How to be a woman on Halloween

Hello and welcome to the best time of the year! Here are some spooky jokes to get you in the mood for All Hallows Eve! What do you call a group of witches who live together? Broommates! Why don’t ghosts like to go trick or treating in the rain? Because it dampens their spirits!

What do you call a girl at Halloween? A slut!

I mean, probably.

Navigating everyday life without drawing the ire of Cheeto-fingered mouth breathers on the internet is a minefield at the best of times, but at Halloween it can be even worse. A wise woman once said: “Halloween is the one night a year when a girl can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it”, and maybe that was true once, all the way back in 2004.

But now it’s 2017, the age of Twitter, where other girls (and other boys) can say whatever they want about every little thing you do, say and think.

There are rules here, you know. Here’s how to get it right according to the great misogynists of the information superhighway.

Don’t wear a costume that shows off your body, obviously

This one’s a given, really. If you wear a slutty costume you must be a slut. The sinister thing about it is how much this argument has become twisted and strange over the years — we’ve internalized it so much that it’s no longer necessary for guys to call us sluts for dressing in literally any Halloween costume that isn’t a sumo suit or a onesie, because plenty of girls do it for them. You might not hear anything outwardly misogynistic from a guy this Halloween about your “slutty” costume (he’ll probably just subtweet you later instead) but you’ll hear plenty of girls talking about how different they are because they choose not to dress sexily.

It’s not our fault, honestly, the struggle of internalised misogyny is real. But look, don’t be a ‘not like other girls girl’ this Halloween, or any other time of the year. It’s just not very festive.

Especially if you’re ~faaat~

Nobody wants to see that.

There are also more specific rules on costumes. For instance:

Don’t be a cat

The first time I dressed up as a cat, I was five and my mum, who was overworked and underpaid, drew whiskers on me and dressed me in a garbage bag and said I was a cat. For a long time I thought that was resourceful and innovative and that I looked cute. Now I see she was setting me up for a lifetime of hurt as a basic bitch. Thanks, mum.

Don’t be a Playboy bunny

According to the men of the internet, topical costumes are a Cardinal Sin. Remember how everyone lost their minds last year over Harley Quinn and Eleven costumes? There’s something about policing women’s referential nods to pop culture events of the past year while looking cute doing it that just irks men online. So look, even though you might look absolutely bangin’, put the bunny ears and basque away for another year. It’s just not worth provoking them.

Side note: if you do decide to dress like a Playboy bunny this year, more power to you, that’s your choice. Just, y’know, bear this in mind.

Don’t be hot sauce…?

Hot sauce is now slutty apparently. Don’t go to Taco Bell anymore if you don’t wanna be abused on the internet.

Don’t be Khaleesi

You might think that Game Of Thrones is a universally enjoyed show with varied strong female characters and interesting plots and that you can show your enjoyment of it on Halloween. But you are wrong. The strong female characters of Game of Thrones only matter to the men of the internet when their tits are out on screen long enough to be saved and furiously masturbated over later. And anyway you don’t look anything like Daenerys, dumb bitch.

Don’t be Mia Wallace

Only TRUE edgy kids who support Quentin Tarantino’s foot obsessed, sad-friend-of-Harvey-Weinstein’s movies are allowed to dress as Mia Wallace, one of his interchangeable two dimensional female characters. Come back at me when you’ve done one film studies class on My Best Friend’s Birthday (1987), OK sweetie?

Don’t be a Kardashian

Kardashians are the epitome of basic, duh.

Don’t be literally anything scary

You! Are! So! Weak!

Don’t wear make-up unless you’re sure that nobody else in a 250 mile radius is wearing similar make-up

Personally I know that I have my bronzer and eyebrow pencils created by blind nuns in a monastery somewhere in Nepal (even they’re not sure of the exact address) so that my mystic beauty secrets are safe with me and I will never, until the day I die, look anything like other girls, because other girls are disgusting and gross and The Enemy.

Don’t eat Halloween-themed food

This is where I draw the line. You can pull my Halloween themed treats and snacks from my cold dead fucking hands.

Don’t even? Enjoy? Halloween?

Don’t enjoy life. Don’t breathe, eat, drink, move or exist. Don’t enjoy anything. There. Now you are safe. For the time being.

Oh, and obviously, and this counts for the whole month, stay well away from pumpkin spice, you basic bitch.

@rosielanners