I need a Halloween costume by Thursday. It needs to be creative, and yet easy to put together. And as much as I envy a girl who can wear a short skirt, that ain’t me, so no naughty nurses and no unitards. Now, go!
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Well, scratch that one.
If I knew more about your wardrobe, it would help.
Go as an American tourist. Hawaiian print shirt and camera strap.
Just an idea…
Priest -
black pants
black button-down shirt
black shoes
white posterboard
rosary
bible
Create a priest’s collar from white posterboard and insert into front collar area of shirt. Works best if you use a shirt that has the same type of self-faced collar as priests wear, or you could tuck under the collar points for a similar effect. Add rosary and bible.
Too controversial? Is it a friend’s party or something businesslike?
The unitarded, naughty candy-striper! Oh shit, not that.
Gotta go with the ol’ DIY standby. Wear some dirty work clothes, tape some wads of paper and banana peels to your wife-beater, and call yourself White Trash.
Be sure to include a pudding stain on Norbizness’ idea.
Schroedinger’s cat!!!
facepaint, kitty ears, tail, wear a cardboard box with holes for the head and arms over your clothes.
The scariest thing I know of would be to wear a suit and scrounge up some Bush pins (like, from the garbage). A Republican. ;)
Go as Harriet Miers. Clutch a large cutout of President Bush, keep it close to you, and kiss it regularly and enthusiastically.
Math geek: The only problem with that is that nobody will be able to prove if she’s at the party or not. (I realize that’s a really clumsy interpretation of the phenomenon, but whatever…)
I’m really boring. I’m wearing an embroidered Cuban shirt with a grey suit jacket and pants, and buying a fedora. Bastista-era Cubna musician!
The shirt is similar to this one: http://www.cardsupply.com/productdetail/images/nrn/cards/NRN_LP_331.jpg
Ooh! Nice shirt, KG. Am I bad if I’m oddly attracted to Bastista-era Cubans?
Cover yourself in mud and go as Guatemala?
Buy a bag of Smarties. Dump out the candy, attach the wrappers to your pants. You are now smarty pants!
Groan.
Two thoughts:
– sweat pants and shirt, covered with as many pairs of old glasses/cheap sunglasses as you can scrounge from your family/friends/the trash/whatever. Or you could make cardboard/posterboard ones. You’ll be making a spectacle of yourself. (Yup, that’s a BIG groaner, but what can I say? I worked as administrative assistance in an ophthalmology department for 9 years.)
– One pair of overalls, baggy, and rolled up as they are too long. One denim work shirt, either short or long sleeved. Bandana turban covering your hair. Some strategic dirt/grease smudges on your face. Welding goggles or face plate as a carry prop. Anyone got it? Give up? Rosie the Riveter, one of my fave icons from the past, and my outfit for Friday night. (Don’t worry — I’m all the way out in Minneapolis, so there will NOT be two of us at the party.) Bonus points if you can scrounge up a “We Can Do It!” button to wear on the overalls.
BTW, Jill: I’ve seen the pix you’ve posted. Who says you can’t wear short skirts? There’s like, nothing to you! :)
you know that part in the Wizard of Oz where the bad witch gets squashed by the house and only has feet with ruby slippers sticking out?
Okay.
You take a large cardboard box and paint & modify it to look like a house. Then you put on the ruby slippers underneath and voila! you are the squashed, bad witch of the east.
P.S. The bad pun costume is all sara’s fault — “smarty pants” reminded me of bad puns as costuming. I’m sure you can think of others, and they are usually cheap and easy to put together.
A sweatshirt/pants combo that is red on the front and blue on the back* is a real science geek type costume: it shows you moving in a relativistic manner. *ducks!!*
* My apologies if I goofed the wavelengths up. My husband did this a few years ago, and I got to make it. Can’t remember which was front and which was back, tho’…..
Wear a dark skirt and blazer, get some temporary red hair dye, and go as Agent Scully.
Or slather on the Goth makeup and grab an ankh necklace to be Death. Or trade the Scully skirt for pants, slick your hair back, and be Desire.
And, of course, if you can find a really hideous old prom dress at Goodwill, there’s the option of Zombie Prom Queen.
I have the same problem… I usually end up at the thrift store a few days before and go with the cheapest outfit I can find.
