10 Halloween Costumes to Show Off Your Bisexuality

By Siobhan Ball

October 01, 2021

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Photo credit: Pexels/cottonbro

With Halloween right around the corner, now is the perfect opportunity to embrace your bi fabulousness and dress up as a famous bi figure, whether from history or fiction. Here are some suggestions to get you started!

Julie d'Aubigny

Julie D’Aubigny lying on a couch smiling with her fencing outfit and sword, looking in front of her.

With the current fad for Regency dress and “royalcore”, why not come dressed as everyone's favorite swashbuckling opera singer? Julie d'Aubigny fought and bedded her way across France, burning down a nunnery to rescue her girlfriend in the process, all before embarking on an operatic career — where she kept dueling disrespectful men who harassed her female colleagues. To nail that Julie look, invest in a poet shirt and a pair of very tight trousers, or, if you're feeling elaborate, a full-fledged 17th-century ball gown replica — but don't forget the bright colors and flashy gems to really pull off those opera diva vibes.

Percy and Mary Shelley (and Lord Byron)

For a fun couple's (or even throuple's) costumes, the three foremost bisexual disasters among the Romantics can never go amiss. Mary is the only one of the trio whose bisexuality is known through actual literary evidence. However, I dare anyone to read the letters and poetry Byron and Percy Shelley wrote to each other and tell me with a straight face that the two of them weren't at least something. For Percy and Byron, ruffled shirts with cravats or waistcoats if you're feeling fancy, while all Mary needs is a white Regency-style dress and a deeply sarcastic expression.

Lord Ruthven

Or you could skip the real people and go right to the character based on Lord Byron, and the origin of the "all vampires are bisexual" trope: Lord Ruthven. Created by his former friend, Dr. Polidori, Ruthven is a barely allegorical exposé on how Byron ruined lives with his penis (and how Polidori may have had some suppressed longings going on). Ruthven is also, like all the best vampires, an elegant, seductive monster.

Take the Byron costume and add a red satin waistcoat, some eyeliner, and plastic fangs. For a touch of the terrible humor, our people seem to be cursed with the habit of carrying about a wine glass of red liquid while making comments about how they don't drink wine. (I know, I know, that's Legosi's Dracula, but hush, the pun-adjacent nature of it works)

Other options here include Dracula and Jonathon Harker, who, while not canonically bi, have some real subtext going on.

Or really, any vampire will do. All vampires are bi after all.

James Dean

Image/Warner Bros. Pictures

The iconic Hollywood bad boy who described his sexuality as "No, I’m not homosexual. But I am also not going through life with one hand tied behind my back", Dean created a look that's been inspiring queer people for decades. Incredibly easy to pull off, especially for a certain sort of bi, all you need is a leather jacket, jeans, and a white t-shirt. Slick back your hair and you're ready to go!

Anne Bonny and Mary Read, or any Pirate!

As if pirates weren't already bi-culture enough on their own (check out the #birates on TikTok and the three-way marriages known as matelotage), we have bi pirate queen Anne Bonny and her girlfriend Mary Read. Prone to cross-dressing and occasionally passing in drag to get by, the two women marauded around the Caribbean with their surprisingly useless boyfriend Calico Jack, building a reputation for themselves as fierce and terrifying outlaws. The pair were featured, with a lot of creative license, in Black Sails (2014–2017).

You can't go wrong looking at Black Sails or Our Flag Means Death (2022–) for costume inspirations!

Image/HBO

Otherwise, pirate fashion is broad and wild, featuring everything from brightly colored scarves to corsets to leather trousers. So, rather similar to how some of us already dress when it's not Halloween then…

Eleanor Shellstrop

Eleanor and Michael sitting together on a couch. Eleanor has a plaid shirt and a very confused expression while Michael is confidently smiling
Image/NBC

Everyone's favorite bi slacker with a heart of gold, Eleanor went from being selfish enough for the Bad Place (in the hit comedy The Good Place) to utterly revolutionizing the entire afterlife and basically saving the universe (along with her gang of extremely attractive co-sinners). This one’s for the lazy bis. All you need is a plaid shirt, jeans, and a smirk. Maybe a sash that says "best person" or a martini glass full of plastic shrimp if you're feeling fancy. Eleanor, during her pre-Bad Place Arizona Dirtbag days, would support you. It's doing the least for the most, after all. Plus, if you've got a tall, hot, bi girlfriend you can always turn it into a couples costume by getting her to go as Tahani.

