Gangnam Style Costume Shows No Style This Halloween

With all this talk of the Halloween season and what not to wear, there's one category I felt needed an entire entry of its own.

This Halloween, don't go Gangnam Style.

Gangnam Style is the insane “dance” “craze” “started” by “some person” “named” “Psy.” If you didn't notice an abundance of quotation marks in that sentence, you are probably a corpse and should go as that for Halloween. But if you are breathing and took note of my linguistic mastery, you'd realize I dislike Gangnam Style and I shudder to think of how many people will go as some pony Asian person this Halloween.

That last line isn’t meant to sound like some bizarre racial slur, that’s what the video is—a pudgy Asian person who dances like a pony. To many people that phrase makes absolutely no sense, but to the video’s 430 million YouTube viewers, it makes complete sense, and they will be certain to deck themselves out as Psy, the guy in the yellow suit or various hot women who want to look like a horse.

Just don't do it.

I’m against Gangnam Style inspired costumes because of its popularity. This might sound hipsterish of me, but my costumes garner a roughly three percent acceptance rate, whereas this would notch probably somewhere in the 60 percents, and that is NOT a good thing.

Gangnam Style is this year's “Dick in a Box,” “Joker” or “Dora the Explorer.” It's the costume style that just about everyone is going to be sporting, which means you don't want to rep it. Going Gangnam Style would be like going as Rebecca Black in 2011. It would just feel like unjustified trend hopping that no one could appreciate. Wait a year, because those who go as Rebecca Black this year will get mad props—it's old enough to be old, but not new enough to be fresh.

Oddly enough, I am okay with this hipsterish
Man in the Yellow Hat costume.

This might be an adequate costume for somebody who is already a pudgy person of Asian descent—you can only go as E. Honda so many times. But beyond that, what this costume will amount to is a lot of white people dressing and make-upping to look like Psy, and that’s going to result in everyone who’s not dressed as Psy (one person) to deem everyone else racist.

There is one Gangnam-inspired costume that I wholly support. Affix a whiteboard to your chest, deck it out to look like a YouTube frame and write “Number of Gangnam Style costumes I’ve seen tonight” on it. Every time you see another, bump up the list. But make sure to leave plenty of room, because Psy’s 15 minutes ensure a figure that’s at least seven digits.

Sure, that costume wouldn’t exist without the Gangnam Style video, and it should technically be considered a tally on the white board, but it’s really a way to make a hipster costume without making a hipster costume, and for many people that’s the goal of any Halloween costume.

Yes, Gangnam Style will be a really excellent costume choice in about seven years—at that point only three percent of people will look fondly in their closet and find their stark yellow blazer. And then it will be an amazing costume, but for 2012, Psy’s 15 minutes of fame remain and the costume is wholly idiotic.