When everyone was a kid, we’d be super excited to dress up for Halloween, and become our favorite characters and/or things. Everyone so desperately wanted to have the most intricate and unique costumes, but the same thing cannot be said now in today’s generation.
With new trends came new costumes, and they aren’t anything too special. Now, when you look at someone, it can be harder to recognize who they are, probably because they’re wearing a brown shirt and saying, “I’m a bear…” And obviously, at first glance, you wouldn’t even identify that person as being dressed up as a “bear,” or a green shirt, throw on some fake blood, and say they’re a “zombie.” I didn’t think that we’d be taking “I’m a mouse, duh.” From Mean Girls too literally.
On top of that, if people do end up wearing super cool and amazing costumes, they get judged for it either way. Truly, you just can’t win with Halloween anymore; damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.
Even if they aren’t wearing something you can recognize, people tend to make their costumes a lot more revealing. I’m very sure that Joan of Arc, a very heroic and chivalrous woman, didn’t wear a skin-tight corset with the tiniest skirt in history.
With the concept of costumes getting more “sensual” more recently, it ties in with people using various figures in cultures and religions, for example. Nuns are supposed to be highly respected religious figures in many different religions, who dress very modestly, and people decide to make their dresses short with slits. The costume name is “Naughty Nun” or “Sinful Sister”. I mean, I’m not one to really shame people. But this is outright disrespectful in so many aspects.
Not only is this highly inappropriate, it is also a straight mockery of people tied in ethnic groups, and or religion.
In a society where prejudice and racism flourish on newer social media platforms, people use different ethnic clothing to mock their cultures. Seeing people who are not of native descent wearing tribal clothing is very disgusting, and it’s very inappropriate; I don’t feel that the saying “My culture is not your costume” is taken seriously enough.
All in all, please wear what YOU want to wear. But make sure not to wear a costume worthy of antagonizing a whole community.
