Halloween promises to allow people the freedom of doing whatever they like, but the rules of fashion still apply and dictate the form that costumes take.
Whilst I anticipate that Friday night will be fun and silly and whilst unlike a Christian 3rd year student who explained that she sees Halloween as being in opposition to her religion because it “glorifies witchcraft”, my main concern on Friday will be why have people chosen to wear what they have? Should my Hermione be a wearing a shorter skirt, heels and have her shirt partly unbuttoned? Or should she be a more ‘authentic’ copy of Rowling’s straight-laced boffin?
Who cares? I’ll be part-Zombie so you won’t be able to judge whether I’ve been pressured by our increasingly sexualised society and next year I’ll escape this dilemma by refusing to take part.
I would refer to that totem of sartorial wisdom, 2004's Mean Girls: "Halloween is the one night a year when girls can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it."
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