photo credit: Sakara Ross
Dark clouds litter the sky, as the streets are filled with tiny children zooming around, knocking down every door they encounter. Candy wrappers are laid haphazardly down onto the pavements as kids gobble up candy faster than anyone can blink. While this may seem like a parent’s worst nightmare, it’s actually something very beloved by many. It’s of course Halloween night.
On Halloween, kids, adults and people of all ages come out dressed in all sorts of unique costumes. Some are original, some are overdone and then there are also the ones that feel just a tad disrespectful. Specifically, costumes originating in cultural backgrounds.
A little kid dressing up as Mulan or Moana is not at all the issue. Those types of costumes aren’t inherently harmful or disrespectful since the underlying motives are just a kid wanting to dress up as their favorite princess.
However, problems arise when a person is purposely changing their face or making themselves look darker for a costume, and an example would be Princess Jasmine. It would be absolutely fine to dress up as her if someone is just dressing up as a character. But it’s another story when a person tries to make themselves darker or look like Jasmine when they aren’t Middle Eastern or South Asian.
A phrase for this would be cultural appropriation. Cultural appropriation is taking a part of a culture that is not your own and using it for yourself, according to Greenheart International. In costumes it tends to show up in stereotypes related towards an ethnicity.
Native Americans are an easy example when it comes to cultural appropriation, specifically in a Halloween costume. From at least what I remember, in the 2000s or 2010s a lot of people, including celebrities, felt like it was okay to go out and even post in it.
Hillary Duff, one of my favorite Disney actresses, dressed up as a pilgrim while her boyfriend was a Native American. He had face paint on, in what I assume is a way to try and mimic actually native traditions and a large headpiece adorned with feathers. This was in 2016, almost eight years ago, when this happened.
Other cultures people love to mock on Halloween range from Latin countries to countries in Asia. An example of an out of touch costume would be dressing up as a person of Mexican descent and wearing a sombrero and a fake mustache. Seemingly funny and innocent costumes like this, only reinforce hurtful stereotypes.
They also include some severe undertones of racism and just plain ignorance. It’s absolutely astonishing to me that people dress up like this for Halloween and then post a video of them in said costume for the whole world to see. It’s also insane that some people were posting videos like this last Halloween.
Halloween is a great holiday, amazing even. Who doesn’t love it? It’s spooky, cool and I get a buttload of candy.
What isn’t so great is the fact there are millions upon millions of costumes to choose from, like a black cat which is a classic, or some niche one no one gets the reference to. And yet there are a few select special people who still think it’s hilarious to be something insulting or haven’t realized how harmful it can be. So, for this Halloween, everyone should take a note to be more mindful of their costume choices and to obviously have a good time.
