Lincoln Carnage: Who cares if you want to dress up in bunny ears and a fluffy tail?

To bunny or not to bunny?

This year’s Carnage theme has caused some controversy among students in Lincoln. No doubt due to the connotations a Playgirl or playboy may carry. In 1953, Hugh Hefner founded Playboy magazine, a magazine for men featuring naked women, and since then it has been at the centre of controversy, no doubt due to its very old mogul having several 20 year-old’s hanging off each arm.

Students out at Carnage embracing this year’s theme!

To me, it’s very much a case of live and let live. Playgirl and bunnies are actually two different things, but are often mistaken for one in the same. To clear up some confusion, this year’s Carnage theme was one that alluded to the perfectly quaffed waitresses-come-bunnies who worked in the Playboy Casinos and bars…not the girls ready and willing to whip their clothes off to be coined as a playmate and become forever installed in the Playboy halls of fame.

This being said, Carnage is simply only a night out, and last year’s ‘Pimps and Hoes’ theme spoke to me as something girls would be much more offended about. So why the sudden influx of slut shaming girls who chose to embrace the theme? Bunny girl does not, and will not, immediately create a rush of girls leaving very little to the imagination in nothing but rabbit ears and a t-shirt. The theme is not mandatory, you have the t-shirt, and you have the golden ticket as it were. Friends did just this, opting out of the theme in favour of skirts and necklaces rather than bow ties and ears.

I myself however, was ready to don the iconic ears and fluffy tail – this didn’t mean I was stripping down to lingerie and pinning a tail anywhere inappropriate. It’s February after all. Instead, it meant leggings, converse and bunny accessories. Like the girls who work for Mr. Hefner himself, they too are consenting adult and so it is their choice, just as it was mine to dress up, and so too any other girl choosing to take on the theme.

I’m certainly embracing the Carnage theme!