Any man from Greek mythology

The bi-normative nature of Ancient Greek masculinity opens up pretty much every male character in their mythology. We have some fine examples recorded in the index of bi characters here on Bi.org already. Why not try Zeus, king of the gods and all-around toxic frat boy? Or Achilles, pretty-boy warrior (and also kind of a toxic frat boy). Then there's Apollo, God of music, poetry, and medicine (less a toxic frat boy and more an immortal Nice Guy with godlike powers). Or Hercules, a violent demi-god who gets a much cuddlier wrap in pop culture than he deserves (one of his epithets was literally woman-hater).

Greek myths had a bit of a theme going on when it came to men, alright? We stan the bi-normativity but would really love to leave the toxicity and violence at the door. If you are going as one of them just wrap yourself in a bedsheet, add a leafy green wreath crown for one of the gods and a terrifying murder scowl if you're going as Achilles.

Dionysus (not necessarily a man)

If you're looking for a break from toxic frat boys wrapped in bed sheet togas (which is very meta, if you think about it) why not try Dionysus? The god of wine, drunkenness, and behaving badly under the influence, he leans into the hideously vengeful behavior, but on the other hand doesn't tend to pursue random women in animal form until they're too tired to refuse to have sex with him, so. He's also not subject to a strictly male interpretation, as many scholars believe the original divinity who became Dionysus was a trans feminine goddess, of which there are several examples in the ancient Near East. So Dionysus can be interpreted to be male, female, or neither.

A fake leopard-skin cloak with a high-glamor ancient Greek drag outfit is one of the ways the officially masculine Dionysus of recorded myth tended to dress. Or you can wrap a bed sheet loosely around your waist while you cart around one of those vintage Italian restaurant-style wine bottles. Both are great takes on the god of drunken chaos, hedonism, and tearing terrible men into literal bloody shreds.

Princess Bubblegum and Marceline

This adorable couple's costume features everyone's OTP from Adventure Time (2010–2018). Snag a lab coat and a tiara for the Bubblegum Princess, leader of the Candy Kingdom, plus a pink wig and dress combo (unless you're planning to go all out and dye your hair). For Marceline, all you need is a classic rock tee and jeans with two penciled in dots on your neck for the fang marks. If you're really going to commit as Marceline you might want to consider carrying a guitar around or painting an apple white (she drinks the red color out of things rather than blood).

Loki

Comic book image of Loki wearing his classic green outfit holding Thors hammer.
Image/Marvel

Oh, Loki. So many options. You could go with the actual mythological Loki — the trickster god who seduced giants and gave birth to an eight-legged horse. (He also had some interesting subtext going on with Odin, another god who, though never shown sleeping with men in the texts, is absolutely coded not just as bisexual, but vers, and in a socially stigmatized way.) All you need to pull off mythic Loki is some green-toned Ren Faire garb, which has the added bonus of being weather appropriate for those of us in the Northern hemisphere.

Then there's the Marvel Lokis, and with all the variants running around in the recent TV series, the possibilities are endless. Crocodile Loki, Lady Loki from the comics run, original classic comics Loki with the silly horned helmet, or any of the variants featured in the show. Hell, make up your own variant Loki, there's room for that! Be the Loki you wish to see in the world!

A happy and smiling couple in halloween costumes of devil and leopard with party accessories over grey background
Bigstock/dolgachov

That wraps up our list of great bi costumes for this season. Now go out there and show your bi pride this October!

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