Hey, girlfriends! Happy Halloweek! What a fun, sexy time for us! But also, what pressure, amirite ladies?
On the one hand, Halloween can bring so much greatness to your otherwise stressful (#midterms) life. The weather is getting chillier, the leaves are turning a beautiful orange, and there’s a really good excuse to eat a ton of chocolate. All the stores are decorated (dare I say) spoopily, there are parties galore, and there are numerous opportunities for costumes.
But what you’d think would be a relaxed, fun couple of days for everyone can actually be a really stressful time. Not only do you have to be respectful of other peoples’ cultures and be, you know, not a jackass*, (soo hard, right?!) you also have to be, if you are a female-identifying person, kind of a slut! You know what I’m talking about. Women fare better when they are the “Sexy Pirate,” “Sexy Nurse,” or “Sexy Pizza.” Sex does indeed sell, racking up those Instagram likes and Facebook “love” reactions. Still, you can’t dress up as any old “sexy” costume, like “sexy cat” or “sexy librarian.” People see right through that. You are expected to put some thought into your sexy costume, because just dressing as the slutty version of a regular costume means that you are unoriginal, or god forbid, “basic.”
Here’s a classic example: Aaron Samuels liked Lindsay Lohan in Mean Girls because she wasn’t like “the other slutty girls.” Lindsay is the funny, relatable, not-blatantly-but-somehow-still-hot girl-next-door who wears a gross ~scary~ costume instead of lingerie and bunny ears. Aaron Samuels knows — it’s bad to be “just hot.” You should be extremely relatable and hot!
This brings us to the issue at hand: Women are faced with unattainable expectations for Halloween costumes, and it’s all bullshit. Do you know how hard it is to come up with original, funny, capital s Sexy costume ideas? Original + funny = usually not sexy. Like, it’d be original and funny to dress up as the dat boi meme, but alas, dressing like a dope green meme frog on a unicycle can hardly be thought of as sensual.
What also sucks is that a guy can give 2% effort and still be thought of as some sort of hot, funny, sexy Halloween genius. i.e. how many of us died when Jim from The Office dressed up as Facebook– by writing the word book on his face in black marker? But if a girl were to also give 2% and just buy a Tinker Bell costume off Amazon, she’d be like every other girl who dressed up as Tinker Bell– clichéd, and just wanting to dress like a ho. And how dare a girl try to live life and enact her sexuality? What is this, a brothel?!
After spending some time with some Reese’s Pumpkin-Shaped Peanut Butter Cups and some wine, I figured out how to cheat the formula. Here’s a very feasible, not-at-all bad, definitely not ridiculous list of costumes that check off all three smart, sexy, and original boxes on your ideal costume list:
- Slutty Ghostbusters — Ghostbusters are already funny and smart (they bust ghosts!). But they could show a bit more cleavage. Fuck respectability and their PhDs; we want boobs, not just BOOs!
- Sexy Egg/Bacon — Could be a couples’ costume, or you could choose your fave solo breakfast food. It’s not particularly funny or smart, but who doesn’t love breakfast food? However, I’d like to note that it is hard to make bacon sexier than it already is.
- Slutty Cereal Killer — The classic costume pun. Adorn yourself with the corpses of mini cereal boxes, but make the mini cereal boxes just lingerie.
- Sexy Albert Einstein — Who’s smarter and funnier than this guy? Have you seen his hair? Ha!
- Slutty Higgs boson — Tell them you’re dressed as the God particle. Shit’s crazy smart. And sexy.
- Sexy One Night Stand — This is the one where you literally dress up as a singular nightstand. Make yourself a cardboard table that you can wear. But like, a sexy cardboard table.
- Slutty Bachelor’s Degree — We’re all in college trying to get one of these, though it’s laughable that it’ll be of any use in this economy! (So study for your tests after the week’s over, kids!!)
*Don’t culturally appropriate this Halloween! Duh!
