All Hallows’ Eve

October 29, 2009

I have a complicated relationship with Halloween. Growing up, I never trick-or-treated; I was bundled off to my church’s ‘Harvest Festival,’ where we played games and got told about Jesus, so I don’t really have the emotional connection to or experiences of Halloween that others seem to. And as I’ve learned more about it, I’m not sure that’s a bad thing.

I have learned to be wary of Halloween. I have learned to shut my eyes to ‘geisha’ costumes, ‘Mexican bandit’ costumes, ‘Indian chief’ and ‘Indian princess’ costumes–all worn by white people, always. I am not claiming that no PoCs, particularly those middle/upper-class, cisgender, straight PoCs, are completely oblivious, but…it’s more complicated.

As far back as I can remember, I have been too uneasy to dress as another ethnicity. I remember complaining about this quite a few years ago, in my pre-activist days: I knew I didn’t look like the white characters I loved and there weren’t any Asian characters I knew to emulate, much less Chinese American ones. “White people can be anything, but I only get to be Asian,” I’d say; I didn’t know how true that was and still is. My skin is too brown, too yellow to pass for white. I look wrong and grotesque dressed as a white woman, but for some reason I never saw it as grotesque when white women dressed as me. Now, of course, I am more attuned to the realities of normalization, the privilege of being unmarked.

Sometimes these are more obvious than not. In this case, Halloween is one of those magical times when racism and sexism can be on full display, so obviously that people look at you oddly when you point it out. ”Well, yeah,” they say. ”But it’s just for fun, really.” It’s ‘just for fun’ that the only costumes available are for white women who want to dress in an explicitly ‘sexy’ way–not that I want to deny anyone the right to dress however the hell they want, but when it is social pressures that demand they hypersexualize themselves rather than their own choice, I am not okay with it.

There needs to be a stronger word than ‘problematic’ for Halloween.

Side note: I really find the trend of men in drag for Halloween disturbing. Aside from my complicated feelings about drag in general, a lot of costumes don’t actually make a serious attempt to appear female; the humor is derived from the fact that OMG it’s guy in a dress!!1

In other words, I feel that in most cases it’s not a question of assuming another gender identity for a night; it’s mocking the idea of performing a non-normative gender identity. Because it is supposed to be funny. (Overheard in hallway yesterday, directed at a male: “You should go as a slutty girl! That would be SO FUNNY.”) Moreover, women in drag are not read as funny, they’re read–well, a lot of different ways. But it’s rarely if ever humorous.

Links to people more coherent than I:

http://theangryblackwoman.com/2009/10/31/dont-dress-up-like-what-you-think-is-a-jamaican-this-halloween/
http://meloukhia.net/2009/10/whats_the_difference_between_costuming_and_appropriation.html

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/sexist/tag/sexy-halloween-costumes/

http://resistracism.wordpress.com/2009/10/30/your-annual-halloween-post/

http://resistracism.wordpress.com/2009/10/30/seriously/

http://stuffwhitepeopledo.blogspot.com/2009/10/suddenly-get-interested-in-non-white.html

http://www.racialicious.com/2009/10/21/the-racialicious-halloween-roundup/

http://www.angryasianman.com/2009/10/bad-halloween-costumes-2009.html

http://www.angryasianman.com/2009/10/more-oriental-hooker-y-for-halloween.html

http://www.reappropriate.com/2009/10/26/lets-have-a-racist-halloween/

http://contexts.org/socimages/2009/10/30/guest-post-asian-hair-for-halloween/

http://contexts.org/socimages/2009/10/29/racist-halloween-costumes/