Listen up, people, because a dark force is about to descend upon New York City this weekend, and that force is Santacon. For those of you who don’t know what Santacon is, it’s an event that takes place once a year where people dress up like slutty elves and puke on the streets—all in the name of Christmas! Normally, I’m in full support of any and all events that encourage you to black out before noon and dress up in costume, but Santacon takes this shit to a whole new and terrifying level. How do I explain this in simple terms? It’s like when God decides to test humanity, and we fail so miserably that She thinks about smiting us all and starting anew. Kind of like that, ya know? And if you think I’m exaggerating about this abomination disguised as a bar crawl, then just you fucking wait, because I’m about to break it down stage by stage for you, sort of like how Dante was kind enough to indicate the different circles of Hell. You’re so welcome.
STAGE 1: HOPEFUL ENTHUSIASM
This is the first—and most important—stage of the event. You’ve prepped for this stage by only having one drink last night saving your strength. You feel good, your liver feels good like the one you started college with. You have the costume, your day drink of choice, and the Insta filters that best compliment your slutty photogenic side. Everything is as it should be. Now, do you feel that hope? That absolute optimism? Hold onto this. Cherish these memories for when you’re hysterically crying because the dude in the shirt that says, “You can slide down my chimney,” didn’t want to feel you up in the Uber at the end of the night.
STAGE 2: IMMEDIATE OUTFIT REGRET
This stage occurs about two minutes after walking into the pregame. The outfit you thought made you look like a reason your grandmother prays for you sexy but cute now looks like you cobbled together pieces of fabric from the garbage, especially when you stand next to that Instagram model in line for the cups. And, on second thought, you probs shouldn’t have left your coat at home just so everyone could see the festive bra you bought just for today. What does hypothermia look like again?
STAGE 3: FUCK, I’M NOT DRUNK ENOUGH FOR THIS SHIT
Oh, you want to bar hop now? Even though I just opened a tab and we waited 45 minutes to get into this shithole of an establishment in 35 degree weather? K. These are the thoughts that will run through your mind after you and your squad descend upon the first bar supporting this godforsaken event. It’s at this point that you’ll start to question why you’re like this. After walking into the bar, your immediate reaction will be to back away slowly from the crowd of Santas aggressively singing Mariah Carey Christmas tunes and guzzling Bud Light. You can’t tell if the guys here are hot or not and if the gut he’s sporting is part of his costume or if he just has a dad bod. The bar, you’ll soon realize, is like something out of The Hunger Games. There are people swarming the bar the same way the Careers swarmed the cornucopia for weapons. You realize if you don’t start pounding vodka sodas soon, you might be the first cannon fired have to soberly interact with the man leering at you behind his Santa beard. May the odds be ever in your favor.
STAGE 4: DUCK I’M NOT FRUNK ENOUGH FOR THIS SHIT
Look, I’m not gonna lie; your only shot at coming out of this thing alive with your sanity intact is to black out as fast as humanly possible. Once you’ve reached this stage in the day, you’ve achieved your goal of getting blackout. Suddenly, everything you hated about the bar—the Mariah Carey Christmas music, the Bud Light spillage, the fact that you’re out in public dressed like Santa’s little hoe hoe hoe—is completely forgotten. You’ve made out with at least three Santas now—or maybe they were the same Santa? Idk. Honestly, it’s too hard to tell. You’re acting like this bar is your own personal thot playground, and you’re loving life. It doesn’t even matter that you accidentally flashed a nipple too much holiday cheer because THIS IS SO MUCH FUCKING FUN!!!
STAGE 5: THE BEGINNINGS OF A BLADDER INFECTION
Ah, my favorite stage. The one where if you don’t pee soon, you might end up with a small bladder infection. That’s when you realize leaving the bar and running back to Brooklyn to use your own bathroom at home might be the faster option. The line for the bathroom is longer than the one you waited in to get into this literal trap house, and it’s filled with angry bitches in Target onesies timing peoples’ pees. You wait through, like, 10 seconds of this before the desperation kicks in. You’re at the point where you’d trade your first born child rose gold iPhone for a spot at the front of the line because you don’t even care anymore; you just have to pee so bad, SO WOULD YOU PLEASE HURRY THE FUCK UP, PEOPLE.
STAGE 6: WHY AM I LIKE THIS
Honestly, it’s best not to question yourself. The fact that for the last six hours, you’ve been grinding on some dude, who could be dressed as Rudolph or could just be someone who favors the color brown, is neither here nor there. Don’t think about how you almost pissed your leggings TWICE or that you drunk texted your hookup to see if he wanted you to “guide his sleigh tonight.” Nah. Don’t do that to yourself. Not now and definitely not tomorrow when you sober up and realize you spent $40 on pizza last night… for just you. In fact, it’s probably best if you try to black out the entire incident at least until next year’s Santacon rolls around, and then you can find new and interesting ways to hate yourself.
