All the Memes About Hyperspecific Queer Halloween Costumes Couldn’t Be More Accurate

I’m pleased to announce that the LGBTQ+ community has made Halloween season even better for the umpteenth time, most recently thanks to a viral trend in which queers are sharing their hilariously niche costumes.

The formula is simple: Social media users begin their post by writing some variation of, “I hate going to gay Halloween parties ‘cause what do you mean you’re [insert ingeniously obscure, highly (gay) specific costume here].”

Naturally, the opportunities for ridiculously creative Halloween looks were endless. Lady Gaga’s NURTEC ODT migraine medication commercial! Jennifer Lawrence on Hot Ones! The “Last Gasp” challenge from Survivor! If it’s incomprehensible to anyone who’s not a very-online, very pop culture-oriented queer person, you’re golden.

For all the tongue-in-cheek jokes about hating gay Halloween parties, we as a community are inextricable from the spookiest time of the year. As Oliver Haug recently wrote for Them, there’s a long tradition linking queer communities to Halloween. Before courts across the United States ended the criminalization of crossdressing in the mid-1980s, All Hallow’s Eve acted as a safe time for queer people and other marginalized groups to publicly dress in non-gender-conforming ways that were prohibited at the time. And as historian Marc Stein told Them, descriptions of Halloween as “gay Christmas” date all the way back to the mid-20th century.

We at Them are noted proponents of extremely specific Halloween costumes, recommending that our readers dress up as everything from viral gay TikToker Kevin Leonardo to gay fruit flies to Elemental’s nonbinary water in our 2023 Halloween costume guide. So the next time you feel the urge to dress up as one of the gay internet’s obscure obsessions, do it! After a frankly hellish year for the LGBTQ+ community, it’s what we deserve.

Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated the era the phrase “gay Christmas” can be traced back to. This version has been updated.

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