Between Freakfest, Saturday’s football game and the abundance of Halloween parties in the month of October, there is a lot of pressure to come up with a costume that will stand out. Sadly, there are some instances where people take it too far and come up with a costume that is not only offensive, but unacceptable.

The biggest Halloween scandal right now centers around a costume called Anna Rexia that has resurfaced after supposedly being discontinued years ago. If you haven’t seen news about the costume, it is meant to embody the eating disorder, anorexia.

With the product description “you can never be too rich or too thin,” this outfit has understandably sparked controversy and has people up in arms. Thankfully, almost everyone unanimously agrees that this is an unacceptable costume for Halloween.

But what about the costumes that are less overtly distasteful?

Students often choose costumes that will make people laugh, but often don’t consider the people they may be hurting in the process. That’s not to say dark humor isn’t a good thing; it can be humorous in certain contexts, but there are costumes that are unarguably tasteless.

Offensive Halloween costumes can include anything from making fun of racial or ethnic groups, a tragic event in history or a dead celebrity.

You may think it’s funny to dress up as in the unisex “Call Me Caitlyn” costume, a clear reference to Caitlyn Jenner’s “Vanity Fair” cover announcing her gender transition, but you may not realize that the costume marginalizes the entire transgender community. Not only does it mock a living person, but also trivializes the struggle of 0.3% of the U.S.’s adult population.

It’s one thing to poke fun at a person in an innocent way, such as rocking the Miley Cyrus’s “wrecking ball” look, but it’s not okay to mock an aspect of someone’s identity — whether it be their gender, sexuality, race, religion, etc.

In that same vein of thought, using an entire demographic group to elicit a cheap laugh on Halloween is just as bad as making fun of an individual.

I would like to believe and I hope that everyone in this student body has enough common sense to not dress up in blackface, a Day of the Dead getup or as a religious figure, but it is still worth discussing.

The bottom line is this: Don’t use Halloween as an excuse to dress up as something offensive.

There are, of course, always people who will get upset about almost anything, but there is a distinction between being offended over something trivial and being offended for legitimate reasons.

The point of Halloween, especially as a college student, is to have fun dressing up in a costume you’ve been planning for an entire year (or pulled together the day of) and getting to show it off. If your goal is to get a laugh, there are plenty of ways to do so without marginalizing entire groups of people.

This year, don’t be “that person.” Have fun, put together a clever group costume that never really seems to work, but don’t resort to offensive costumes to get a cheap laugh. There are more than enough ideas for Halloween costumes on the Internet, and tons of fun to to be had without risking looking tasteless and crude.

Hannah Fricke ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in microbiology.