How to ruin Thanksgiving, as told by a savage.
During the holiday season, you’re bound to get flooded with heaps upon heaps of content targeted your way, instructing you to be a “grateful” and “good” girl on Thanksgiving. You’ll be told what you should wear if you’re meeting “bae’s” family for the first time (Ballet flats! No red nail-polish!), you’ll be told what to eat (Cauliflower turkey is a great alternative to real turkey!), you’ll be told how to drink (Remember to have eight ounces of water between each cocktail!), and you’ll be told how to feel (Lucky!).
But what if you don’t want to be a good girl this Thanksgiving? What if you’re pissed off this thanksgiving? Pissed off at your condescending cousin Suzie who always reminds you that your biological clock is ticking? Pissed off at your Auntie Morgan because she always makes a bitchy comment about your weight? (Pro Tip: If someone comments on your weight, eat them!). Pissed that we’re celebrating a holiday with a dark and twisted history? Pissed at your girlfriend for going to her family’s Thanksgiving in Oklahoma over your family’s in Queens? Pissed at your homophobic uncle? Pissed that you lost your sixteenth cellphone this year during one of mercury’s vicious, seemingly-never-ending retrogrades?
Pissed at yourself for not chasing after your dreams like you promised yourself you would last January 1st, but you didn’t because you’re afraid of failure and now feel deeply ashamed that once again, you let the fear of failure get in the way of you living the life that you deserve to live, and the year is almost over and once again you didn’t accomplish your goals and now you just hate yourself?!
Girl, I get it.
And I, personally, would rather gag on one million spoons than read another faux-positive Thanksgiving article written by a secretly miserable blogger. You’re not alone. And let me give you an ice-cold welcome to the dark side, honey.
I’m not going to bestow you with diet tips and fashion tips. I’m going to teach you how to be a raging bitch at Thanksgiving dinner. How to alienate your family! How to be the most detested dyke in your hometown. How to ruin the whole song and dance for everyone because you’re nasty savage!
Here’s my ~expert~ guide.
1. Dress inappropriately.
The easiest way to make everyone uncomfortable is to dress inappropriately. Thanksgiving is quite a conservative, prim little holiday. Women don sweater dresses and opaque black tights and pearl earrings. Men wear button-downs topped off with those fratty-looking Patagonia vests. It’s all very basic-bitch fall. Everyone looks like they’re dressed for the f*cking pumpkin patch (gag!).
If you really want to be properly hated, you need to dress radically. You can either make it awkward by dressing super slutty (this is my specialty) OR by donning a political shirt. If you’re super badass like my friend Dayna Troisi, you can do both.
Extra bitchy points if you insist on standing front and center of every photograph in your wildly inappropriate attire.
2. Arrive late with no champagne or wine, but an obvious buzz.
A good girl brings a nice bottle of wine or some homemade cookies to Thanksgiving dinner. What does a bad girl bring? Nothing.
She arrives empty-handed, at least thirty-two minutes late (which you are never to acknowledge let alone apologize for) with what appears to be a healthy buzz. You don’t want to veer into the “drunk” territory because then everyone will feel better about their dismal lives after seeing your trainwreck, so be careful and only appear to have had one leisurely glass of champagne at some posh hotel where you got held up “chatting” while everyone else slaved away in the kitchen!
3. Blame everything on your mental illness.
You know what nice, normal people don’t know what to do with? Mental illness, babe. Nothing will make a normie squirm like incessantly bringing up the topic of mental illness — not mental health, illness. Which is why you’re to bring it up constantly, of course, darling! Whether you have it in real life or you don’t is completely irrelevant. Just act out the part.
So you accidentally spilled some wine onto the carpet? Simply gasp: “I’m so sorry, it’s my mental illness.”
So you swore in front of the precious children? Grin with wide blinkless eyes like a sociopath and sing-song “It’s my mental illness, sorry!”
So you dented Grandpa’s car? Scream “IT’S MY MENTAL ILLNESS” with everything inside of you.
If someone dares to challenge you, accuse them of stigmatizing your disease, deem them damaging, and storm out the door. Go home and write a long, jargon-filled Facebook status about how “violent” your family is and TAG EM’ ALL. WAHOO!
4. Bring up a long-resolved feud with your sibling.
Did your brother call you fat when you were a kid, which subsequently gave you an eating disorder in high school, which you finally confronted him about and resolved with him five years ago on a therapist’s couch? Me too!
So let’s f*ck up Thanksgiving for everyone in our hemisphere by bringing it up, at the dinner table, right as dessert is being served. Cry, weep, lecture, and get dramatic! Tap into your inner theatre bitch and lay on the bravado thick. Extra points if you get your parents involved and blame them for everything!
5. Adopt a random English accent, and then gaslight everyone when they notice it.
Do you know what’s so impossibly annoying it makes the masses want to rip the wallpaper off and choke themselves with it? Speaking with a bad, fake English accent. As a former Londoner, allow me to inform you that there a gazillion American girls living in London right now, putting on a fake English accent that’s so off-putting it makes everyone, regardless of where they’re from, feel filled with a deep, impenetrable rage. Which means you must speak in an English accent the entire night at Thanksgiving!
When you’re family asks “what the hell is wrong with you” and “why the hell are you speaking like that”…gaslight them, little sister. Tell them “you have no idea what they’re talking about.” And primly smile and “pardon” yourself to the “loo.”
What Do You Think?