Nude Halloween Parade

October 2019 is over halfway gone. Halloween is fast approaching, and Steve White (@AfroMandinka on Twitter) recently posed a great question: What are the great naked Halloween costume ideas? He mentioned a few in his tweet, and got a few responses. Many of them are well-known characters from literature and art. But the essential challenge of these “costumes” is, how do you stay naked while showing which character you are? Or, at least, keep uncovered those parts of the body that are most associated with being naked (genitals, buttocks, breasts), while giving some clue as to the identity of your “costume”?

For example, a woman and man going as Adam and Eve can wear fig leaves (or bottoms for both, and a top for Eve, with fake fig leaves), of course, but what if they want to go completely nude? They could, perhaps, hang a few fig leaves around their necks, or in their hair, or paint one each on a thigh. Adam could carry an apple, and Eve could wear a “snake” over her shoulders. There are plenty of ways of conveying who they are “dressed as” (lol) while still going naked.

Body painting is always an option… with body painting, there’s a lot you can do to give the illusion of clothes while actually nude. There are many photos out there of folks “dressed” as superheroes, for example, but who are actually wearing only very well designed and applied body paint. The examples I present below might use body paint from time to time, but not to give the appearance of clothing.

What follows are some nude “costume” possibilities, listed as if narrating the characters in a costume parade. Guess who they might be! You might find out about some interesting characters (answers below).

1. Leading the parade is a woman wearing a wig of long red tresses, and she’s “riding” or hopping along on one of those toys that is a plush horse’s head on the end of a stick.
2. Next comes a strapping young man wearing a fake animal skin over his shoulders. He makes a curious, unique call from time to time.
3. He’s followed by another young man with a painted tattoo on his chest: it’s the head of a wolf. The young man howls from time to time.
4. Here comes a young woman with shells in her hair, a shell necklace, and fish scales painted all over her body from the waist down.
5. She’s followed by a man wearing a crown and holding a scepter, marching proudly but with an embarrassed look on his face.
6. Now comes a young woman with long blond hair, carrying a bow and arrows. She has an amulet and a few painted tattoos of motifs from Native American cultures.
7. Next comes a young woman wearing a peculiar red face mask with white-outlined eye openings and rabbit-ear type extensions that hang down behind. She also wears a long, thin red scarf or sash hanging from her neck, half over her front and half over her back, and matching red gloves and boots.
8. There follows a beautiful woman of Nordic appearance, with long hair and wearing a crown of sprigs, berries and flowers.
9. She is followed by two men, each painted completely a single color. The first is painted all blue. He is bald, and has a circular target-like black spot over the third-eye area of his forehead.
10. The second man is painted all gold except his straight dark hair. He wears a golden crown and a gold amulet around his neck.
11. Next come a man and woman together. He wears an elaborate breastplate over his sternum, strapped over his shoulders, and carries a sword. She wears a golden tiara, a golden amulet, dangling gold earrings, thick gold bracelets, and flashy gold sandals.
12. The parade ends with a woman who has close-cropped hair and carries a sheet with some clothespins draped over her arm.

Did you guess these characters? Who else would you add to the parade?

Answers: 1. Lady Godiva (British legend). 2. Tarzan (from Tarzan of the Apes and other novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs) 3. Mowgli (from The Jungle Book and other texts by Rudyard Kipling). 4. The Little Mermaid (from the tale by Hans Christian Andersen). 5. The Emperor in his New Clothes (also from a tale by Hans Christian Andersen). 6. Sheila, the protagonist of Paul’s Naked Crow series. 7. Kekko Kamen (Japanese manga series). 8. Freya, the Norse goddess of love, appearing in Robert’s novel A Small Company of Pilgrims. 9. Dr. Manhattan (DC Comics). 10. El Dorado (South American legend – and also the character Pilli/Sun Prince in my novel Aglow). 11. John Carter and Dejah Thoris (from A Princess of Mars and other novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs). 12. Remedios the Beauty (from One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez).