How Pop Culture Has Influenced the Unoriginality of Halloween Costumes

By: Abigail Lewis

It’s that time of the year! Pumpkin spice lattes, corn mazes, and perhaps the most exciting seasonal event of them all… costume parties! People come together with friends and family to display their creativity through fashion. These outings are considered the “Met Galas” of the general public—or at least they used to be. With the rise of pop culture, online content, and memes, the meaning of Halloween costumes is changing drastically. Our society has gone from tailored trailblazers to tasteless trend-followers. The joy of customizing a costume has completely lost its sentiment due to the rise of social media. While pop culture has always influenced Halloween, modernity is turning a holiday of self-expression into a sea of unoriginal, mass-produced carbon copies. 

The first and most prominent reason for this change is the rise of social media. Humans seem to be conditioned to follow others of strong influence, hence the term “influencer.” It’s not until these influencers are dictating societal norms as a whole that we have a serious problem. Viral trends inspired by these revered social media personalities spark hyper-fixations on a few pop culture moments just before October! As these trends take off, severe F.O.M.O. sets in, causing mood boards across the globe to fill up with the same repetitive aesthetics. Although the group costume you plan on wearing may seem cool in September, the idea could be completely irrelevant within a few weeks, further normalizing the idea of perfunctory outfits,  more commonly known as “fast fashion.”

Fast fashion is a business model that rapidly designs, produces, and markets inexpensive clothing to replicate the latest runway and social media trends. Major companies such as Shein and Amazon rely on synthetic, non-biodegradable materials to mass-produce these pieces. This causes irreparable damage to the environment and raises ethical concerns regarding low wages and unsafe conditions in the workplace. These efforts have grown so mainstream that consumers steer away from healthier wardrobe-building choices. Massive corporations make it too easy to purchase a cheap, low-quality costume; convenience like this has replaced the classic tradition of DIY, especially in our own schoolhouse.

The amount of neon spandex Loraxes or “M&M’s” wearing a T-shirt I’ve seen win the “most creative” category in our Halloween parades is absurd. As someone  EXTREMELY committed to dressing up, I feel targeted by pointed stares in the halls and lose scores in the lineups purely because I don’t center my entire personality for the day around some fad that’ll be old within seconds.

Although it may not seem like it, I don’t hate pop culture. It’s fascinating how much inspiration is drawn from each other through modern technologies! The major concern is our reliance on instant-gratification trends that kill the spirit of this once eccentric holiday. I encourage you to push back against this lackluster laziness and embrace the uniqueness that Halloween was meant to bring! Ditch the last-minute prime overnight shipping and plan an outing with your friends to the thrift store! Together, we can bring back the weird, unpredictable, and genuinely original nature of the spooky season, because nowadays, being different is the scariest thing you can do on Halloween.