University Costume Party Promotes Sustainability Reports Costumes and Parties

San Francisco, CA — (SBWIRE) — 11/23/2012 — Morris University Center hosted an event allowing students to dance and mingle as their favorite scary ghouls.

The Student Organization for Sustainability sponsored the Zombies, Vampires, and Werewolves Costume Party in the Meridian Ballroom. More than 100 people were in attendance.

The event gave students an opportunity to try ‘mocktails’ and music that was free to faculty and staff, according to Mark “Wolf” Veverka, SOS Vice President. Veverka is a sophomore biology and environmental science major, who came to the school by way of Alton.

“If you look around, you’ll notice there are no faculty or staff,” Veverka said. “This is done by the students, for the students.”

Students were providing free costumes and makeup that could be found in the lobby. Student government funded the services, including the mocktails. The DJ was an SIUE student, as well as members of the Alliance of Students Against Poverty collected gently-used clothes for the Oasis Women’s crisis Center at the door.

Above the DJ’s booth showed sustainability facts. The slide had zombie and vampire puns thrown in strategically to add levity. “We’re making fun of ourselves,” Veverka said.

Particular slides included one that said “Zombies – their preferred travel method is “mass transit” or “Vampires – Their ‘livestock’ is free range and organic.”

The event also provided activities for students. Marketing research graduate student Tony Rovertoni, enjoyed the party, stating, “It was the best thing I found to do close to campus,” Rovertoni said. “I’m all for sustainability. It is one of those things that lessen our impact. My roommates and I recycle.”

Commemoration of the Campus Sustainability Day was the reason for the event. The day is sponsored by the National Wildlife Federation as well as the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education.

“The purpose of the day is prompting the removal of biases and prejudices,” Veverka said. “With sustainability, we don’t have to lower our quality of life—we can improve it.”

About Costumes And Parties
Costumes And Parties http://www.costumesandparties.com provides costumes for all ages. Whether buying for a costume party, Mardi Gras, carnival, or any costume-based event, one can be sure to find it at Costumes and Parties.

Left for undead

Infectious … The Walking Dead’s popularity has helped solidify zombies’ pop cultural status.

Move aside vampires, zombies are taking over the fickle world of genre drama.

In the season-four finale of the Alan Ball vampire drama True Blood, a character explains her Halloween costume: ”I’m a zombie. Didn’t you know – zombies are the new vampires.”

It was a characteristically arch reference to the success of The Walking Dead, the American zombie drama that’s based on Robert Kirkman’s graphic novels and has just ended its second season in the US. But the line was also recognition – however cloaked in irony – that the pop-cultural moment of the vampire had passed.

Popular culture demands novelty and, for now, vampires have lost theirs. Despite True Blood’s best efforts to keep the vampire genre interesting, its currency has been reduced by its ubiquity in mainstream teen culture, from the interminable Twilight saga to recent shows such as The Vampire Diaries.

But zombies? In the hierarchy of the undead, you don’t get any lower.

The dramatic appeal of the vampire is obvious. They are charismatic, unrestrained, transgressive. They come with a rich literary and folkloric history and are full of symbolic potential. Simultaneously attractive and repellent, they play into a range of anxieties around mortality and sex. Combine this with their brooding aesthetic, and vampires represent a heady cocktail for the contemporary adolescent.

Zombies, on the other hand, are defiantly unglamorous – grotesque and void of personality. No one ever fantasised about a zombie. While vampires are invariably the protagonists of their stories, zombies generally function as antagonists, and dumb ones at that. They represent a mindless collective threat to those yet to be contaminated. The survivors will always be the focus of any zombie story, which means the stories themselves will be different.

Most zombie stories in popular culture stick closely to the ”zombie apocalypse” formula, which has its seeds in George A. Romero’s 1968 movie Night of the Living Dead, itself influenced by the 1954 novel I Am Legend. The 2002 movie 28 Days Later and The Walking Dead belong firmly in this sub-genre.

