Please No Cultural Appropriation this Halloween

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1. Dressing as Moana may seem harmless but some argue it turns Polynesians into a costume.

It can be insensitive to Polynesian culture. Disney Shop
With the popularity of the film "Moana," costumes featuring the princess will be everywhere. While it may seem like a no-brainer to have your kid dress up as a movie character they emulate, many feel that dressing up white children as Moana turns Polynesians, and their culture, into a costume.

"Recognize this: Moana is a really special character to young girls of Polynesian descent who have never seen a Disney Princess who looks like them, just like how Tiana from 'The Princess and the Frog' likely resonated with young Black women who had waited decades to see themselves represented," the editors of Redbook wrote in an op-ed. "White girls have plenty of princesses to choose from — there's Belle, Ariel, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty … you get the idea. If your Caucasian son or daughter doesn't get to be exactly what they wanted for Halloween, encourage them to take a step back and realize that they're awash in privileges that the real Moanas and Tianas of the world will likely never see, because the world is full of racist a-------."

It's worth noting that others, including writer Preeti Varathan, have argued that kids can wear this costume as long as it's done in a respectful way.

"Discouraging your children's impulses, and insisting they stick to white alternatives, misdirects their initial feelings of adoration for a woman of color," Varathan wrote in Quartz. "Brad Meltzer, a children's book author who has spent decades studying the concept of heroes, believes 'heroes are really magic mirrors. Your heroes don't just reflect you; they reveal you.' This makes your child's impulse to worship Moana, a girl from a different race and culture, even more worth protecting."

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Blackface has a deeply painful history in the black and African-American communities. Costumes with blackface, as "Daily Show" correspondent Roy Wood Jr. noted in a segment, are something that should be avoided at all costs.

"Blackface is like smoking on an airplane. It used to be acceptable a long time ago but now we know it hurts people around us," he said. "That's why when it comes to blackface, your intentions don't matter."

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There's a trend on Halloween for people to dress as "hobos" or people who are homeless as a joke. As the Montgomery County Coalition for The Homeless reminded people, a person who is homeless is not a costume and poverty is certainly not something to be used as a punchline.

"This Halloween, please don't dress up like a person experiencing homelessness," the group wrote. "It's unthinkable that anyone would dress up as someone experiencing domestic violence or as a child in extreme poverty. So please respect our clients' humanity as you plan your Halloween costume this year."

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Putting your kids in a headdress or other Native American clothing is cultural appropriation, argues author Terra Trevor, and should be avoided.

"As Native American people, we are a culture — not a costume. I understand that wearing a culture as costume is not intended to hurt most of the time. However, the fact of the matter is that it does," Trevor wrote in a post for Matador Network.

"Native-alike regalia has become popular style-wear in the mainstream in the US. This fetish for dressing in a manner to look like an American Indian has moved beyond Halloween — and has become a year-round clothing trend for adults who are dressing up to resemble a race and culture of people they do not belong to," Trevor continued. "Some wear it out of naiveté and others in a blatant disregard, disrespect, and irreverence."

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5. Geishas are a traditional part of Japanese culture that should not be replicated.

It's appropriating a culture. Target
You may be tempted to dress your kids up like a geisha, but many have argued that this is another example of cultural appropriation

"To treat a character like Batman or Superman as a Halloween costume is one thing, but to treat an entire ethnicity as a costume is something else," Jelani Cobb, a professor of Africana studies at Rutgers University and the author of "The Substance of Hope: Barack Obama and the Paradox of Progress," told CNN. "It suggests that people conflate the actual broad diversity of a culture with caricatures and characters."

Also, many have taken issues with exactly how these costumes are created, including that there is often the stereotype of the "sexy" Geisha, according to a BuzzFeed video.

"If you want to be sexy on Halloween, there are so many ways you can be sexy without disparaging another person's culture," Jen Ruggirello, a Japanese BuzzFeed staffer, said in the same video.

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Last year, a few retailers came under fire for selling an Anne Frank costume for children. While most stores pulled the costume following the immense backlash, some online retailers kept it, re-branding it with the title, "World War II Evacuee Girl."

"There are better ways to commemorate Anne Frank," Carlos Galindo-Elvira, regional director of the Arizona Anti-Defamation League, tweeted at the time. "This is not one. We should not trivialize her memory as a costume."

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T he term "Eskimo" is considered a slur by many Inuit people. That aside, dressing up as Inuit is another example of turning a culture into a costume. In fact, this trend made one Inuit man so fed up that he penned a blog called "folks dressed up like 'Eskimos.'"

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Whether it's as a sumo wrestler or an inflatable ballerina, any costume that comes with a fat suit is seen as body shaming by many.

Speaker and author of the blog "Dances With Fat," Ragen Chastain argued that wearing a fatsuit is literally using someone's body as a punchline.

"This is literally putting on someone else's body - a body that, as it exists in the world, is subject to a tremendous amount of shame, stigma, bullying, and oppression," Chastain wrote. "Costumes like this add to that shame, stigma, bullying, and oppression by perpetuating the idea that there is something about being fat that should be laughed at. Then, having used their body as a tool for fatphobia, the wearer removes the costume and returns to their life of thin privilege."

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Many moms were concerned after a trend of morphsuits and "invisible" costumes became popular, noting that it could be difficult for motorists to see children in these costumes.

"I wanted it off the shelves immediately!" Lyss Stern, CEO of Diva Moms, told Little Things. "This costume is extremely dangerous. Children cannot see through the costume, let alone if they are walking across the street the cars can't see them. They are completely invisible; it is completely dangerous."

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