Halloween: It's a time to put on your greatest thinking cap, muster up all your creativity, and blow all your friends, family and fellow statesmen out of the water with your costume.
Or, it's a time to be literally the simplest person ever.
That's right, since the dawn of time Halloween celebrants everywhere have been disappointing people with their complete inability to show any originality in their costumes. Our society has been plagued with witches, devils, angels and all the of other boring costumes for ages. Every Halloween, we get to sit back and place bets on which of our friends will do the "sexy cat" this year. Unitard? Check. Stilettos? Check. Cat ears? Double check.
It's not that there's anything inherently offensive about these costumes, but rather that it's simply become a running joke—or a way to easily spot the kids whose parents are too busy to sew a costume. And now we actually have geographical proof that points us to where exactly this Halloween basic-ness is the most prevalent, thanks to a study by Influenster.
The social media shopping site polled Americans far and wide to find out the most popular costume in each state. While it revealed a few regions that take the holiday very seriously, it also revealed a whole lot of simplicity. In the former category, the most popular costume in Alabama is Harley Quinn, a.k.a. the character played by Margot Robbie in the upcoming Suicide Squad. The citizens of Arizona and New Mexico chose Day of the Dead-style "sugar skulls," and Minions won out in Illinois and Oklahoma.
Those are all great costumes, made to look even better when you consider that the rest of the states lay claim to the witches/cats/princess contingent. And let's not forget the ever-present nurse costume (that would be Kentucky and Louisiana). See the rest of the lackluster findings here.
So what lesson can be learned from this enlightening study? That we all need to do better that cat ears. If one state fails, we all fail.