Your 2016 Sexy Costume Options

You can do better, fellow intellectuals. Read on.

It’s Halloween. If you’re the personable type, odds are you have been invited to a costumed event. You may already have plans, but does your costume show off your smarts while living up to the time-honored tradition of unnecessary sexualization? We didn’t think so.

Here are three suggestions to replace your subpar costume with something that's both culturally-edifying and sexually-objectifying. You’re welcome.

Sexy Ursula K. LeGuin
Ursula K. LeGuin is an American science-fiction and fantasy writer who greatly influenced both genres with books like The Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed, The Lathe of Heaven, and an entire series of Earthsea novels and short stories. Her writing brilliantly depicts alternate worlds, each with their own masterfully-constructed gender and sexual politics, economies, environments, religions, and ethnographies.

To dress up as Sexy Ursula K. LeGuin you need to:

  • dye your hair gray;
  • wear casual clothes;
  • write influential fiction and literary essays;
  • have terrible luck at Earthsea adaptations. (Dominik)

Sexy Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault was a French philosopher, social theorist, and overall badass intellectual who wrote extensively on power, knowledge, and knowledge-power.

To dress up as Sexy Michel Foucault (who is the same as regular Foucault), follow these simple steps:

  • shave your head; 
  • put on a pair of thin-framed glasses, a white turtleneck shirt, and a suit;
  • memorize at least five of Foucault’s most abstract, intellectual, and perspective-shifting quotes; 
  • practice his gestures. Especially the balls-grabbing one

The last two steps are most essential. Think of this less as a costume, and more as a character study in how to turn yourself into a sexy subject. (Tova)

Hunky Marshall McLuhan
Herbert Marshall McLuhan was a Canadian public intellectual who defied disciplinary parochialism to expound a complex hermeneutic of media influence.

To go out as Hunky Marshall McLuhan, simply do the following:
  • grow a mustache;
  • comb your hair back with pomade, but not all of your hair. Leave room for some chaos;
  • don a woolen suit, white shirt and striped tie. For sexier results, cut off your sleeves to show off those thuggish guns of yours;
  • speak in dense aphorisms. For instance, you might say that "we shape our tools, and then our tools shape us"—or you might not. The important thing is to be misinterpreted for decades. If someone calls you a “technological determinist,” you’re in the right ballpark;
  • team up with your friends and go out as the Toronto School: have them dress up as Handsome Harold Innis, or Foppish Northrop Frye. (Etienne)

Dominik Zine is a nerdy lad from northeastern Poland and is generally found in a comfy chair with a book in hand.

Tova Crossler Ernström is a bisexual Swede, feminist, socialist, INFJ, Hufflepuff, HSP and Taurus. She is fond of personality tests, labels and lists.

Etienne Domingue is not currently on fire. Ask again later.