BY ANISHA PAI '19
With access to professional makeup artists and costume designers, celebrities have always won the Halloween game. According to Elle Magazine, Halloween 2016 officially began on Oct. 14 when Kylie Jenner debuted the first costume of the year. The 19-year-old celebrity snapchatted a picture of herself in a skeleton onesie.
Past highlights include Heidi Klum’s realistic 95-year-old version of herself from 2013 and Beyoncé, Jay-Z and Blue Ivy’s 2015 take onQueen Aoleon, King Jaffe Joffer and Imani Izzi from the movie “Coming to America.” Last year, Katy Perry took the expression ‘drop the mic’ quite literally, instagramming a photo of herself on the floor, dressed as a giant microphone.
Babies in costumes are always crowd pleasers, and Chrissy Teigen’s six-month-old daughter, Luna Simone Stephens, got four different outfits. On Oct. 28 Teigen instagrammed consecutive pictures of Stephens as a hot dog, a peacock, Minnie Mouse and, most recently, a banana.
The tradition of Halloween costumes originates in Celtic winters, according to the History Channel. People would wear masks when they left their houses to disguise themselves from the ghosts and spirits that came out during All Hallows Eve. Today, Halloween is a time for people to express their creativity and humor, celebrate the things they love or subvert expectations with clever, and often elaborate, costumes.
At Mount Holyoke, Halloween weekend is packed with opportunities to dress up. Renegades’ annual Get Your Geek On event offers reduced pricing for geeky attire and free entry for full costume, while Student Programs, MHACASA and APAU throw a Halloween Bash in Chapin Auditorium, calling for costumes that attendees can still dance in.
Hannah Galloway ’17 dressed as Merida from the movie Brave, having first donned the bow-and-arrow in 2014.
“When I first dyed my hair red, people said I reminded them of her,” said Galloway, “I’ve been working on making the costume as good as I can for a couple years now, adding more each year to make it better.”
Samantha Tressy ’18 came up with her costume of Carl Fredricksen from the movie “Up” on Time Travel Day at the summer camp she worked at. “I was me from the future — bow tie, suspenders and grey hair,” she said, “All of the kids thought I was the grandpa from ‘Up,’ so I realized it was a good costume for me.”
As commentary on the recent attack on Mount Holyoke College’s Facebook ratings, Emily Jetmore ’18 and Cara Board ’19 each dressed as a specific negative review left on the college’s page.
“We were talking about the fiasco and how some of the insults we kept receiving were mostly true and not actually bad,” said Board, who emulated the 3-star ‘anti American flower children’ review that circulated around Facebook on Friday morning. “We just went for it.”
Several other students donned satirical or witty Halloween costumes this year. while talking about costumes for gender studies majors, Caedyn Busche ’17 and Daniela Rakhlina-Powsner ’17, came up with a white t-shirt and biohazard symbol to depict Toxic Masculinity and being wrapped in toilet paper pinned with gender symbols to become Gender Rolls. Nabeeha Noor ’20 decided her scary costume would entail a single sign that reads “your responsibilities.”
Even for students who didn’t dress up this year, the holiday conjures up memories of past costumes.
Aryaa Rajouria ’19 recalled her 7th grade Nikon camera costume that took her family 2 weeks to make. She chose Nikon in an attempt to irk her father whose loyalties lay with Canon at the time.
Katie Reynolds ’19 remembered dressing up as a fluffy cloud when she was 16. “I was just sitting in the car on my way to school one day and I saw a fluffy little cloud and I just decided that I wanted to be one for Halloween,” she said, “I just spray glued a bunch of quilt stuffing to a sheet and cut a hole for my head. It was loads of fun.”
