Yeah, but how did he do it?

Earlier this week, photos from a Halloween costume contest at Admiral Moorer Middle School in Eufaula created a stir, with one of the winners presenting as a person who’d been cut in half, his torso seemingly a foot or more to the side of his waist. You know there’s a gimmick, but it’s hard to perceive how a person’s upper body could be over here and his knees over there without (a) some cirque-level spinal contortion, or (b) tipping over.

It is a really cool costume. There’s a sad little side note, which is that the internet went crazy over it. Type “Adm” into Google and you may find that it autofills “Admiral Moorer Middle School Halloween Contest 2023.” Basically, a lot of people got really righteous because the kid in question won third place, behind an “old man” and a Wednesday Addams. And they rained internet shame down upon the school.

There’s a little more to it than that. Eufaula City Schools spokesperson Mitzi Clayton said the costumes were part of a “Harvest Dance” event held by the school. New Principal Sean Clark supports such events as a way of building student engagement, she said.

The judging wasn’t based strictly on the costume: It included a skit, with points based on factors such as the theme and the level of engagement with the audience, Clayton said. That’s why the most eye-catching costume wasn’t necessarily a lock to take the top prize.

But it’s almost beside the point: On the one hand, we have photos showing a school making Halloween fun, with supportive teachers (many in costume themselves) cheering on students who took part. On the other, we have people who, somehow, with everything going on in the world, have decided this is the supposed injustice they need to address with calls and criticism and conspiracy theories. On Facebook you’ll find people bragging about how the school wouldn’t answer their calls, or how it took down its Facebook page because of the outcry.

It’s a fact that the school took down its Facebook page. But it wasn’t to cover anything up, Clayton said. It’s because commenters were slinging dirt at the other participants in the contest. Who, as Clayton pointed out, are middle school students.

“Some of them were really unkind,” she said. She said Eufaula is a pretty small town and the worst of the comment came from people who had nothing to do with the city or its schools.

Clayton said the backlash hadn’t necessarily been all negative, for the schools or the students. “It’s all about teaching and learning,” she said. “I think it’s been kind of a learning experience.”

Anyway, back to the costume. There are instructions all over the internet on how to do it, including YouTube videos that are up to 10 years old, a step-by-step guide on Instructables.com, Pinterest how-to’s and so on. None of which is said to diminish the costume: It takes a significant assortment of materials and some work, and it creates a strong opinion on people seeing it for the first time.

So what’s the gimmick? Here’s a nice video that breaks it all down.

The gimmick is that the costume cleverly disguises the amount of contortion required, making it look much greater than it is. The pants and shirt are deliberately oversized. Balloons fill the upper portion of the pants, which tricks your brain into thinking the hips are thrown over impossibly far. The shirt dangles low, disguising the bend of the legs. The sharp horizontals of the beltline and the shirttail trick you into thinking there’s an abrupt kink in the body, which isn’t the case. One shoulder is over the opposite foot, that’s all.

In the video above, there’s a reveal that shows what’s really going on. And it doesn’t look that extreme. (Skip to the 2:20 mark if you’re in a rush.)

However, the costume itself can be taken to an extreme: Here’s a video where it’s presented as a magic trick by a guy who pushes the concept to the limit. It’s no wonder people are startled.

Here’s a prediction: Based on the exposure this incident generated, this costume is going to be pretty popular for Halloween 2024.

“It kind of put us on the map,” said Clayton.