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Party on down with a skeleton dress-up game

Ever had one of those nights where—no matter what you do, how you accessorize, in sweats or dressed to the nines, after a good day or a bad one—you still feel like nothing but a skeleton with skin crudely stretched over your bones? To make matters worse, this is the sort of night you can’t avoid; giving up on your plans is unthinkable (it’s your final college hurrah, your friend’s engagement party, your own birthday), even as you struggle to make yourself feel and look like a real person. Those nights you are reduced to a shambling sham of a human being, unable to pass…

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The transgressive politics of a monster dress-up game

You know who I’ve always admired? Divine. She was only a stage persona, a high-camp drag queen and music act, but one that challenged notions of beauty and decency while entertaining the hell out of you. I first came across Divine in John Waters’s cult classic midnight movie Pink Flamingos (you may know her from Hairspray). In it, she is called “the filthiest person alive” by the newspapers, and it’s a title that she desperately tries to uphold with her “filth politics.” In the film, she’s considered to be a monster, or at least a criminal, but you can’t help but be…

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Relive the horrible experience of getting ready in the morning as a teen

“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.” – E. E. Cummings Looking in the mirror can feel like an assault as a teenager. Your reflection—something that used to be dependable—only brings new horrors with each morning. Some days, it’s an eruption of pustules. Others, its straggly, non-cooperative hair. Most times, your face is running on a couple hours sleep. You might as well be classified a zombie, who must somehow make all this rotting, festering flesh look presentable to the outside world. Because right at the moment that your body is betraying you and changing…