What Not To Wear: Halloween Edition

Well it’s the first of October, y’all. And you know what that means, right? Time to start doing something you should have been doing for the past twelve months: planning your Halloween costume. And while I don’t know what the perfect costume is (and if I did I wouldn’t give it away), I can tell you what to avoid this season.

   1)   Bulky Costumes. It’s Halloween weekend, people. This is the weekend when even those who don’t party, party. Kitchens, living rooms, hallways, and creepy murky basements are going to be jam-PACKED with literally everyone. So don’t be the douche who goes as a centaur and has a whole horse sticking out his ass. You’ll make some enemies.

   2)   “I’m a nudist on strike”. This one is just lazy, unoriginal, and trivializing to the Nudist Strike efforts. 

   3)   Costumes that are too cold. The end of October signals the end of temperatures where you can wear nothing but a strapless mini dress and live to tell the tale. And while you may look smoking hot in a backless halter and Daisy Dukes, your hypothermia-blackened fingers and the deluge of snot flowing out your nose will drastically lessen your appeal.

   4)   Costumes that are too hot. Yes, this goes against number 3, but think about it. Houses will be absolutely crammed with hundreds of dancing, jumping, excited college students. It’s gonna get toasty. How to balance between the freezing tundra of the outdoors and the uncomfortably moist sauna that is a party basement? LAYERS.

   5)   “Slutty” versions of specific people. Take any occupation, make it slutty, and you have yourself a perfect Halloween costume. It’s when you get specific that you get into trouble. Going as “slutty Helen Keller” won’t make you any friends.

And on a related note…

   6)   Costumes that will get you punched. See above.

   7)   Group costumes that don’t make sense by themselves. My friends and I once went as one potato two potato three potato four. We each wore big brown t-shirts filled with stuffing, bearing the numbers one through four. Inevitably, at many moments during the night we were not directly next to each other, and I just looked like a giant third base. Not what I was going for.

   8)   Expensive costumes. Chances are, you will not find another context to wear your Halloween costume until next Halloween, and you don’t want to be the loser who wears the same costume every year. So do yourself a favor and don’t empty your bank account buying yourself a boa constrictor so that you can be Britney Spears. This is Vermont. Go into the woods and catch your own snake. It’s free!

But worst of all…

   9)   No costume. “Dressing up is so immature.” Ok, buzzkill, you can stay home with a vinyl of Bach’s symphonies on the record player, while reading Hawthorne novels and sipping a glass of scotch. The rest of us will be acting like five year olds and having a fucking great time.