Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. It has historically been a day where we can embrace our macabre side, engage with the supernatural, and celebrate the autumn season. It’s also fun to see the creative ways people dress up for Halloween, whether these costumes are humorous, spooky, or pay homage to celebrities and fictional characters. However, some people ruin the fun by offending real human beings with their costumes. Here is a little guideline on costumes to avoid so everyone has a fun Halloween.
Cultures are not costumes. It’s 2018, and yet costumes depicting sacred cultural traditions still exist in the mass market. Bindis, Native American headdresses, and Día de Muertos sugar skulls are all treasured in their respective cultures. When someone who doesn’t even understand the implication of these traditions wears them for one night to go out partying, it is understandable why those who belong to these cultures could feel frustrated. Many people who express their cultural practices in America are ostracized and ridiculed, and it often takes courage for people to express their heritage or religious practices. If you want to pay tribute to a culture you admire, Halloween is not the time to do it.
It is especially cruel to wear costumes that play on racial or ethnic stereotypes in order to get a laugh. Costumes including blackface, prisoners, or terrorist costumes demean serious human rights issues and play off of racist stereotypes. If you don’t find racism, mass incarceration, or terrorism funny in your everyday life, then it isn’t going to be funny on Halloween.
Think twice about the “sexy” costume. Next time you’re looking for Halloween costumes, take a look at the difference between costumes offered to men and women. Women’s costumes often show more skin and include many uniforms of female-dominated professions. Women in these fields are already unfairly sexualized enough, it becomes tiring to see the stereotype physically in revealing costumes around Halloween. Hypersexualization also occurs around women of color (think of the amount of “Sexy Native American” or “Sexy Geisha” costumes you have most likely seen). These are insensitive and demean real-life issues that marginalized groups, especially women, face. Go ahead, flaunt what you got and be a sexy ghoul, but think twice about why so many sexy costumes are focused on harmful stereotypes and what that means for women.
“Insane” people are not costumes either. Costumes including straight jackets and “mental patient” costumes perpetuate damaging stigmas about people with mental illness. These costumes typically depict mentally ill individuals as aggressive and scary. While mental illness can be scary, it is usually scariest for those who deal with these illnesses every day. People with mental illnesses are more likely to harm themselves than other people, and people committed to mental asylums faced terrifying living conditions and horrific treatment. Dressing up in these costumes on Halloween humiliates people who have endured mental illness, which can even prevent people from accessing help.
This still leaves plenty of costume ideas open for Halloween. Be a superhero, a Disney character, even a meme, or go for the classic spooky look. But keep in mind that a costume made to get a cheap laugh probably won’t be funny to a lot of people.