It’s not hard to see how the zombie apocalypse plays into contemporary anxiety about the fragility of civilisation – its susceptibility to contagion, whether in the form of illness or ideological extremism. Zombies are not just highly infectious carriers of disease, they also represent mindless, aggressive conformity that grows exponentially, overwhelming all resistance. Vampires need to coexist with humans to satisfy their craving for blood. Zombies just march towards an inevitable end point – the extinction of the human race.

In terms of dramatic potential, zombies are far more limited than vampires. For a zombie narrative to work, it must be played straight. The threat must be genuinely horrifying and the survivors well-drawn, compelling characters – both strengths of The Walking Dead.

The moment zombie dramas begin to incorporate elements of camp or self-referentiality, such as in Charlie Brooker’s 2008 TV series Dead Set, the MTV drama Death Valley or the classic/horror-hybrid novel Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, the illusion collapses and we’re in pantomime territory.

Zombies are not going away any time soon. The Walking Dead continues to grow in popularity and next year Brad Pitt will star in the zombie movie World War Z, seen as a potential franchise. In the longer term, however, the limitations of the genre and pop culture’s insatiable appetite for novelty will ensure the zombie’s demise.

As for what supernatural entity will next arise, it’s anyone’s guess. Talking to Spectrum last year, Ball qualified the ”zombies are the new vampires” line, adding: ”I’ve heard zombies, I’ve heard angels – I don’t know. That’s one of the great things about it all, nobody knows.”

Since then, Ball has stepped down as showrunner on True Blood, hammering yet another nail into the vampire’s coffin. But like any self-respecting member of the undead, vampires will rise again, their appeal to the lucrative adolescent market too powerful for any TV or film executive to resist.

The Walking Dead airs on FX on Sundays at 8.30pm. Series one is on DVD.

Left for undead

Infectious … The Walking Dead’s popularity has helped solidify zombies’ pop cultural status.

Move aside vampires, zombies are taking over the fickle world of genre drama.

In the season-four finale of the Alan Ball vampire drama True Blood, a character explains her Halloween costume: ”I’m a zombie. Didn’t you know – zombies are the new vampires.”

It was a characteristically arch reference to the success of The Walking Dead, the American zombie drama that’s based on Robert Kirkman’s graphic novels and has just ended its second season in the US. But the line was also recognition – however cloaked in irony – that the pop-cultural moment of the vampire had passed.

Popular culture demands novelty and, for now, vampires have lost theirs. Despite True Blood’s best efforts to keep the vampire genre interesting, its currency has been reduced by its ubiquity in mainstream teen culture, from the interminable Twilight saga to recent shows such as The Vampire Diaries.

But zombies? In the hierarchy of the undead, you don’t get any lower.

The dramatic appeal of the vampire is obvious. They are charismatic, unrestrained, transgressive. They come with a rich literary and folkloric history and are full of symbolic potential. Simultaneously attractive and repellent, they play into a range of anxieties around mortality and sex. Combine this with their brooding aesthetic, and vampires represent a heady cocktail for the contemporary adolescent.

Zombies, on the other hand, are defiantly unglamorous – grotesque and void of personality. No one ever fantasised about a zombie. While vampires are invariably the protagonists of their stories, zombies generally function as antagonists, and dumb ones at that. They represent a mindless collective threat to those yet to be contaminated. The survivors will always be the focus of any zombie story, which means the stories themselves will be different.

Most zombie stories in popular culture stick closely to the ”zombie apocalypse” formula, which has its seeds in George A. Romero’s 1968 movie Night of the Living Dead, itself influenced by the 1954 novel I Am Legend. The 2002 movie 28 Days Later and The Walking Dead belong firmly in this sub-genre.

