Halloween: Your True Self!

It's been told to me that on Halloween, your true self comes out when you can pretend to dress up as "someone else." I don't think this is true, but what if it is? What if Halloween World is the real world, and the other days of the year, we self-seclude in our mutually acceptable clothing?

Okay, so it's probably not true. Even the most empathetic man in the world doesn't actually want to BE a pregnant man. Who would? Insane levels of hormones course through your body as it packs on fat and vascular tissue to support growing a tiny baby that will say things like "Shut up, mom" in 15 years.

See? There's no possible way someone would intentionally want to be a muscled, golden-locked athletic woman. Look at her cheering, doing the best she can despite her fetus draining her lifeblood and dropping her gut out of her shirt like she's on a reality show about buying trash from a dump.

Haha! Who would want to be an extremely beautiful, voluptuous lady, clad in red strip-string, dancing the night away, with your regular legs hanging from your massive, sagging hips? That wouldn't be fun at all. Best to sneer so no one accidentally thinks I would want to do this on Halloween, or in March, or next month, or on my birthday.

No, no, this is definitely not what I want to do, running on the beach in slow motion as the fat version of the beautiful red Baywatch bathing suit catches your eye.

Fine. A costume that's literally "a fat woman." Maybe people just want to be obese and/or pregnant for Halloween. Is that so wrong? Yes, it's wrong. Is it worse than dressing like a Native American? I'm not qualified to answer that. How about blackface? Let's move on.

If your store runs out of pregnancy-themed costumes, or fat-woman costumes, you can always dress up as Fat Slender Man, who some people believe originated right here on Something Awful. Regular Slender Man, that is. Fat Slender Man came from another forum, far away, where posters enticed each other to eat bacon and fatty fiery jerky, and, far from doctors' care, posted pics of their meat hauls in a Neato Keto Megathread.

But none of these fat outfits, or even last year's sexy outfits, are anywhere near as offensive or inappropriate as this next costume. It should be illegal, and by the spirit of the holiday, it is, and yet, do you have true freedom if you cannot do what your soul believes to be most wrong? I present to you: The Santa Halloween costume.

Drew Fairweather is the author of three daily sites: The Worst Things for Sale, Toothpaste for Dinner, and Married to the Sea.

– Drew Fairweather (@drewtoothpaste)