We all love getting dressed up. Creating dramatic costumes to garner attention, particularly at Halloween, means we get to see people at their most creative. However, sometimes this goes a bit too far, when people choose to dress controversially, or make just plain stupid choices.
Annie Collinge and Amber Langford shocked the people attending a Halloween party in Chester UK by dressing up as the Twin Towers. These British teenagers wore costumes to represent the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York. Their costumes depicted burning planes and descriptive images of the wreckage with US flags atop the hats. Many of the families of victims were aghast at the gall of these girls and their public mockery of the tragic events that ensued.
This gave rise to much negative publicity especially when it is noted that the father of one of the girls was a pilot flying the US airlines. They won $250 as they were voted as wearing the best Halloween costume in a competition. The media jumped on the case and the story has gone viral.
Here are a few fancy dress costumes that may give rise to controversies that have reached a global audience. These types of fancy dress costumes are not to be used in jest or worn in an attempt to shock people or try to win prizes. Many of the costumes that were worn as fancy dress have been checked out and care is now being taken to see that even stores do not stock such items.
Prince Harry once donned a costume in 2005 that created a surge of drama. His Nazi costume did more than just raise many eyebrows. The young royal only got a slap on the cheek for this poor taste in costume, which was evidently done with very little respect for his family and countries’ history. However, he is not the only one to pick a controversial group to mimic in fancy dress. These types of costumes causes a lot of negative comments and people proclaimed their annoyance. One US mother dressed her son up as a member of the Ku Klux Klan for a school fancy dress. Her defence was that it was a joke, which at least she offered as an excuse, considering Prince Harry paid no heed to the complaints about his costume.
When Asda the supermarket giant began selling a costume resembling a ‘mental patient” customers were outraged. The costume included a straitjacket that was bloodstained and a machete and was retailed at £20. ASDA was selling these outfits at the supermarket though they apologized later and made sure to remove them from the shelves. The other controversial costume worn was a Psycho Ward costume by Tesco which had “committed” written across the bright orange jumpsuit. Tesco also had to publicly apologize for the offence caused and remove the costume from their website. They had priced the costume at £18.45 and printed “committed” on the bright orange costume. ASDA apologized for making a mockery of mental patients and offered to donate handsomely to the charity fund for mental health. ASDA had crossed the limit of tolerance by creating a stir among people who were on the services of mental health.
In May last year, Colin Darch, a former sea capitan had to speak before the Parkham Women Institute’s members regarding what he have experienced while being a hostage in Somali being kidnapped by pirates four years ago, in 2008. When he arrived at the meeting, he found a group of people dressed like Captain Hooks and Long John Silvers with cutlasses, a toy parrot and eye patches. Fortunately, he decided to look at that from the funny side.