It’s not hard to see how the zombie apocalypse plays into contemporary anxiety about the fragility of civilisation – its susceptibility to contagion, whether in the form of illness or ideological extremism. Zombies are not just highly infectious carriers of disease, they also represent mindless, aggressive conformity that grows exponentially, overwhelming all resistance. Vampires need to coexist with humans to satisfy their craving for blood. Zombies just march towards an inevitable end point – the extinction of the human race.

In terms of dramatic potential, zombies are far more limited than vampires. For a zombie narrative to work, it must be played straight. The threat must be genuinely horrifying and the survivors well-drawn, compelling characters – both strengths of The Walking Dead.

The moment zombie dramas begin to incorporate elements of camp or self-referentiality, such as in Charlie Brooker’s 2008 TV series Dead Set, the MTV drama Death Valley or the classic/horror-hybrid novel Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, the illusion collapses and we’re in pantomime territory.

Zombies are not going away any time soon. The Walking Dead continues to grow in popularity and next year Brad Pitt will star in the zombie movie World War Z, seen as a potential franchise. In the longer term, however, the limitations of the genre and pop culture’s insatiable appetite for novelty will ensure the zombie’s demise.

As for what supernatural entity will next arise, it’s anyone’s guess. Talking to Spectrum last year, Ball qualified the ”zombies are the new vampires” line, adding: ”I’ve heard zombies, I’ve heard angels – I don’t know. That’s one of the great things about it all, nobody knows.”

Since then, Ball has stepped down as showrunner on True Blood, hammering yet another nail into the vampire’s coffin. But like any self-respecting member of the undead, vampires will rise again, their appeal to the lucrative adolescent market too powerful for any TV or film executive to resist.

The Walking Dead airs on FX on Sundays at 8.30pm. Series one is on DVD.

Our culture is not a Halloween costume‏

Our culture is not a Halloween costume‏

Category: NEWS

Created on Tuesday, 20 March 2012 21:34

Last Updated on Wednesday, 30 November -0001 00:00

Published Date

By Krystalline Kraus | March 15, 2012 | www.rabble.ca

Cultural appropriation is never OK. For fun or not.

It has come to my community’s — the Saami people, Indigenous to the Arctic — attention that over eBay or from the Texas company CostumeVille anyone can buy (for €43.46 or C$56.73) a Saami gakti. Ja, that is our traditional cultural dress as a halloween costume.

In a Norwegian article — translated in English by the kind Troy Storfjell — commentary reads, “It’s still quite a while until Halloween, but if you haven’t begun to plan a suitable costume for next fall’s trick-or-treating, perhaps the firma CostumeVille in Texas can help you.

In addition to the traditional Halloween costumes, like vampires, witches and wizards, they also have a Sámi collection.”

The actual product description reads:

“Lappland Lady Costume includes a deep blue dress with brilliantly colored trim on the collars, shoulders and cuffs, matching red hat, plush fur mittens, richly decorated red belt and plush trimmed boots.”

Yup, that’s capitalism selling my people’s traditional dress as a halloween costume. (Or maybe for members of the Saami diaspora looking for a cheap gakti if they don’t know or cannot make their own?)

Either way, this is ridiculous. A traditional, cultural outfit should not be worn as a halloween costume.

“This is disgusting exploitation and adds to the destructive colonialism that threatens to destroy the culture of the Saami, the native people of Fenno-Scandia,” said Suvi-Tuuli Allan of Kokkola, Finland.

I’m proud of my community’s reaction to this. While we got the costume taken down, it has since reappeared for sale.

Saami, Ellen Jensen, created the petition, “The ‘Blue Lappland Funny Scandinavian Halloween Costume’ where she writes that the “funny” costume, “exploits and misrepresents the legitimate Sami culture. Dress culture is protected under international laws on the Rights of Indigenous People and on collective cultural property.”

Article 11 of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) has two sections: “The first addresses the rights of indigenous peoples to maintain and to further their own cultural practices and traditions specifically their cultural and intellectual property. The second part says that states should attempt to make reparations for all the cultural property and knowledge that was taken from indigenous peoples forcefully or without their consent.”