I’ll use this as an opportunity to be snarky about msn.com… If you want to take their asshat advice, you can be a confederate flag! About a week ago they had an outfit in their ‘top 10 women’s costumes’ that consisted of a confederate flag shirt and some short black shorts. Now that’s the outfit I’m looking for.
God, if I knew your wardrobe….
A winner for me is always to think about old 80s icons and do that. Madonna is pretty easy–most of us can cobble together a Madonna-esque outfit, and all you have to do it get a blonde wig.
Wear a hideous flowered dress and do your hair with big bangs and tie 16 baby dolls to yourself. And be pregnant, also.
Voila, Michelle Duggar!
But that may be too obscure. It really depends on the crowd; older, younger, web geeks, students? You need to pick something that crowd will recognize.
If you’re not going to do anything glam, then bloody/gory is always a good bet. Zombies, the Corpse Bride, etc.
Serious suggestion – a 70′s outfit is always easy to find and put together.
I like Hugo’s suggestion better, though. ;-)
A Halloween costume should reflect whatever the scariest thing is going on with you internally. I went a couple years back as the evil queen from Snow White, since I was at that point in my life where I was getting older and feeling bad about it.
The point is to work out your own internal demons, rather than playing into the fantasies of other people.
So, the simplest Halloween costume is to take your least-favorite outfit, whatever that is, and build around it in a way that completely destroys it. One year for me this was chopping up a hopelessly outdated jumpsuit (remember those things?) If you had a bad marriage and ugly divorce you could go as the corpse bride in the torn-up wedding dress, etc. It’s fun, gets out your agressions and gets rid of a nasty thing taking up space in your closet…
The other option, if you’re like me and have nothing left in your closet to trash, is to take your *favorite* outfit and “dress it up”, to become some uber-sexy creature. Then do something offbeat to set it off, like weird hair color or a fun wig or a strange hairstyle, or just some zombie makeup. Get creative!.
I dressed up as a block of tofu once for Halloween (painted a box white, cut holes in it for my arms, head, and body, and wrote “got tofu?” on the front so people would know what it was), but I’m not sure if that’s your thing…
How about:
1) An entire outfit in one color (white, red, black, whatever), with face and hands painted to match.
2) Cut a shirt and a pair of pants in half, pin them onto a whole set, paint half your face ugly, mousse half your hair into messy spikes and go as the Batman villain Two-Face.
3) Bet you look better in a short skirt than you think.
http://www.somethingawful.com/articles.php?a=3294
This should give you an endless parade of ideas…..
Anyways, Lauren, you shouldn’t feel any worse than I do for liking to look like a Batista-era Cuban. All politics aside, they knew how to party, and look good doing it.
I don’t know if this would work for you, but I once took an aqua turtleneck, stuck pictures of fish on it, added a couple of plastic water plants and went as an aquarium. That’s the best I can do right now; I’ve just talked my older son down from a beaver costume to a volcano.
Go as one of every conservative’s worst nightmare: Che Guevara or Fidel. Get some thrift store khakis/shirt (or army greens, if you can), a $.50 red bandana for your neck, a beret, a cheap cigar, draw on a beard, and check out a copy of either the communist manifesto or mao’s little red book and carry it around with you. Top it off with boots. Presto!
or get some of that colored masking tape (red) put it all over your suit and go as a bureaucrat. :)
Carmen Sandiago
Red trenchcoat, red hat, black pants, shirt, and gloves.
Voila!
Dress all in blue, and stick a bunch of panty liners to your clothing: Picasso’s Blue Period.
Not too sexy, but you could go as a bathroom stall. Wear a pair of grey sweats, put a fanny pack around your waist and attach a roll of toilet paper to it, and walk around with Sharpies so that people can write messages on you. Good way to get some phone numbers, too.
Wear a Hawaiian shirt, sunglasses, a straw hat and a skull mask and go as Death takes a Holiday.
past Halloween costumes:
- Crazy 88 from Kill Bill Vol I. White shirt, black pants, jacket – only items to buy where fake toy sword and black mask. My sister was Go-Go.
- anarchy cheerleader from Nirvana video. Costume w/pom poms sold at that teen mall store but can’t think of the name. Bought fake tatoos, fishnets, jewelry.
