This Halloween, like all Halloweens, the floodgates for offensive costumes will open. In two weeks’ time, lots of people will think it’s OK to make fun of cultures and demonstrate a complete disregard toward the historical and social context of their costume. Darkening your skin isn’t cool; it harkens back to when blackface was used for minstrel shows. Similarly, dressing as a Native American is insensitive to their culture, which was trampled on and remains largely ignored to this day. These costumes parody, rather than honor, other cultures because they act as hollow interpretations that are rooted in assumption, not actual knowledge.
The sexy geisha costumes, for example, perpetuate the stereotype that the geishas were prostitutes and further eroticizes them. It’s not "just a costume" because these are real cultures that are misrepresented and needlessly sexualized.
That being said, dressing as someone of another race does not HAVE to be offensive. There are distinctive characteristics that go beyond race. When Julianne Hough dressed as Crazy Eyes from "Orange is the New Black" just a few years ago, she did not have to darken her skin in order for us to know who she was dressing up as because Crazy Eyes has very distinct hair.
When someone uses blackface to depict a fictional character, they are saying the most distinctive quality of a person is their skin. Dressing as a specific person or character is different than just dressing as the representation of an entire culture, like the "Chinaman" or "Bollywood Beauty" costumes that are so popular. When people wear these costumes, they are narrowing public perceptions of what those cultures truly are and stand for. In the process, people do not think about the fact that after Halloween, they will be able to take the costume off — after that, one does not have to deal with the everyday realities of the culture they temporarily adopted.
Instead of honoring a culture, these costumes reduce them to cheap laughs and amusement for the sake of having a "cool" costume. By making a skin color a costume, it essentially says it is an "other" and exotic.
Additionally, the use of racial caricatures as Halloween costumes demonstrates a profound lack of empathy. As an example, let’s consider the use of blackface: When someone wipes off that makeup, they no longer have to deal with the systemic racism and police brutality that many black people face every day.
Wearing an insensitive caricature shows one has a limited understanding of that culture.
Going beyond cultural appropriation, costumes can be deeply misogynistic, like last year’s Ray Rice costumes, or this year’s Megyn Kelly bloody tampon costume. For those who say it’s "just a costume," realize your choice in costume says a lot about you. If you dress like Ray Rice, that means you find reducing domestic violence to a joke OK. If you dress like Megyn Kelly as a bloody tampon, it means you genuinely believe women are slaves to their emotions and are uncontrollable on their periods, lending validity to Donald Trump’s gross comments about Kelly.
Picking a thoughtful and inoffensive Halloween costume boils down to considering the implications of what you’re wearing. Why are there costumes based on an entire culture, and what does this assume about that culture? Does the costume make fun of someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity? And why does "sexy" need to be tacked on to that?
All it involves is thinking beyond your own identity and how your actions could affect someone else.
Nicole Dan is a UF political science sophomore. Her column appears on Mondays.