Until next year, betches.
Ah, Halloween—innovative costumes, chilling haunted house-inspired decor, and that crisp, cool weather we look forward to all year. Haaaa, I fucking wish. Idk if it’s the incessant articles about fall that I force my 59 followers friends to read or the pure rage I develop when my attempt at a slutty Poison Ivy costume somehow always ends up looking like Shrek, but what we think of Halloween actually only exists in places like Pinterest or borderline demonic Disney films. And yeah, it might sound like I’ve become a bitter bitch, but that’s only because I’m actually a bitter bitch.
Anyway, I’m not here to throw all my problems on you—my therapist frowned upon that. There’s a lot that goes into Halloween that never actually happens, and that’s honestly way too much work for an attempt at record-breaking Instagram likes on a night you probably won’t remember anyway. Thankfully, I’m here to let you down easy and tell you what to really expect come your boyfriend’s sister’s grand big’s monster bash, and why I think Halloween is the most overrated holiday (sorry, Satan, but I’m going to hell anyway). But if you’re one of those idiots who lives and breathes Halloween because you hate yourself so much that you have to be someone else to feel good, you can go shave your back now drown in your own bowl of Mini-Twix.
Actual convo we’ll have if you disagree with me:
Fall Weather
EXPECTATION: You’re already planning your pumpkin patch-inspired Instagram complete with that fall sweater from Nordstrom’s annual sale (BACK IN FUCKING JULY) that you’ve been harboring for like, seven years now. Once September hits, you’re about to rip the tags off your new leather boots, so you can eagerly mask your post-summer bloat in the cutest cozy fall attire, because you know what they say: boyfriends come and go, but leggings are forever.
REALITY: Don’t even get me started. Actually, never mind—I’ve already been triggered. I despise our garbage president for many reasons, but mostly because he’s apparently unaware of this thing called Global Warming that’s causing me to freeze my ass off, and then sweat my dick off all in the short amount of time it takes me to get to the bar after work on a Friday. Nothing tastes as good as baggy clothes make us feel, but no amount of likes on a fall OOTD pic is worth the buckets of boob sweat generated by this incessant heat stroke.
Halloween Decorations
EXPECTATION: This will be the year you finally give in and line your mantle with those annoying sticky webs that literally cling to everything you own. You’re so ready to go full Grandma Cromwell and deck the halls with boughs of horror—oh, and HELLO, stupidly over-priced adorbs accent pillows!
REALITY: You know when you take your headphones out of your bag after just putting them in 30 seconds ago and they’re in just as big of a clusterfuck as your life is? After going through the entire bag of web, congrats—you’ve successfully covered about three square feet of wall space in what looks like a heap of unrolled cotton balls. Stick a skull head on your table, and leave the decorating to your parents from now on.
Pumpkin Carving
EXPECTATION: Getting my friends together to do dumb activities no one cares about, like carving pumpkins, as an excuse to get shitfaced on a Wednesday is the one LinkedIn skill I pride myself in being endorsed on. The excitement of chugging pumpkin beer and watching throwbacks like Mom’s Got a Date With a Vampire while competing to see who can carve the best pumpkin without anyone asking “Wait, what is that?” is thrilling.
REALITY: Don’t get me wrong: pumpkin carving is the best—besides the part where you actually have to carve the pumpkin. It’s like painting a room: the movies make it look like it’s as exhilarating as sending a hoe-ish text at 2am, but in reality, it’s so much more than that. Three minutes into regretting trying to carve a Cheshire Cat, you’ll make the slightest wrong cut, only to knock a whole row of teeth out and fuck up the entire thing. Not only will you be stuck cleaning pumpkin goo off the table, but your jack-o-lantern will probably look like it just went on a 3-month alcohol bender and woke up with a half-opened eye and four teeth missing. Whatever, that’s why the devil invented alcohol.
Buying Candy
EXPECTATION: You hit up the Halloween aisle for the best and most frowned-upon candy and in the process, you even selflessly think to bag some up for your besties!
Side note: when tf did tiny bags of candy become so expensive? Tbh, my friends aren’t that great.
REALITY: It apparently didn’t occur to you that you either live on the 27th floor of a city complex or a tiny dorm room, and that the only children you’ll probably see all day are the ones dressed in fugly ‘90s getup in the Dannon Yogurt commercial. You’ve gotta get rid of the candy somehow, so you decide to take one for the team and experiment with the Wonka Nerds and craft your own witches brew of flavored hangover vodka, but like, it could be worse… Also, you’re welcome for that million-dollar idea.