- space alien but that costume was widely misunderstood as “space hooker” probably b/c bought the silver pleather outfit at a stripper clothing store.
- lightning bug: black shirt w/silver bolt on it, black wings / feelers from drug store, put glow stick in plastic bubble wrap on butt.
- black widow spider: used children’s tights to make legs, attached then to black shirt that read “we could mate but i’d have to kill you” black pants, spiderwebs and black plastic spiders in hair.
- roach: brown outfit, feelers from wire cleaners, wings from netting / florist wire.
i love halloween. this year am wicked witch of west, sister is east.
also – a coworker did a “birds” costume which was regular clothes, a trench coat, used fake birds from craft store, messed up her hair and put a bird in it, attached birds to herself w/fake blood, scratches, torn stockings.
Judith Miller in an orange jumpsuit?
emjaybee, I knew I knew you from TwoP! I post there as mambotaxi.
One year, I went as the Toof Fairy — I got a cheap pair of fairy wings, a pink bouffant wig, a wand and some toothblack.
Another Bad Pun idea: get a slip at a thrift store, and, with a permanent marker, write on it: “Oedipal Complex,” “Id,” “Ego,” “Superego,” “Penis Envy,” and “Anal-Retentive.” Voila! You’re a Freudian Slip. (When I saw this done, the slip was worn over black pants and a black top, so it doesn’t have to be skimpy.)
Happy Halloween, whatever you choose!
Take a cardboard box, big enough to wear and cut holes for legs, arms, head. Draw a footprint on it. Dent the corners, make gashes in it. put USPS stamps all over it. Write fragile on it upside down. On the back, print the words “Damaged Goods”. May not get you many free drinks, but you’ll get a lot of laughs.
i was going to go as yassar arafat this year (using the headgear i picked up in syria last month). but now it looks like i won’t be able to make it to the halloween party this weekend. if you want to steal the idea, that’s fine with me.
My favorite all-time last-minute Halloween costumes:
1. Vampire victim. Long nightie, bloody “tooth marks” on neck with lipstick pencil. If you’re feeling ambitious, do pale makeup and carry a candleholder or candelabra.
2. Tie a noose in a long piece of rope, put it around your neck. Pin a note to your shirt that says, “I’m at the end of my rope.”
3. Traffic bump: wear neon-yellow sweat pants and top.
I am SOOOO going to print this list out! These ideas are fan-fucking-TASTIC!
(And I’m from Minnesota, where we don’t use that kind of language lightly. ;-) *wink!*
Seriously, what an awesome collection of ideas!
Cut five or six leaves out of colored construction paper, and hold them in your hands: you’re a tree!
Put a bandage over your ear: van Gogh.
No clue what your hair looks like, but I just got back from a Halloween party for which I dressed up as Princess Leia from Star Wars. Only thing that really worked was the hair–I wore a white sweatshirt over a bedsheet to make the dress, and bedsheets do not make good skirts, especially when you tie the top around your chest and keep your keys in your pants pocket underneath.
Thinking of going as an Egyptian priestess on Halloween itself. Wanted to be a Cardassian, but the makeup is too elaborate for me to arrange it on such short notice (not to mention the armor), same problems with being a Klingon. On the other hand, might obtain a white wig, paint myself purple and go as a dark elf. Not sure yet.
Here’s what my kids are doing:
Dressing up in classic Batman burglar attire, with a sack of stuffed-animal cats slung over the shoulder. But maybe that’s too juvenile.
Kyra: Bajorans and Trill are easy.
If you have or can get a pink suit, you can splash yourself with some blood and go as Jackie Kennedy right after the assassination.
Or get a steering wheel and a tiara and go as Princess Grace.
Yes, I know I’m sick.
I’m thinking of going as a professor. I have the tweed jacket (Harris tweed, even!); I’m thinking of getting some glasses and a pipe to go with it and carrying around my big book of Shakespeare’s works.
A good costume, as it’s something I’ll never be, it seems. :)
I’m thinking of a big cardboard spoon and a catchphrase.
My favorite lazy costume as a kid was to take a garbage bag, poke some holes in it, and go as a raisin. It was warm and dry for inclement weather trick-or-treating.