The Angel Costume
I think that it’s important to be the angel you wished to see in the world.
But what does that mean?
To me, it means that I need to take a stand, even if it is just one small step at a time.
The angel costume is one small step.
Halloween is right around the corner and I bet your kids are going to ask you for a costume. It’s easy to go online, find something cute and order it. But this year, why don’t you get your kids involved with making their own costumes? Before we get started on an awesome angel costume, I want to tell you about a problem I noticed with Halloween costumes.
Many of our popular children’s costumes are violent and inappropriate. You can find anything from an axe murderer to a sexy nurse and everything in between. Many of these costumes would not be appropriate for a child to wear in any other situation but Halloween night!
I’m writing this blog to share how you can be the hero on Halloween.
My son wanted to dress up as an angel. Not a fallen angel, but a good one. I thought this was a great idea, and started to research ways that we could make his idea come true. Little did I know, I would soon be fighting crime!
The first thing I needed to do was make the costume. This is where my journey began. Let me tell you, making an angel costume isn’t easy! The materials for it costed about $50. My wife and I created a prototype out of newspaper first so we could see if it would work out before wasting money on materials. After all that hard work, my son looked adorable!
I didn’t think it would be too difficult to find the perfect wings for him. Unfortunately, all the angel wings in stores were meant for fallen angels. There were no good options anywhere. They were all too dark or gory looking which just wasn’t right for our little guy’s costume.
I tried making wings myself with cardboard and paper but it looks terrible and wouldn’t have any way of staying on his back without straps or strings which would ruin the look completely!
It was back to the drawing board until
You can be a hero at Halloween and help the kids in your neighborhood. You can even dress the part of a super hero, an angel or a devil. So this year in lieu of having my daughter be some sort of scary monster or gruesome zombie, we decided to make her costume more like an angel that would save the world from evil doers.
This is what she will look like on Halloween night:
She will have blinged out wings, a halo and some cool looking fairy dust. She will definitely have all of the tools necessary to fight crime and put away bad guys.
I’m thinking that if we give her a big bag to trick or treat with, she could use it to carry around any bad guys that she finds. We might even need to add horns to her costume so that if any bad guys show up at the door, she could really look the part and scare them away.
We’ll probably be making some last minute tweaks to her outfit as we get closer to Halloween so stay tuned for updates on our progress.
I want to talk about Halloween, because it’s a great opportunity for you to be a hero.
I am very concerned about the safety of children trick-or-treating in the neighborhoods around my home. I’m also worried about the people who give out candy. Last year, I was one of those people—and I was scared!
The problem is that there are lots of bad guys out there who will do anything to get your candy. They don’t care if they hurt you or scare you; they just want what you have.
What can we do to stop them? We could call the police, but they have better things to do than patrol every neighborhood on Halloween night. We could stay inside our houses and not give out any candy, but then kids would miss out on the fun of trick-or-treating.
It seems like there’s no good solution to this problem—until now! This year I’m going to dress up as an angel for Halloween, and I’ll be handing out special angel costumes to all of my neighbors so we can patrol the streets together as a team. If anyone tries anything funny with us, we’ll be ready for them!
Halloween is a fun holiday, but it can also be one of the most dangerous nights of the year. The three biggest threats are:
1. Drunk drivers
2. People opening their doors to drunk strangers
3. Candy poisoning
We can’t control other people’s behavior, but we can control what we do and how we behave. So this Halloween, I propose that everyone become an angel. Literally.
Wear an angel costume and go to your local bars and clubs with a group of friends. We don’t want to just drink; we want to keep people safe at the same time. You might think that your friend who had too much to drink is fine to drive, but if you saw them behind the wheel, you’d be able to tell them they’re too drunk to drive before it’s too late. If you see someone trying to get into their car, stop them and call them a cab or help them find another ride home.
Don’t just let your friends walk home alone; go with them or know about it beforehand so you can make sure they get home safely. And always have a plan for getting another ride home if needed (think Uber).
It’s not just about stopping drunk drivers, though; it’s also
Your child wants to be a superhero this year. You can’t find the costume at the store (it’s sold out) and you want to save money so you think, “I can make this myself!” And you do: your child looks amazing as Batman or Wonder Woman, with a costume that is completely original.
And then it happens. A child sees your child in their Batman or Wonder Woman getup, and says, “I want to be Batman/Wonder Woman!” To which you reply, “Too bad! This is my original design. You had the chance to buy one at the store, but you didn’t! Now I get to be Batman/Wonder Woman.”
That may sound absurd, but that’s pretty much what happened when Warner Brothers sent a cease and desist letter to Heidi Clements of Minnesota. She made her son a cute Batman costume for Halloween last year and posted a few pictures on Facebook. She received praise from friends who saw the pictures and decided to start selling them on Etsy. Warner Brothers sent her a cease and desist letter stating that she infringed on their copyright by making costumes based on characters they owned.
As an intellectual property attorney
It’s that time of year again! As the leaves change color, the air gets crisper and pumpkins appear everywhere, we begin to prepare for Halloween and another year of the annual trick-or-treat ritual.
Halloween is a time when children, parents, teachers and community leaders often come together to build on a shared, cultural experience. It’s also a time when adult costumes can be humorous or scary but kids’ costumes are usually cute or funny. And while some costumes may seem harmless on the surface, they actually reflect and promote stereotypes that are hurtful to individuals and our society.
One of the most common costume themes for girls and women is “sexy angels.” While this costume may appear to be cute or fun to some, we must remember that it reflects rigid gender roles for girls and women. This costume reinforces ideas about how girls and women should look and behave: soft, pretty, sexy (but not too sexy), helpless, in need of saving by men.
Furthermore, these ideas about girls and women are connected to some very serious issues in our society – domestic violence, sexual assault, rape culture. When we talk about “costume” domestic violence or sexual assault – when we say that it’s just “boys being boys”