321 lines
8.8 KiB
Plaintext
Executable File
321 lines
8.8 KiB
Plaintext
Executable File
comment
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personal-view
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8088316
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-----
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# Hallowe'en? Fangs aren't what they used to be
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## Hallowe'en parties should be about fun home-made costumes, says Lucy
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Cavendish. So why are women making things harder for themselves by following
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Lady Gaga's lead and running up dresses made of meat?
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![Lady Gaga's meat dress divides opinion][1]
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What a fright: Lady Gaga at the MTV Video Music Awards Photo: AP/REUTERS
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7:00AM BST 27 Oct 2010
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[Comments][2]
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I haven't been to many Hallowe'en parties recently, not adult ones anyway, for
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one perfectly good reason. I hate dressing up.
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Perhaps I'm scarred from a party I went to a couple of years back for a
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friend's wedding anniversary where we were all made to dress up as Barbie and
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Ken. The small daughter of a friend of mine had to lend me a blonde wig to
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make me vaguely resemble a Barbie. That's how unenthusiastic I am about
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dressing up.
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But years ago, when I had a social life and could be enticed out of my house,
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I used to make a real effort for Hallowe'en. My usual garb made me look pretty
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hideous - I'd usually go to parties dressed as a witch with fake warts on my
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nose and a pointy hat with green hair attached to it. It made apple-bobbing
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pretty difficult, but at least I looked scary.
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Witches' robes, ghosts' outfits made from old sheets, or - if you're feeling
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really adventurous - cat costumes complete with tail made from a metal clothes
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hanger wrapped in fabric - these are the Hallowe'en dress-ups we all know and
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love. And this sort of dressing up did help create a party atmosphere - you
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could use the luminous skeleton costume or bad vampire outfit as an excuse to
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talk to the people you didn't know. It really was the ultimate ice-breaker -
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after all, it's hard to be aloof if you're dressed like Grotbags.
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But, my how things have changed. The internet search engine Yahoo! has
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reported that the most searched Hallowe'en costume across the world is the
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infamous meat dress Lady Gaga wore to the MTV Video Music Awards last month.
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Such is the demand to do a Gaga that master butchers in New York are trying to
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make meat dresses for their most demanding of customers, while cautioning that
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the dress would be "highly perishable". No kidding. Those who can't afford the
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$2,000 price tag for the authentic Gaga experience are settling for plastic
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versions. Fully grown women are going off to Hallowe'en parties looking,
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literally, like a dog's dinner.
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## Related Articles
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* [Hallowe'en eye injury warning][3]
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27 Oct 2010
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* [Halloween dog parades][4]
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25 Oct 2010
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* [Gaga's meat dress 'archived'][5]
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24 Sep 2010
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* [Lady Gaga collects MTV VMA Award wearing dress made of meat][6]
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13 Sep 2010
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* [Lady Gaga's meat dress divides opinion][7]
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14 Sep 2010
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* [Bizarre Halloween pumpkins][8]
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26 Oct 2010
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This competitive Hallowe'en costuming really has gone too far. No one dresses
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as a witch any more. If anything, people now dress as pop stars, as if pop
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stars have anything much to do with Hallowe'en, which they don't. In fact,
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current Hallowe'en costumes seem to bear no resemblance to anything
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traditionally scary at all. Take Cindy Crawford, who was pictured attending a
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Hallowe'en party dressed as Amy Winehouse. I suppose Gaga and Winehouse look
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more witchy than, say, Beyonce but still… what is going on?
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Part of this is to do with the increasing commercialisation of Hallowe'en.
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Those who hate the whole idea of Hallowe'en claim that in its modern form it
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is just an American invention. But traditionally Hallowe'en was a Celtic
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celebration, a prelude to All Saints' Day. Now it has been overtaken by trick-
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or-treaters and endless children dressed up as Casper the Ghost wandering
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round the streets. Such is the bad feeling towards Hallowe'en that some shops
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sell posters which say "No trick-or-treaters welcome" for people to put up on
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their windows and doors.
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This year, despite the recession, there seems to be an increased upsurge in
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the whole "selling" of Hallowe'en. It is now the most commercially lucrative
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festival after Christmas and Valentine's Day. And as expectations rise, so do
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the fancy nature of the costumes. This year my children have got much more
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savvy with their dressing-up demands. My daughter, aged three, recently
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announced that she wanted to celebrate Hallowe'en as a "pink princess witch".
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"You can't," said seven-year-old Leonard. "You have to go as something scary.
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Anyway, there's no such thing as a pink princess witch."
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Only there is. The next day we happened to be in the local branch of the Co-op
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when we saw it. A pink witch costume complete with sparkling broomstick priced
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£14.99. "Ooh," my daughter said. "That's mine!"
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Did I buy it for her? Of course I did. This has now sparked off massive
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amounts of friction in our house. Leonard now wants to go as a Pokemon-vampire
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(is there such a thing?) and Jerry, aged six, as a light-up luminous skeleton.
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They both swear that they have seen these costumes in the endless catalogues
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that come through our door on a daily basis.
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"What about a vampire?" I say, remembering we still have a cape and plastic
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fangs from last year. "Or a bat? Bats are good."
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But there's no stopping them. It's pink princesses, modern-day action heroes
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or nothing. As for me, maybe I should unleash my inner Lady Gaga. Now that
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really is a scary thought.
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/8088316/Halloween-Fangs-
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arent-what-they-used-to-be.html
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