Meghan Daum
How Not to Get Canceled on Halloween
Seven tips from a professional costume designer to make your potentially culturally insensitive Halloween costume A-OK
It’s a problem as old as Halloween’s ancient Celtic roots themselves: how to wear your costume of choice without being called out on social media and promptly canceled. With cultural sensitivities (or at least sensitivities to the idea of people being sensitive) at an all-time high, it might seem like you’re better off dressing as an object (like a treadmill desk) or a concept (like climate change) than as a human being. (Not that climate change is just a concept.) But with enough creativity, can even a “classically offensive” costume be made acceptable?
Los Angeles–based costume designer Ann Closs-Farley has been working in theater, film, and television for more than 25 years. I proposed seven costumes that could potentially cause offense and asked if there was any way to safely pull them off.
Our conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
