Ebola Costumes Top List Of 2014 Controversial Halloween Ideas: Definitely Too Soon
As Halloween rolls around, everyone is looking for a witty, edgy — and usually sexy — Halloween costume. As often occurs on this fall holiday, there will be the handful of people who choose to dress up as whatever timely controversy recently happened.
This year, the trend might be Ebola — slutty Ebola nurses, doctors, and even patients — especially since the whole Ebola zombie scare took flight. Halloween costume sellers are designing outfits resembling the heavy protective gear health care workers wear when caring for Ebola patients, and they don’t seem to be too worried about whether or not it’s too soon.
But the morbid Halloween idea “definitely rubs me the wrong way,” Maria McKenna, a physician’s assistant nurse in Philadelphia, told the AP. “Normally, I think that irony and humor is funny, but this thing with the costumes, is it really that funny? I mean, Ebola’s not even under control yet.”
Halloween costume sellers, such as Ricky’s NYC, aren’t shying away from controversy. “I wouldn’t say we can see an uptick in sales,” Richard Parrott, Ricky’s president, told the AP of the Breaking Bad hazmat suit costume that became popular last year. People are re-using the Breaking Bad hazmat suit as Ebola costumes this year. “I would say it’s still chugging along because it’s a good seller no matter what. But people are definitely asking about an Ebola-type costume.”
But is poking fun at the potential pandemic immoral? “It allows people to stay far from the situation and not to imagine the human suffering that’s actually occurring,” Kathryn Getek Soltis, Director of the Center for Peace and Justice Education and Assistant Professor of Christian Ethics at Villanova University, told TIME. “The issue isn’t that you’re a bad person because you have an insensitive costume, it’s that actually you’re closing yourself and the people around you off from trying to understand how you might be able to participate in this issue in a way that affects people’s lives.”
“I don’t want folks to think being ethical means you can’t be fun,” Soltis continued. “But … this isn’t funny.”
Shamelessly, people on Twitter continue to discuss their Ebola costume options. And no one in the first world seems to be too worried about it.