It’s that time of year again. It’s spooky season, which means everyone’s thinking of their costume for Halloween. There are endless possibilities of creative, cute, scary costumes, but some people take a different approach. For years, people have been dressing inappropriately and offensively for Halloween.

One common theme for Halloween that can be deemed as offensive is dressing up as another culture. A Mexican costume where they have a shot in their hand and a tool belt around their waist could be considered offensive. Dressing up as a stereotype is pretty disrespectful. Also many girls, usually, will dress up like Native Americans making their costumes “sexy” by wearing the cheap looking costumes. Some people may argue that they are just appreciating their culture but making fun of the stereotype of Mexicans and making Native Americans “sexy”, isn’t really appreciating their culture. These costumes might want to be avoided on Halloween day.

Another thing that has been used for Halloween is black face. Black face started from minstrel shows. On these shows, white actors would paint their face black and act like black people in a very offensive way. They got away with it too; making fun of the way they acted and talked. Nowadays if someone uses blackface, it’s usually to dress up as a famous black actor. It could have an innocent intention, like the person just wanted to dress up as their favorite celebrity and they happened to be black.

Megan Kelley recently said she doesn’t really see the problem with blackface, “Because you do get in trouble if you are a white person who puts on blackface on Halloween, or a black person who puts on whiteface for Halloween. Back when I was a kid that was OK, as long as you were dressing up as, like, a character,” Kelly said on NBC Today. It can be seen as the person just trying to dress up as their favorite character, actor, singer etc. but doing blackface takes it to the next level. It’s stems from a offensive place. The TV shows were not trying to appreciate black people. Also changing your skin color isn’t necessary. Dress up as your favorite person of color, but there’s no need to do blackface for Halloween.

Then there’s the costumes that are just plain offensive. The costumes that people think their being funny but are just disrespectful. There’s examples all over the internet of people dressing like the Twin Towers and a plane, or Hitler and Anne Frank. There’s some people dressed up as the Boston Marathon runners, Osama Bin Laden, school shooters, just anything blatantly offensive. These costumes just don’t have to made. There’s no point in them besides being rude. Some people think of them as funny, but everyone can admit they’re offensive, maybe just avoid those this Halloween.

Halloween is a time to dress up as anything you can think of. It’s a time of dressing up as your favorite TV show character, a werewolf, a vampire, even a toothbrush, who’s knows. It’s not the time to just be inappropriate and offensive. Just stay away from the disrespectful costumes this year, there’s so many other costumes.

Here’s some appropriate costumes down below.

https://www.brit.co/work-appropriate-halloween-costume-ideas/