Making Your Costume
EXPECTATION: The absolute best part of Halloween is crafting up the most original, not-too-slutty-but-pretty-fucking-slutty costume. For once, you got ahead of the game and began the planning process even before October came around. And to top it all off, you found the perfect YouTube makeup tutorial you’re about to watch like, 12 times in order to get the perfect sexy zombie bride face. No really, this is about to be some next-level shit.
REALITY: Spoiler alert: It’s October 30th. You’ve achieved nothing but an overloaded Amazon shopping cart filled with items that are 100% guaranteed to overdraft your checking account. Your party is tomorrow night, so you should probably just try Sears. Lol JK, I’m your friend, remember? You knew this would happen again, so you should really just order the best effing costume you’ve ever worn from our Betches store (yeah it’s a plug, fucking prosecute me) to save yourself time, money, and a year’s worth of embarrassment when you think about showing up in last year’s bumble bee leotard.
The Halloween Party
EXPECTATION: The night has finally arrived. You and your friends are planning on getting inappropriately drunk before arriving to the party—for precautionary purposes, of course. You’ll be sipping on whatever the fuck is in that witches brew concoction, while yelling “OMG that’s so good!” to your friend’s unoriginal Khaleesi/possibly-also-Elsa-from-Frozen getup. You managed to get that one Instagram you’re about to fully dissect and edit when you’re alone later on, so yeah, life is good.
REALITY: You show up only to lay eyes half the party wearing your typical run-of-the-mill fuckboy Halloween staple: A white tee with some sort of dumb fucking saying like “Error 404: Costume Not Found” sharpied on it. Nobody told you that a “horror” theme was actually because of your ears bleeding from hearing “Monster Mash” play on repeat 87 times. Oh, and that witches brew? I’d steer clear unless you’re into the kind of thing that is chugging the leftover middle cup ingredients from King’s Cup. But it’s ok because if all else fails, there’s always some Freeform marathon to binge while also bingeing Snickers and tequila.
Happy haunting, witches.
Listen up, heathens. Whether or not you even know what the real meaning of Memorial Day is, you and I both know you drank enough alcohol this weekend to put Lady Liberty under the table. But now the memorializing/excuse for drinking is over and it’s time to drag your bloated, hungover body into work like an adult with bills to pay and a mouth to feed.
Unfortunately, you probably feel like you have absolutely destroyed all the work you put into achieving the summer body you were able to display this weekend. Fortunately, you have a few weeks to prepare for the next big binge drinking excuse of the summer, 4th of July. But in the meantime, the next day or two are not going to be easy.
So what’s a betch to do? Follow advice she found on the internet, obviously. Here are 7 ways to detox after all the burgers you ate and shots you took this weekend.
1. Drink A Fuckton Of Water
Research shows that hangovers are caused at least in part by dehydration. While the very thought of chugging anything may make you want to vom right now, start sipping on some water ASAP.
2. Replace Your Electrolytes
Again, you’re probably super dehydrated right now, which means you need to replenish all the body salts you lost while participating in the great American tradition of getting blackout. Sports drinks and salty soups like miso soup are good sources of electrolytes, plus they make you look like you just did something athletic.
3. Eat A Banana
Apparently potassium is good for counterbalancing sodium, so it can reduce all that water making you swell to three times your size. If you don’t like bananas for whatever reason (I get it; you can’t transport them anywhere without them turning to mush, you can’t eat them in public for fear that some perv will get the wrong idea), snack on other potassium-rich foods like sweet potatoes, yogurt, clams, etc.
4. Go For A Walk
Studies have shown that going for a walk after eating helps lower your blood sugar and get your digestive system moving faster. I’m assuming you’ve already digested all the beer from yesterday, but go for a walk just in case—your body can use all the help it can get. It also puts you in a better mood, so you might manage to make it through the day without stabbing someone in the eye with a ballpoint pen.
5. Make Asparagus Tonight
Asparagus is also known to help your hangover go away faster by up-regulating cell metabolisms. In other words, it helps you metabolize alcohol faster. Who knew?
6. Go For A Starbucks Run
Caffeine has been shown to reduce headaches caused by hangovers, so indulge in your Starbucks addiction today, assuming you haven’t already. Just make sure to go back to #1 and drink water afterward, because caffeine causes dehydration.
7. Skip The Seltzer
Carbonated drinks have bubbles in them. Bubbles contain air. Gas and bloating are caused by air in your digestive system. You do the math—stay far, far away from carbonated stuff today, unless you want to continue looking and feeling like the angry marshmallow man from Ghostbusters.
