Green Halloween: Don't Dress To Kill
by Jasmin Malik Chua, Jersey City, USA on 10.25.07
Photo credit: Martha Stewart Living
As one hapless television news crew discovered, store-bought Halloween costumes frequently contain a boatload of carcinogens and reproductive toxins such as lead, cadmium, and pthalates, particularly those made from PVC or vinyl. Even the PVC packaging most costumes come embalmed in can leave phthalate residues on their surfaces.
You should also be wary of store-bought face paints and Halloween makeup that are not only derived from petroleum, but may also contain parabens, butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA), formaldehyde, lead, and other potential and probable cancer-causing agents.
It doesn't take huge leaps of imagination to dress up a scurvy pirate scallywag or a ballerina princess, so scour your closets, kitchen drawers, toy trunks, and local thrift stores for items you can pull together to create a killer—metaphorically speaking—look. (The Dollar Stretcher has some great, low-cost ideas.) You can even learn how to make your own monster makeup.
Get more Green 'Ween tips here.
One thing I have to say -- no self respecting kid would ever be caught dead in one of those costumes. Because except for the pumpkin, they're not costumes. A black jumper and matching spider headband is not a spider costume. The girl in the middle illustration isn't even dressed up as any particular thing, she's just wearing a festive Halloween themed outfit.
It's quite easy, however, to make sustainable costumes using real articles of clothing, either from your own closet or via thrift stores. I'm going as a pirate this year, and the only thing I bought was the tricorne hat. I always liked those sorts of costumes better than the packaged polyester ones, anyway.
I've managed to make my kids' costumes most years. My mother did my daughter's last year, though, since my daughter wanted to be Dorothy from Wizard of Oz and my mother happened to have some blue gingham fabric that was probably 20+ years old.
This year I did give in and buy my daughter the Cinderella costume she desperately wanted, after my appeal to creativity failed. Hard to talk kids into these things sometimes. But I am making my son a blue dragon costume out of a hooded sweatshirt, sweat pants and scrap fabric. It should be very cute and I know a lot more about what has gone into it.
On the plus side for the Cinderella dress I can trust my daughter to play dress up in it until it turns to rags.