My Culture is NOT a Costume
Halloween is an exciting time for people of all ages to dress up as a superhero or their favourite movie or television character. However, with all of the many costumes available in Halloween stores, people still choose to dress up as a certain ‘culture.’ This is referred to as cultural appropriation-to remove all original context or meaning, in order to make oneself seem “edgy”, or to allow or encourage monetary profit. This may occur in a variety of forms, but around Halloween, it involves wearing costumes that focus on cultural stereotypes.
I recently viewed a video by Teen Vogue about how cultural appropriation during Halloween affects people from different ethnicities. They were explaining that the costumes were disrespectful and were inaccurate depictions of traditional outfits people wear. Hopefully, most people do not pick costumes with the intention of being racist. But regardless, appropriative costumes encourage cultural stereotypes and are extremely offensive. In the many years I have dressed up for Halloween, I have never worn a cultural costume because I didn’t want to offend anyone. I have always viewed Halloween as a fun holiday, and wearing a racist costume was never part of it. It is completely unnecessary to wear offensive costumes when there are tons of other options to pick from.
During Halloween, I have seen people in elementary wearing inappropriate costumes. It was often kids from younger grades who had no intention of offending anyone. However, regardless of one’s age, I don’t think anyone should be allowed to wear costumes that poorly represent a culture. In fact, teachers should begin to educate children at a young age to prevent cultural appropriation from continuing. But in order to solve this issue, effort needs to be put in at the store level. Inappropriate costumes should be banned from Halloween stores, thus preventing consumers from purchasing them.
I like what you said about people dressing up as cultures to seem cool or get social approval for a night but is something we should not do. This is something that easily is offensive to many people and just because other people are doing it, doesn't mean you should follow the trend. I agree with what you said about younger children dressing up as these cultures don't know any better, but it should not be allowed to do so. I like your solution to this and I feel like it could well and have huge benefits that would come with it.
ReplyDeleteThe last point was my favourite because as often as we bash the individuals for even purchasing the offensive costumes, we don't take a look at the companies producing them. It's not just one person who decided to appropriate someone's culture, it took a group effort. Often these costumes are sexualized which is also a major issue and is very hurtful. The video pointed out how Halloween is a time to dress up as an outlandish creature or follow a certain theme, anything jokelike and how using culture as a costume insinuates that their backgrounds are a joke.
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