We all know people who have dressed up as a culture before. Whether dressing up as different countries for Turnabout or wearing a Native American headdress to Lollapalooza, there are many examples of this phenomenon.
When it comes to costumes or dress up themes, it can be difficult to come up with a creative idea. Sometimes, the idea of choosing a cultural theme seems like the easy way out. You can dress up as a Mexican person by wearing a sombrero and a poncho. It’s a pretty easy outfit, and one that can be thrown together on relatively short notice.
While you may not intend for these costumes to be hurtful to the given group, by stereotyping their culture into one outfit, you are reducing a group of people into nothing but a Halloween costume.
Buzzfeed has picked up on the cultural trend towards these cultural appropriation outfits, and recently posted a video where Mexican-Americans try on “Mexican outfits,” from “Hey Amigo!” (which includes a stuffed donkey) to a “Tequila Shooter” costume. After the Buzzfeed employees tried on the costumes, they remarked on how inaccurately the outfits captured the essence of the cultures, saying, “I don’t have amigos that dress like this.”
One woman’s comment on the video read, “This is stupid. No one takes Halloween costumes seriously. I don’t see doctors getting offended about slutty doctor outfits.” The main difference between these examples is that one is born into their race, but they have the power to choose their profession. Clearly not all people will see eye to eye on the issues with cultural appropriation in Halloween outfits.
Another Buzzfeed video in the series focused on Japanese culture and geisha costumes. A geisha is a Japanese girl or woman who has been highly trained in the performance arts and entertainment of guests. “The Geisha with the Dragon Tattoo” costume had a plunging neckline and a “Mandarin collar choker.” Mandarin is Chinese, not Japanese, which was their first mistake. Additionally, geishas are all about “mystery and intrigue, not about showing as much of your chest as possible.” According to Buzzfeed’s Japanese-Americans, the costumes succeeded in “getting almost everything wrong about Japanese culture and geishas.”
Again, people got riled up in the comments section. After one commenter wrote that no one making these costumes was intending to be hurtful, another person commented, “If I accidentally ran you over with a monster truck because I was busy texting, you’d still have a severed spinal cord. Lack of ill intent doesn’t excuse outcomes caused by disregard for others.”
So next time you are considering what to wear as a costume, keep in mind that while you aren’t intentionally being disrespectful towards a race, culture, or group of people, you cannot know how a member of that group may react. Instead, respect all people and choose a different costume.