WEEK IN HALLOWEEN

Week in

Halloween is in the air, and the famous ideas known as ‘costumes’ are the talk of the town. But not everyone has time to plan them! We know our readers, and we know the nonstop cosmopolitan lifestyles they lead: you might have been busy having good intentions or drinking a glass of water. Anyway, we have you covered—with these costumes, you’ll be the belle of Pumpkin Hall:

1. Being Tall!

Why be a shrimp on the scariest day of your life when instead you could just put on some off-puttingly gorgeous 20-inch heels and be the tallest ghoul of them all?? Why would you do that? Be tall!

2. Reading in Your Free Time

John Waters says don’t eff anyone who doesn’t own any books…to that I say: if I dated nerds, I would never have scammed enough venture capitalists to start my company that uses unethical data extraction to give people ideas for how to caption Instagram posts! But on a day like Halloween, it can be fun to ironically inhabit the mysterious and twisted mind of someone who values something like books (which we have a very specific and valid reason for hating that our ongoing litigation with the National

Librarians’ Association does not allow us to elaborate on at this time). Let your fellow godless Hallow’s Eve celebrators know you’re flirting with the ideas contained in a dusty tome by wearing a pair of $11 patterned ‘joke’ socks underneath a normal outfit! Try wearing a shirt and pants and regular shoes or maybe a jacket if you’re cold.

3. Girl who is Sick and Evil and Can’t Be Put in A Box

Try being a girl whose mind is sooo dark, whose psyche is sooo impenetrable, who thinks about things like skulls because she’s just into effed up crap like that…this is a girl who doesn’t clean her room (she has a loose ribbon on her floor), a girl who kind of doesn’t care about the ‘norms’ of society (there’s a computer cord on her bed). This is a girl who lives her life in a way that someone like you or me could barely recognize (she wore leg warmers with a skirt last month)...this costume is only for people who are really ready to venture into a deeply disturbing psychic landscape.

4. Male Pattern Baldness

There’s nothing wrong with being bald. But there is something wrong with wearing an immediately recognizable costume that builds community with other members of your niche microculture! Reject common ground and be the concept of male pattern baldness. I don’t know, wear plaid and shave your head. Now there’s an idea you don’t see every day. Earlier today I dropped a salad on the ground and I didn’t even care. This is the kind of reckless and carefree lifestyle that leads people like me to come up with ideas like this.

5. Sexy Medieval Disease

Ever wanted to experiment with showing a little skin and basing medical science off of the color of your pee? Like pink eye, pasta dishes, and some haircuts, the medieval times are innately sexual. Show your peers that you can watch the kissing parts of movies without acting weird by being an afflicted serf or a blighted hermit who can, like, get it.

6. Boymoding!

Going home for Halloween? Tired of being an agoraphobic trans woman who has to constantly perform femininity perfectly or else suffer social shunning, and potentially physical harm? Don’t want to get a milkshake thrown at you this year at Derek Freep’s annual Halloween Scary Monster Bashapalooza? Just put on a big sweatshirt, pull your hair back into a bun, and suppress your fundamental identity and place in the world for 20 minutes. Who’s that? It’s Derek’s mom who came for some reason, walking your way and making intense eye contact! She’s gonna tell you that you look handsome, so how about you just leave right now and go hang out with only other trans women forever because they’re the only people who don’t infantilize, fetishize, or villainize you! Now that’s what I call spoopy xD

7. Joker Costume

If you’re in your “Joker Era,” why not go just full cray-cray? Put on some clown makeup and spend the whole night doing a long-form improv bit as Heath Ledger’s Joker, no matter how many times your friends tell you to stop. If they love you, they’ll accept your bold choices and inability to tell when you’ve gone too far.

8. Us!

One’s a loser, three’s a crowd, but two is juuuust right. So this Scary Month of Ghosttober, why not shake things up by doing a couples costume with your landlord, coworker, or frenemy, and making that costume everyone’s favorite gournalists (girl journalists)? It’s real easy to do a Masha and Nora costume—for Masha, just put on a modest sweater, a can-do attitude, and carry around a super hilarious coffee mug that says “Don’t talk to me until I’ve had my COVFEFE!” For Nora, get clip-on bangs, flawless plastic surgery, a crop top that says “I’m with stupid,” and fill your arms with books that you drop constantly, waiting for someone else to reach down to pick them up for you so that when you also reach down, your hands touch. If you’re a pet owner, you can do a fun version of this where you put two ferrets in wigs!