Following “Halloweekend,” the Internet becomes filled with photos and Instagram screenshots of celebrities’ costumes, which will surely bum you out about your attempts at successfully celebrating the festive holiday. Don’t feel too bad, though.
While we as college students feel hesitant about dropping more than $20 on our costumes, celebrities go all out and probably spend more money on the holiday than we’ve ever had in our bank account.
But what’s all the hype about celebrities and Halloween? A quick Google search will reveal a plethora of results with articles such as “The Coolest, Cutest and Weirdest Celebrity Halloween Costumes of 2015,” “The Best Celebrity Halloween Costumes in 2015” or “The Good, the Bad, and the Fugly Celebrity Halloween Costumes.” The amount of articles on this trivial topic is excessive to say the least.
Model Heidi Klum’s Jessica Rabbit is among the top Halloween costumes on these sites—probably due to its outrageousness. It’s hard to even recognize that the figure decked out in a red, skimpy dress with a chest popping out is in fact Klum. According to The New York Post, the model had been working on the costume for months because it involved a lot of prosthetics for her face, chest and butt. The amount of time and money required for the transformation is unquestionably outlandish, but celebrities will go through extreme measures for the spotlight.
Differing from Klum’s sexy costume, Ellen DeGeneres appealed to her fans through humor. She poked fun at the Kardashian family by dressing up as their “youngest sister” Karla. She wore leggings and a plunging animal-print blouse, revealing prosthetic breasts and also flaunted a fake backside. The costume—definitely impressive and comical—made fans go crazy with appreciation.
“Teen Wolf” star Colton Haynes made an astonishing transformation to an over-the-top version of Ursula from The Little Mermaid. The costume was complete with spiked white hair, dramatic blue make-up and bright red lips.
Halloween gives celebrities an opportunity to showcase their sexiest, funniest or most creative costumes. As a culture, we feed into it—which is most likely the reason for the influx of articles following the holiday. With Klum’s confession of spending months on the idea of her costume, it’s sad to think that people admire celebrities who dedicate this absurd amount of time brainstorming how to garner even more attention on a holiday intrinsically grounded in appearances.
How creative do you really need to be if you have a ridiculous amount of money—and in most cases, a team of publicity experts to advise you? Admittedly, I had no clue who Colton Hayes was, but I do now as a result of his image being plastered on so many Halloween and celebrity-related articles. Pretty genius.
Celebrities can gain exposure by simply having the “best” costume because many people become obsessed over their outfits, evoking the uproar of discourse about what celebrities wear for big award shows like the Oscars, Emmys and Grammys.
Halloween is just another day for the paparazzi to keep asking the question, “What are you wearing?” And, sadly—but not surprisingly—people are still interested and drawn to clicking through slideshow countdowns of who had the most impressive costume.
Even though these stars invade media platforms, our culture is overwhelmingly more interested in what these stars wear than in their actions—and celebrities are more than willing to gratify these superficial interests.