Of the halloween costume, “This is using the traditional clothing of an actual culture just for profit, and is inherently both disrespectful of that culture, and is cultural fraud and misappropriation of it in the process,” commented Saami-American, Renee Timmer.

Translated from this site, Mattias Åhrén, responding for the Sámi Council, believes the Texas gákti are, “illegal to human rights work.”

“Generally speaking, it is illegal for others than Sámi to use the gákti. This applies also to clothing which resembles the gákti” said Mattias Åhren.

Sámi Parliament president and leader for the Sámi parliamentary council, Egil Olli (Ap), believes it is necessary to investigate whether Sámi had the opportunity to give permission to use the gákti as a costume and whether Sámi can control such use:

“I am unsure of which tools we have, and about finding some tools in order to stop this gákti. But we should absolutely have some guidelines to get this stopped,” said Olli.

In an Open Letter to Costumeville.com by John E. Xavier (Interim Chair) and Chris Pesklo (Secretary) of the Sami Siida of North America (SSNA), they write, We, as officers of the SSNA are appalled by the cultural insensitivity displayed by the offering for commercial gain of Sami outfits as Halloween costumes.

Here in the twentieth-first century, there ought to be more thoughtful approaches to indigenous cultures than is shown in this case. For example, the supposedly Sami costumes are not manufactured in the Sami homeland, but rather in some non-indigenous production facility located in Asia. Furthermore, no Sami leadership in the Nordic countries or here in North America has been consulted about the authenticity or appropriateness of such costumes.

In another aspect of this case, we at the SSNA think that the businesses involved in the manufacture and sale of these outfits have failed to consider a larger picture: cultural traditions and world-wide recognition of those traditions, as found in documents of the United Nations and other organizations.”

[The Sami Siida of North America (SSNA), represent a twenty-year-old organization dedicated to the Indigenous Sami traditions and culture of our ancestors from the Arctic Circle nations of Europe (Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia). The SSNA also is active in building bridges among Sami, Sami-Americans, and other indigenous peoples world-wide, including Native Americans.]

This is not the first time Saami traditions and the traditional gakti have been improperly used.

In the fall of 2010, the Kiwi grocery chain held a celebration where its 650 employees in Tromsø, Norway, wore what has become known as a Kiwi-kofte (“kofte” being the Norwegian word for “gakti”); another perversion of Saami traditional dress in lime green. Debate raged throughout Norway and in both the Norwegian and Saami Parliaments regarding the commercialization of Saami traditional dress.

Finnish tourist organizations and companies use Finns dressed up as fake Saami wearing fake gaktis, both in their advertizing and in tours they provide to tourists. They also perform fake Saami ceremonies for tourists, like the crossing of the Arctic Ocean as a rite of passage.

The Resource Centre for Indigenous Peoples reports on a demonstration held by Saami youth in Rovaniemi, Finnland, against the Finnish government profiting off of Saami culture in the tourism industry.

In the article, “Anne Kirste Aikio is from Finland and she maintains that more than 500 000 tourists visit Rovaniemi yearly. They visit “fake Samis” and the tourists believe that all the badly dressed “Samis” in famous the ´Santa Claus Land´ are real indigenous people.”

Miss Finland 2005 and 2007 both wore “gákti” at the Miss Universe competition

In 2007, contestant Noora Hautakangas wore a copy – a copy of an authentic original – of a gákti at the Miss Universe pageant in Mexico. Problematic here is a complete negation of the historical context and realities of European colonization; as if the Indigenous Saami dress could represent the colonial Finnish state.

Rauni Äärelä of the Rovaniemi Sami Association, commented that, “The gákti is continuously used as if it were a national costume”.

I cannot comment on her personal motivations, but I can guess that the commercial motivation here was to capitalize of the European-exotic that the Saami represent, as the only Indigenous peoples left alive on the European continent. In fact, Arctic/Saami culture is distinct from Indo-European culture (the basis for Western civilization, ancestry and genealogy).

