Tis’ the month that culminates with witches, mystical creatures, fictional characters, and, well, a little bit of cultural appropriation.
Turn on your television, and you’ll hear Michael Jackson’s Thriller courtesy of Party City. Head to YouTube and the beauty community competes to upload the most popular Halloween looks. Run over to your local Walgreens and Fantasy Makers has a display of face paint for all your colorful Mexican sugar skulls desires.
Halloween has become an infamous time for appropriating cultures through sartorial consumerism, and now beauty gurus are tapping into their arsenals to showcase their appropriative talents. Uploading tutorials on how to achieve a tribal look, paint Mexican sugar skulls, create a Geisha makeup look or transform into an Egyptian queen is simply racism masquerading as a playful aesthetic. Cultures aren’t costumes.
Appropriated “costumes” are trotted out yearly by corporations, news outlets and beauty bloggers alike, contributing to cultural erasure. For example, Glamour recently listed Mexican sugar skulls in an article about Halloween beauty trends without even mentioning the name or origin of the skull. A week later, Nylon jumped on the bandwagon and posted an article on DIY makeup looks; one of them was a sugar skull. The appropriation dates back even further: A few years ago, Seventeen magazine uploaded a tutorial on how to achieve a kabuki look.
“Fashion” is no better. Spirit Halloween’s Native American costumes are listed as “wild spirit,” Mexican skull appropriations are called “senorita death,” and Japanese appropriations are filed under “geisha gorgeous“—and each costume comes with face paint to enhance your all-natural racism.
If we look beyond Halloween and at cultural appropriation at large, hipster culture is packed full of white folks wearing dream catchers, headdresses, traditional Indian bindis, dreaded and cornrowed hair, and Buddha on just about everything you need to fulfill a trendy, bohemian aesthetic, while stripping away the religious, historical and cultural value.
That’s a problem. In America, any external feature that deviates from the white “norm” signifies your ethnicity and denotes you as “other.” So, for example, African Americans are vilified for wearing their hair in certain ways and even denied employment opportunities, while the likes of Kylie Jenner and Miley Cyrus can dread and cornrow their locks for a single day and not face the daily struggles of being black. Some might say they’re simply appreciating a culture, but there’s a big difference between appropriation and appreciation. Appreciation is knowing the historical and political significance of what you’re trying to wear before getting dressed, versus throwing on a dream catcher T-shirt from Urban Outfitters and calling it a day.
While you may acknowledge your costume as a token of appreciation, wearing it for a single night holds the inverse effect. Halloween is certainly a time for fun; just try not to be problematic or offensive in the process.
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Photo courtesy of Flickr user Alice licensed under Creative Commons 2.0
Yasmine Rimawi is the beauty editor at Downtown magazine. Besides spearheading all things related to cosmetics, skin and haircare, she’s also very critical of the industry’s injustices. Find her on Twitter!
While I understand your perspective, I feel that you are jumping to conclusions and generalizing to a population. In my opinion, while most people don’t think about the background or significance of something, that doesn’t mean all people do. For example, someone who wears a dream catcher shirt may know the significance behind it and really love the culture. Should they not wear it simply because they weren’t born of that culture? Furthermore, is it my fault that a different culture came up with a certain design or color scheme? I don’t go around telling people they can’t wear four leaf clovers because they don’t understand the significance to Irish culture or that people can’t drink Guinness because they haven’t experienced or considered potato famine before. Should people not wear hearts because it was originally designed with a woman’s butt in mind?
I do agree that people need to be more aware of other cultures; however, I also think that people need to understand that more often than not, costumes don’t have to do with racism, at least in my experience. A few months ago, I watched an interview with Native Americans about the name of the Washington Red Skins football team and a majority of the participants said that they don’t really care about the name as they have more important things to worry about. I think people need to worry about other things besides Halloween costumes. I guess I don’t necessarily think that there is no appropriation, I just think people need to get over it.
I also read an article by a friend of mine last year; she was saying very similar things as you are: appropriation, stereotyping, etc. Like I said, I don’t entirely disagree with you. However, in her article, she mentioned other possible ideas, such as a witch or a vampire. All I could think about after reading her article was, what about all the women who died in the Salem Witch Trials or the people who really think they are vampires or better yet the people who think that vampires and witches are the Devil’s work? Are we not also belittling their beliefs or diminishing their experiences?
I do think that the “sexy” costumes are ridiculous and are appropriation. However, as a little girl, I dressed up as Princess Jasmine. I’m not Indian. I feel that I wasn’t being racist. I didn’t think about the culture but I dressed up as something I loved.
In response to Ev: I don’t quite understand your rebuttal. Costumes have everything to do with racism whether you’re conscious of it or not. Telling people that they need to ‘get over it’ when it comes to appropriation is insensitive and ignores the problem at hand. Marginalized groups don’t need to ‘get over’ racist acts when they’re intentionally otherized because of their respective cultures. You’re talking about mystical creatures and fictional princesses, when I’m discussing real day to day values and beliefs. I’m not saying ‘White people must avoid (insert culture) holistically’ but you need to be aware of the context behind the clothing or makeup. If you only care for sugar skulls or geisha’s on October 31st, you clearly don’t care for Mexican or Japanese culture. You may think these costumes have harmless intentions, but by wearing cultures as costumes on Halloween you’ve trivialized the struggles minorities deal with every single day. You can’t accept the aesthetics of a culture, without acknowledging these groups are alienated because they’re different. Borrowing only the good parts of a culture is synonymous with objectification when you use someone’s external identity as a costume.
(Also- Princess Jasmine isn’t Indian, she’s Arabian. After all, the film’s opening scene states the lyrics ‘Arabian Nights, like Arabian Days’.)
I understand the sympathy and concern people may feel towards these halloween costumes. I, however, do not share the concern that such activity rises to the level of racism. Still, the most comical leap is the all too-often trotted out comparison is between African Americans and that of Kyle Jenner and Miley Cyrus.
First, I’m not certain of what exactly Kylie Jenner’s job is. So saying her “employment opportunities” are not affected by her hair begs the question if, how, and what she actually does for work? (and no, I don’t mean her ill-fitting underage cosmetic work). Second, while it’s an easy comparison is its a deeply flawed comparison. The non-famous individual who applies via Monster.com, Craigslist, or newspaper ad as we most Americans do cannot be compared to the: 1.) Singer building a brand of excess, short skirts, crazy hair, and a perpetual high or 2.) a sister of a Kardashian with no known skill but Instagram and following the Kardashian script. Their employment opportunities are drastically different than those who struggle everyday (whether by economic means or appearance or culture) and a comparison cannot honestly be made
Lets not forget the entire holiday is cultural appropriation from the Irish pagans.