Yes, it has been a week since Hallowe’en, but I’m a student and, far from being lazy, I have many little things to do. I’m tempted to say that I’m going to take a small hiatus from the blog for the month, just to see how I do, but I suspect I won’t stick to it.
I’m still writing, still thinking, most importantly, still editing.
Anyway, what did I do for Hallowe’en?
Dress up, of course. The Second West corridor decided on a Batman villains theme, which I took to happily. Mainly for the fact that it gave me the excuse to dress up as Catwoman. I had the ears and clothes already. Though not exactly a villain in the majority of the newer, 2012 film, I believe she is originally portrayed to be antagonistic towards the whole collection of Gotham heroes.
In StarKid’s Holy Musical B@tman she is, anyway.
According to Wikipedia:
She is usually depicted as an adversary of Batman, known for having a complex love-hate relationship with him.
In case you’re wondering, yes, I was basing my look on Anne Hathaway’s. I love the sleek and almost scientific side to this Catwoman. It’s that antihero element pulling us all in. However, one could argue that all villains are some version of the antihero, unless they are predominantly evil. But then, with realistic characters, you must have some shred of humanity within them, even for non human/humanoid creatures. Every ‘villain’ has some aim towards their final ‘good’, be that the opposite of the norm society and heroes consider. This is why I enjoyed Anne Hathaway’s portrayal, since the Catwoman there definitely possesses an unusual morality, but she is, in her soul, ultimately good.
The question is whether a character is willing to break the law/go beyond normal ideas of right and wrong to achieve their goals.
And, of course, that’s down to how the writer portrays them via showing.
Meanwhile, in the Wantage Baa…
My costume was pretty easy to put together. I had my actors instinct, but I think anybody could have crafted it, since there wasn’t much effort in pulling pieces together. I was following this idea, though the pictures are of 3D game-design.
- I already had an athletic-looking shiny black top and black trousers (if you know me, you’ll know that black trousers are my staple clothe item). I also had the spider earrings already, another irrepressible trait of mine!
- I bought wrist-length black leather gloves from a charity shop; from Primark, I found a large belt to act as my Bat/Catbelt. Its buckle was originally gold, but I coloured it over with a black permanent pen.
- The mask was a friend’s. Half the time I couldn’t see, so I didn’t wear it much. I had the ears already, but they were falling apart, so a friend moved them onto one of my ribbons. Sadly, my black wasn’t long enough, so its the only blue. In the pictures, the ears are actually pinned to my head/hair! I also trimmed the white feathers on the inside of the ears to reduce how ‘kitten’ the look was. After all, I wanted to follow the idea of the ears as necessary (in the film, they are Catwoman’s glasses and just happen to look like ears when she slides them onto her head) not decorative.
- As for makeup: I painted my nails black, rather than giving them a French manicure-style cut and colour. For my eyes, I used a light grey and a little blue to create a smoky eye effect, finishing just below my brows. Then, I used gel-liner to lightly outline my eyeball on my lids – this gives the eyelids a darker shadow and makes the eyes stand out a little more. After that, I applied the gel-liner to the edges of my lids in the usual way, making sure to link up the bottom and top layers and with the faint outline on my lid, and give the liner a little flick to finish the ‘smoky’, secretive look. Of course, I also put on mascara, clear lip-gloss and powdered my face 😉
Alexandrina Brant 