I’ll hate on Martha Stewart’s crass, out-of-touch Halloween costume all day, every day, but not all Halloween controversies are the same. It looks like they’re trying to cancel Jessica Alba for her Halloween costume too, only I have mixed feelings about this one. This year, Alba and her friend Kelly Sawyer decided to coordinate their costumes, with Alba dressing up as Nancy Kerrigan and Sawyer dressing up as Tonya Harding. Sawyer carried a baseball bat and Alba’s costume included a bloodied and bandaged knee. Get it? Like the infamous 1994 incident, where Tonya Harding’s ex-husband hired someone to literally kneecap Nancy Kerrigan. Alba ended up deleting the photos from Instagram after backlash in her comments.
Some backstory on the costumes, for those who don’t know: while the incident was absolutely traumatic for Kerrigan, this happened in 1994, it was a huge moment in pop culture and I’m absolutely positive that thousands of other people have dressed up as Harding and Kerrigan for Halloween. It was legitimately a huge pop culture moment and everyone who was alive in 1994 remembers it. My other criticism is that Tonya Harding never wielded the bat!! Shane Stant was the one who attacked Kerrigan, and he did so with a baton, not a bat. Historical accuracy for Halloween costumes, please! The assault was also turned into an excellent, Oscar-nominated film (I, Tonya) and many documentaries and such.
Now, are the costumes rather tasteless? Sure. Kerrigan’s career was never the same and she was literally assaulted with a baton. Harding received a lifetime ban from figure skating. People went to jail. It’s always super-tricky to use real-life true-crime people as Halloween costumes. I don’t think this is as controversial as Martha Stewart’s costume, but hey, I get why people were mad and I get why Alba deleted the pics.
Photos courtesy of Jessica Alba’s Instagram.
Clever idea but some things should just be left to…an idea.
Lol, as my mother used to say: Not all your ideas need to be vocalized.
Thirty years later but still too soon.
Maybe there’s something wrong with me, but I don’t think this one seems too horrible. The fact that there was a movie creates a little buffer around it
@Gabby, I am with you. The movie buffer as you cleverly called it, is applicable in my opinion.
The Oscar nominated movie was a dark comedy so I think we have moved from tragedy to absurdity in the collective consciousness.
Same, maybe because I was there for all of the ridiculously overwrought coverage at the height of tabloid TV era. This one seems really tame to me.
I can’t imagine dressing up to spoof someone’s tramautic moment. But that’s just me.
Stupid idea.
Other people’s trauma is not funny or cute. Actual crimes are not funny or cute.
I think it’s funny! And yes after a movie and Harding being on DWTS it’s fair game.
Distasteful
LOL. People have been doing Tonya and Nancy costumes ever since it happened. Nancy herself was in a Nancy and Tonya comedy sketch on SNL a few weeks after the Olympics. If her career wasn’t the same it was because the Olympics was always going to be her final competition. If she spent her pro career doing her own smaller shows and tours, it’s because she married her agent (who was married with children at the time) and he decided that was the way to maximize her income. She was doing shows while visibly pregnant. I know it’s tasteless to point out, but those shows wouldn’t have happened if she hadn’t become world famous because of the attacks. Nancy seems to be doing well now, but she grew up in a not great family situation herself.
As for Tonya wielding the bat, despite her protestations and whatever the movie said, she was certainly in on it. It couldn’t be proven, but there is no way the men plotted this without her involvement. I say this as someone who was a Boston figure skating fan at the time who knew reporters working the story.
This is a sign of the changing times and people imagining trauma as something people never get over. And people parasocially claiming virtue for themselves by standing up for victims.
Sid, totally.
No reason to cancel anyone, but blah.
Eh, the costumes don’t bother me. The social hierarchy in figure skating and our society in general was the biggest takeaway for me, when this incident happened. BOTH girls were traumatized by the entire situation. BOTH girls’s careers took a hit. And I am deliberately saying girls here, they were competitive athletes, but not emotionally or socially mature, and were failed by adults.
Someone here in Pittsburgh showed up dressed in full costume as Hitler because they lost a double dare. I can’t make this garbage up. Not going to cancel someone for showing up as Nancy & Tonya from 94. Do I think it’s stupid-yes. They didn’t murder millions of people.
The movie about the event was satirical.