Around this time of year, Facebook timelines become rife with articles and comment sections on acceptable and unacceptable Halloween costumes.
It is also around this time of year that drunk teenagers start to wear chicken-feather headdresses, and paint their faces with washable finger paint in red. At the same time, little girls wanting to go as Moana are getting the finger-wag from the Facebook comment section jury.
Earlier today I spotted one of the newer controversies: an Anne Frank costume, sold by an obscure Halloween costume website up until last week, when it was pulled.
It’s easy to see where this costume goes wrong. It’s an association between something grave and something petty, making it feel like it is disrespectful and disregarding of the six million-plus victims of the Holocaust, Anne Frank included.
On the other hand, going as a historical figure isn’t unusual or questionable in and of itself, whether the motivation is admiration, interest, or recognizability.
However, the origins of the sensitivity surrounding Halloween costumes are understandable and concrete. This all started, at least partially, with blackface. It’s the insensitive and really racist idea that you could paint your face with black paint to go as a Black character. It’s reminiscent of the anti-Black imagery portrayed by racist cartoons, around the 50s and 60s.
Non-Indigenous people dressing up in cheap plastic or chicken-feathered imitations of Indigenous regalia is similarly regarded-annoying at best and at worst horribly disrespectful. Not to mention, in both situations, the commonality of racist imitative behavior that comes out when people dress up as an ethnic, national, or racial group that they don’t belong to for Halloween.
But, where should the line be drawn? Should the laws of comedy, where it’s okay because it’s not serious, be applied to Halloween costumes?
For me, it’s hard to take costume policing seriously, especially when it’s going as far as outrage at a Moana costume. It’s not considered strange or unusual for little girls to go as their favorite Disney princesses, and it shouldn’t be, blonde-haired and blue-eyed or not. On the other hand, the outrage stems from something real: a lot of these costumes are remnants of a society where blatant racism was rampant and normal (Note the key word: blatant.).
Regardless, it’s good that people have the ability to voice concerns about potentially harmful or hurtful things, like questionable Halloween costumes . . . even when the outrage seems to get a little out of hand.