In the 2005 Miss Universe contestant, Susanna Laine, also represented Finland wearing the Indigenous Saami gakti. Finnartist, the corporation behind the Miss Finland competition was later forced to apologize for using a fake gakti.

So in this case, you had a fake gakti being worn by a fake Saami woman being used as a form of cultural appropriation.

Please help my community by signing the petition against cultural appropriation and fake gakti, Halloween costume here.

I think the only people laughing are the people making money off our exploitation.

**

Language note: For the sake of uniformity of language, Saami = Sami.

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Activist Communiqué: Our culture is not a Halloween costume‏

‏

Cultural appropriation is never OK. For fun or not.

It has come to my community’s — the Saami people, Indigenous to the Arctic — attention that over eBay or from the Texas company CostumeVille anyone can buy (for €43.46 or C$56.73) a Saami gakti. Ja, that is our traditional cultural dress as a halloween costume.

In a Norwegian article  — translated in English by the kind Troy Storfjell — commentary reads, “It’s still quite a while until Halloween, but if you haven’t begun to plan a suitable costume for next fall’s trick-or-treating, perhaps the firma CostumeVille in Texas can help you.

In addition to the traditional Halloween costumes, like vampires, witches and wizards, they also have a Sámi collection.”

The actual product description reads:

“Lappland Lady Costume includes a deep blue dress with brilliantly colored trim on the collars, shoulders and cuffs, matching red hat, plush fur mittens, richly decorated red belt and plush trimmed boots.”

Yup, that’s capitalism selling my people’s traditional dress as a halloween costume. (Or maybe for members of the Saami diaspora looking for a cheap gakti if they don’t know or cannot make their own?)

Either way, this is ridiculous. A traditional, cultural outfit should not be worn as a halloween costume.

“This is disgusting exploitation and adds to the destructive colonialism that threatens to destroy the culture of the Saami, the native people of Fenno-Scandia,” said Suvi-Tuuli Allan of Kokkola, Finland.

I’m proud of my community’s reaction to this. While we got the costume taken down, it has since reappeared for sale.

Saami, Ellen Jensen, created the petition, “The ‘Blue Lappland Funny Scandinavian Halloween Costume’ where she writes that the “funny” costume, “exploits and misrepresents the legitimate Sami culture. Dress culture is protected under international laws on the Rights of Indigenous People and on collective cultural property.”

Article 11 of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) has two sections: “The first addresses the rights of indigenous peoples to maintain and to further their own cultural practices and traditions specifically their cultural and intellectual property. The second part says that states should attempt to make reparations for all the cultural property and knowledge that was taken from indigenous peoples forcefully or without their consent.”

Of the halloween costume, “This is using the traditional clothing of an actual culture just for profit, and is inherently both disrespectful of that culture, and is cultural fraud and misappropriation of it in the process,” commented Saami-American, Renee Timmer.

Translated from this site, Mattias Åhrén, responding for the Sámi Council, believes the Texas gákti are, “illegal to human rights work.”

“Generally speaking, it is illegal for others than Sámi to use the gákti. This applies also to clothing which resembles the gákti” said Mattias Åhren.

Sámi Parliament president and leader for the Sámi parliamentary council, Egil Olli (Ap), believes it is necessary to investigate whether Sámi had the opportunity to give permission to use the gákti as a costume and whether Sámi can control such use:

“I am unsure of which tools we have, and about finding some tools in order to stop this gákti. But we should absolutely have some guidelines to get this stopped,” said Olli.

In an Open Letter to Costumeville.com by John E. Xavier (Interim Chair) and Chris Pesklo (Secretary) of the Sami Siida of North America (SSNA), they write, We, as officers of the SSNA are appalled by the cultural insensitivity displayed by the offering for commercial gain of Sami outfits as Halloween costumes.

