How to Not Be Offensive With Your Halloween Costume
In the latest installment of the Dear White People op-ed series, writer Kayla Monteiro explains how to avoid offending people with your Halloween costume.
When you’re younger, the hardest part of Halloween is figuring out what to delete from your DVR to make room for Halloweentown and Hocus Pocus. Now you have to deal with the pressures of managing your DVR recordings and dodging culturally appropriative and downright offensive costumes on your news feeds. Everyone wants to have a good time on Halloween, but unfortunately, for many, it can be a day of aggravation when they see their culture — or their experiences and trauma — caricatured and turned into a costume. If you are interested in being an ally who respects those around you, here are costumes to avoid this Halloween season:
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Getty Images1/9Leashes and Chains
An old picture of Khloe Kardashian and a group of women in costume, including Meagan Good, recently resurfaced on social media — and several commenters have strong opinions about it. Some speculated that it's a "pimp and hos"-themed costume based on Khloe's oversize suit, white hat, and gold pendant necklaces, and the fact that other women featured in the picture are wearing lingerie with leashes around their necks.
Leashes are problematic in this context, not only when one considers the real dangers many women face and the abuse of sex workers, but also because of the racial implications of a white woman walking black women on chained leashes. The optics of this costume are deeply offensive to anyone mindful of power structures, systematic racism, and the history of slavery and the Middle Passage.
Photo: Pacific Coast News2/9Blackface
There are two types of clueless people on Halloween: those who do not understand why wearing blackface is offensive, and those who non-ironically hand out candy corn as a treat. Blackface is offensive because it exaggerates and dehumanizes the Black experience while perpetuating racist stereotypes. Unless you were born with a brown face, please put down that foundation and find another costume.
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Photo: Courtesy of costumeish.com3/9Caitlyn Jenner/Bruce Jenner
Making a mockery of someone's gender identity is never funny, especially since so many transgender people are frequently put in situations where they feel unsafe simply for being themselves.
Photo: Courtesy of halloweencostumes.com4/9Arab
There's nothing funny about reducing an entire group of people who face Islamophobia and oppression daily to a costume that clumps various Middle Eastern cultures together in a baseless display of ignorance.
Photo: Courtesy of Twitter5/9Bill Cosby/Harvey Weinstein/Any Other Sexual Assault Offender
There are some things that seem so common sense you’d think it'd be unnecessary to explain them; however, some people need to be reminded that dressing up as a person who has perpetrated violence against another is wildly offensive. The costumes are not only tactless, they can be triggering to survivors. Let's stop this once and for all.
Photo: Getty Images6/9Dia de los Muertos
Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, is a Mexican holiday that honors those who have passed away. It is not the Mexican version of Halloween, but rather a beautiful and ornate celebration of life. When you decide to take something that is meant to be a personal form of expression and turn it into a costume, you are reducing centuries of tradition to one night of revelry. Consider that before co-opting Mexican culture for Halloween this year.
Photo: Courtesy of Halloweencostumes.com7/9Convict
The United States has more people in our prisons than any other country in the world, and a disproportionate number of those people are men and women of color. Mass incarceration is a real problem that profoundly impacts families and communities. Making light of it by reducing it to a costume is tawdry.
Photo: Courtesy of Yandy8/9Native American/Geisha/Literally Any Other Culture
Everyone deserves to have a fun, safe Halloween without fear of seeing a version of themselves or a lived experience hyperbolized for the sake of a costume. If you have to ask yourself if your costume is offensive, it probably is, and no costume is worth appropriating or offending someone else.
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Kayla Monteiro is the Special Projects Associate of DoSomething.org. If she is not working or writing, she can probably be found live-tweeting The Bachelor.
