5 Controversial Halloween Costumes You Should Absolutely Avoid in 2022
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Ah, October. The second best time of the year. The leaves are changing, the air is becoming crisper and the ghouls are officially out and about. Halloween is just around the corner and we can’t get the best Halloween costumes off of our minds.
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A lot has happened this year to inspire some most excellent costume ideas. Pop culture Halloween costumes relevant to 2022 include the TikTok-famous Corn Kid, Stranger Things’ Eddie Munson and even couples’ costumes like the late and great Pete Davidson and Kim Kardashian. May their short-term relationship rest in peace.
But, you may have noticed, a lot of really bad things have also happened this year, and if one were so inclined, well… let’s just say 2022 has provided plenty of fodder for offensive Halloween costume ideas for the politically incorrect among us. Sure, you might be able to score some laughs with your oh-so-clever costume, but if you think a little harder, you may just come to the conclusion that you’ve made a terrible mistake.
In an age where anyone can go viral and get canceled at a moment’s notice, do you really want to roll those dice for a costume?
We’ll drop the preamble and get straight to it. Here are five controversial Halloween costumes you should probably not dress as in 2022.
1. Jeffrey Dahmer
If you asked us a few weeks ago at the beginning of Ryan Murphy’s Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story whether or not it would be okay to dress as the prolific serial killer/cannibal for Halloween, we probably would have told you to go for it. After all, we love a good scary Halloween costume. Of course, if you’ve actually watched Dahmer, then you should have learned how much pain the victims’ families suffered because of people making light of his crimes, which claimed the lives of real people.
Recently, it seems that lots of folks wanted to be Dahmer for Halloween. Search for Dahmer costumes ticked up tremendously. But, we simply suggest you just don’t do it. Even eBay suggests it. The extremely popular distributor has fully banned Dahmer costume sales on eBay in hopes to get fewer people to dress up as him.
So unless you completely missed the moral of the story, you should know that going as Dahmer is in very poor taste. His surviving victims and victims’ families are still alive and suffering, and considering that he targeted mostly poor Brown and Black folks, we can’t recommend doing a Dahmer this Halloween. Even if you really love controversial Halloween costumes, keep away from this one.
2. Queen Elizabeth
It was 96 years in the making, but Queen Elizabeth finally passed away in September of this year. But, unless you’ve been living under a rock, you might already know that. So is it funny or not to attend a Halloween celebration dressed as the beloved constitutional monarch? Well, that depends entirely on how you feel about British imperialism. We can’t deny that the queen lived a long life with quiet integrity, but we also can’t deny that the extended royal family is kind of a joe here in the United States.
That said, if you’ve found yourself on any side of Royal Family TikTok since Liz’s death, you might have seen that a number of Brits are royally pissed that folks outside of the Commonwealth are making light of her death. That said, maybe it’s not in your best interest to head out on the town dressed as The Queen this year.
Probably best not to take the chance.
3. Monkeypox
Another year, another pandemic, and another opportunity for politically incorrect Halloween costumes. We’ve talked about going out as COVID-19 for Halloween once before and we’ll reiterate — it wasn’t funny then, and it never will be. That said, monkeypox is even less funny to dress up as for Halloween, especially considering its outsized impact on the LGBTQ+ community. That said, no, you’re not going to make fun of folks suffering from a painful, uncomfortable viral disease. Do better.
4. Vladimir Putin
Does Vladimir Putin really need more attention? Sure, the Russian strongman has his fanboys here in the United States, but with the increased threat of nuclear war, do you really want to be reminded of this KGB sociopath on one of the best holidays of the year?
No thank you. Next.
5. Kim Jong-un
Kim Jong-un has been making headlines again as he sends missiles over territories and countries he simply isn’t allowed to. The man is a joke that also happens to pose a very real risk to our entire planet. However, there’s another very good reason to avoid Kim Jong-un Halloween costumes. For white people dressing up, this controversial costume idea could very easily become Yellowface. A quick search on Amazon will reveal Kim Jong-un masks that look like racist caricatures, and you just don’t want to go there.
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