Here in the twentieth-first century, there ought to be more thoughtful approaches to indigenous cultures than is shown in this case. For example, the supposedly Sami costumes are not manufactured in the Sami homeland, but rather in some non-indigenous production facility located in Asia. Furthermore, no Sami leadership in the Nordic countries or here in North America has been consulted about the authenticity or appropriateness of such costumes.

In another aspect of this case, we at the SSNA think that the businesses involved in the manufacture and sale of these outfits have failed to consider a larger picture: cultural traditions and world-wide recognition of those traditions, as found in documents of the United Nations and other organizations.“

[The Sami Siida of North America (SSNA), represent a twenty-year-old organization dedicated to the Indigenous Sami traditions and culture of our ancestors from the Arctic Circle nations of Europe (Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia). The SSNA also is active in building bridges among Sami, Sami-Americans, and other indigenous peoples world-wide, including Native Americans.]

This is not the first time Saami traditions and the traditional gakti have been improperly used.

In the fall of 2010, the Kiwi grocery chain held a celebration where its 650 employees in Tromsø, Norway, wore what has become known as a Kiwi-kofte (“kofte” being the Norwegian word for “gakti”); another perversion of Saami traditional dress in lime green. Debate raged throughout Norway and in both the Norwegian and Saami Parliaments regarding the commercialization of Saami traditional dress.

Finnish tourist organizations and companies use Finns dressed up as fake Saami wearing fake gaktis, both in their advertizing and in tours they provide to tourists. They also perform fake Saami ceremonies for tourists, like the crossing of the Arctic Ocean as a rite of passage.

The Resource Centre for Indigenous Peoples reports on a demonstration held by Saami youth in Rovaniemi, Finnland, against the Finnish government profiting off of Saami culture in the tourism industry.

In the article, “Anne Kirste Aikio is from Finland and she maintains that more than 500 000 tourists visit Rovaniemi yearly. They visit “fake Samis” and the tourists believe that all the badly dressed “Samis” in famous the ´Santa Claus Land´ are real indigenous people.”

Miss Finland 2005 and 2007 both wore “gákti” at the Miss Universe competition

In 2007, contestant Noora Hautakangas wore a copy – a copy of an authentic original – of a gákti at the Miss Universe pageant in Mexico. Problematic here is a complete negation of the historical context and realities of European colonization; as if the Indigenous Saami dress could represent the colonial Finnish state.

Rauni Äärelä of the Rovaniemi Sami Association, commented that, “The gákti is continuously used as if it were a national costume”.

I cannot comment on her personal motivations, but I can guess that the commercial motivation here was to capitalize of the European-exotic that the Saami represent, as the only Indigenous peoples left alive on the European continent. In fact, Arctic/Saami culture is distinct from Indo-European culture (the basis for Western civilization, ancestry and genealogy).

In the 2005 Miss Universe contestant, Susanna Laine, also represented Finland wearing the Indigenous Saami gakti. Finnartist, the corporation behind the Miss Finland competition was later forced to apologize for using a fake gakti.

So in this case, you had a fake gakti being worn by a fake Saami woman being used as a form of cultural appropriation.

Please help my community by signing the petition against cultural appropriation and fake gakti, Halloween costume here.

I think the only people laughing are the people making money off our exploitation.

**

Language note: For the sake of uniformity of language, Saami = Sami.

Fuel Halloween costume party 8 pm Friday, Oct. 28

Check in between 8 and 10 p.m. to get a wristband for drink specials all night and then dance and mingle with monsters, vampires, ghosts and ghouls!

The winners of the costume contest will be announced at 10 p.m.

Click here to join Fuel.

Time: 8-11 p.m.
Date: Friday, Oct. 28, 2011
Place: Kathy’s Pub, 307 S. Broadway., Rochester, MN 55904

Eep! The Worst Celebrity Costumes Over the Years

Is it fall already?

