With everyone’s favorite holiday rolling around, especially here in Madison (hello Freakfest), it’s time to starting picking out costumes. From seductive cat ears to giant coordinated crayons to your favorite Game of Thrones character, you can’t really go wrong with picking your outfit for the night — well, almost.
Some people use what’s popular in modern media, politics and pop culture to create their costumes, and sometimes people go from being funny and quirky to downright offensive. People have been thrown into the social media spotlight for doing blackface or wearing headdresses and doing powwows, but it’s all in good fun, right?
Wrong. Dressing up as other cultures and ethnicities may seem harmless, especially when you’re not a part of the culture you’re imitating, but it’s demeaning and stereotyping other cultures. For most people, that’s definitely not the intention, and people who appropriate other cultures on Halloween aren’t usually trying to come off as racist or bigoted, but that’s the effect it has on others.
The point of Halloween is to have a day where you can forget about your responsibilities, put on a silly costume and have fun, but your fun shouldn’t have to come at the expense of other people. It’s difficult to know when you’re being culturally insensitive because we (white people especially) aren’t usually taught to be mindful of cultures outside of our own, at least to a certain extent. If a problem such as stereotyping doesn’t directly and negatively affect you, chances are, you won’t even think about it. That’s not to say that cultural appropriation and insensitivity are anyone’s fault; people just have never been conditioned to think about how their actions affect those in other social classes and races.
For people who don’t take offense at costumes that perpetuate stereotypes (usually people who have never had to experience stereotyping), it can be difficult to even decide what’s considered cultural appropriation and what might be demeaning. If a costume is racially or culturally based and/or includes anything that might be part of a cultural stereotype (such as a sombrero), it’s probably racist. Also, if you don’t belong to that community but choose to dress/act like them, it’s also cultural appropriation. That’s why, for example, wearing a geisha outfit isn’t a good idea if you aren’t Japanese. One of the easiest ways to decide if a costume is inappropriate is to put it to a (mental) test: Imagine you’re with a group of people who are part of the culture that you’re imitating; if you can’t wear the costume around them, then it’s probably not a good idea to wear anywhere else.
With each year, more and more costumes are available for people to choose for Halloween. Dressing up as an emoji, a Star Wars character or your favorite Olympian can make your costume the highlight of any Halloween party, and none of them insult other cultures. Someone’s culture can be an extremely important part of their identity, and mocking it will not only make them feel bad about themselves and their cultural identity, but it will also make other people think that wearing similarly inappropriate costumes is okay, too. Keep in mind that a culture is not a costume, a joke, a sexual fetish, or in any way yours to take and appropriate. Stick with a costume that can get laughs without being offensive, and if you can’t manage that, you should probably just stay home.