It’s that time of year again, guys. Put your bikinis away and trade your fake tans for bodypaint. Halloween is just around the corner and the celebs are here to provide guidance on what NOT to wear this year. What really constitutes as a bad costume, though? The answer is debatable. Sure, a costume can have a completely unaesthetic structure that can make our eyes burn…but if the effort is there and it pays strong attention to detail, they can (maybe) get away with it.

When we think of Halloween, we used to automatically think about witches, ghosts, goblins, vampires, etc. Nowadays, costumes range from the disgustingly gory to the purposely ironic hipster all the way to the endless array of people epitomizing the Mean Girls motto of: “ In girl world, Halloween is the one night a year when a girl can dress up like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it.” As much as we can agree with that statement, the little feminist in me is not a fan of that word to describe us ladies who simply want to be able to show a little skin on a fun night of dress up.

With that said, once you take a look at the upcoming costumes on the bottom, getting too sexy is far from the problem. Here are 5 of some the worst and WTF-worthy costumes that celebs have donned over the years.

1) Janet Jackson (The Lavin Dolls party 2010) – Looks like the usually stylish star had a bit of trouble deciding on a costume. Did she want to be Mary Poppins? Zorro? Prince? Janet loved all the ideas so much, she decided to dress as all three. Yikes.

 2) Nadya “Octomom” Suleman - Holy [fill in the blank]. The most shocking aspect in this list is the fact that she is considered a “celebrity” of some sort. What really catches the eye is the mother’s little attempt at irony by dressing up as a pregnant nun with little Devil spawns in strollers. We can get all into what is offensive and all that but bottom line, the babies are crying for a reason.

3) Seal Heidi Klum (2007 annual Halloween party) – This costume ensemble between the superstar couple definitely gets an A for originality…but really? Couldn’t Seal be the apple and have the former Victoria’s Secret babe as Eve in the garden of Eden? Nah. Too easy.

4) Dennis Rodman – We really do not know what is going on is this picture either…perhaps it’s a poor attempt as a peacock? Or a Troll doll?…No one knows.

5) Lady Gaga a.k.a. “Joe Calderone” - Alright, this may not be a Halloween costume, this photo is merely a screencap from her (his) opening monologue in the 2011 Video Music Awards. However, this little outfit she has on just ‘scah-reams’ costume. Were you a fan of her little gender-bender gimmick at the show? Frankly, the mute button was more of the star than anything on my TV screen.

Rockford Woman: Favorite Halloween costumes

Halloween is not just about candy and haunted houses. Being creative in the wardrobe department is just as important to really cause a fright. We asked area women what their favorite Halloween costumes have been over the years.

“My most memorable Halloween costume was being a life-sized rabbit in a hat. I was 12 years old. It was difficult to sit but very entertaining to see people’s amused faces as they would see me walk by. I obtained a record of candy collecting that year. I think I received extra candy because people loved my costume.”
 — Monica De León, Rockford

“In eighth grade … I was a dice … I painted a box white with black dots and wore black clothing so my arms and legs would be like the dots — I thought I was being so creative. That year at a Halloween party (with my church group) one of the games was to tie one of your hands to another persons and carve a pumpkin with one hand … well I scooped the guts out with my carving hand (which made it slippery) and oops … my hand slipped and (I) cut my finger. … Eight stitches later I returned to the party and won … the most unique costume award.”
 — Joy Weyrauch, Rockford
        
“My favorite Halloween costume over the years has been a vampire. I shared that day with my girls. We had so much fun trick or treating. Both my daughter and I were vampires. My youngest daughter was the cutest witch.”  
 — Delicia Harris, Byron
 
“My most memorable Halloween costume was Beth Chapman from ‘Dog the Bounty Hunter.’ It was out of my character and something just fun.”
 — Samantha Stovall, Freeport

Seductive Vampire

Vampire Halloween Costume Ideas : Pants & Shoes for Vampire Halloween Costume