My culture is not a Halloween costume

I spent most of my childhood in Mexico, where Día de los Muertos is one of the most culturally significant days of the year — a time where the entire country would come together to grieve their deceased ancestors and celebrate their departed family members.

Halloween and Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, are only a day apart from each other, which may encourage people to dress up in traditional Mexican attire during Halloween. However, Día de los Muertos is a centuries-old holiday meant for paying respect to lost loved ones.

The symbol mostly used to represent Día de los Muertos is a sugar skull, an intricately designed and colorful skull made of sugar and/or clay. Traditional costumes typically include lace veils, which hold religious significance, marigold flowers, and long gowns which vary in name and style depending on the region.

Department store costumes of Día de los Muertos are often sexualized depictions of a Mexican woman — short skirts, excessive cleavage and saturated colors.

Because non-sugar skulls are representative of Halloween, people tend to choose sugar skull face paint when deciding costumes because of its “exotic” look.

Recycling the ornate, traditional symbols of Día de los Muertos is not only derivative, but the act erases the meaning and intent of the holiday.

Here I use the term “latinx,” a gender-inclusive term. To see non-Latinxs on Halloween wear sugar skull face paint is a not a way to indicate appreciation of my culture, rather proves how ignorant people can be in the name of Halloween.

I’m not a Halloween hater. In fact, it has always been one of my favorite holidays.

Halloween, however, has become more than a time to dress up and drink. As I’ve grown older, I’ve noticed the insensitivity of people wearing culturally appropriative costumes and their disregard for other people’s feelings toward them.

From Native American headdresses and sugar skull face paint, to black face and turbans, these costumes are not only poor in taste, but disregard any sacred, religious or cultural significance.

Costumes are key to having a memorable Halloween experience. But this holiday has become a pass for people to wear certain cultural clothing or elements in Halloween’s name — apparel that does not belong to their own culture therefore trivializing marginalized people.

Cultural appropriation signifies a power dynamic in which a dominant group adopts or takes another culture’s elements, usually a group that has been oppressed by that same dominant group.

A clear example would be a white woman wearing a Native American headdress. The headdress, or war bonnet, is a recognition for men in tribes who have earned respect from his tribe members.

Racially insensitive costumes, from face paint to clothes, are merely ways of perpetuating stereotypes of people of color.

Yale Law professor and author Sandra Scafidi defines cultural appropriation in her book “Who Owns Culture?” as “taking intellectual property, traditional knowledge, cultural expressions, or artifacts from an oppressed group’s culture without permission, [including] unauthorized use of another culture’s dance, dress, music, language, folklore, cuisine, traditional medicine, religious symbols, etc.”

Blackface is perhaps the most infamous, oldest form of cultural appropriation and racial insensitivity in the United States. Beginning in the 19th century, white performers would paint their faces for minstrel shows and perpetuate stereotypes of black people.

This is a similar concept to racially insensitive Halloween costumes.

Exploiting people of color’s cultures by dressing up like stereotypes associated with them signifies a grave disrespect of their traditions and struggles. For people to use these depictions as a disposable novelty for Halloween is an injustice that degrades people of color, specifically.

College campuses are not immune to the plague of cultural appropriation during Halloween.

Last year, the University of Louisville’s staff had a Halloween party where they dressed up in stereotypical Mexican costumes, wearing sombreros, thick mustaches and ponchos. In 2012, two men dressed up in blackface, gold chains and baggy pants to a Halloween fraternity party at the University of Arizona.

Cases involving racist costumes like these have lead several college campuses to issue statements of apologies and intolerance of this behavior.

This month, the University of Florida posted a message on their website offering mental health counseling to students affected by racist costumes. I’m convinced this is a constructive step toward preventing racist costumes to be worn on college campuses nationwide.

Even celebrities are culpable in cases of offensive Halloween costumes. Singer Julianne Hough showed up to a party in 2013 wearing blackface and dressed up as Suzanne “Crazy Eyes” Warren from the show “Orange is the New Black.” Her costume was in poor taste and could have easily worked without brown face paint. Hough claimed she chose to paint her face for “authenticity,” but failed to realize the racism in her actions.

The list goes on and on, and there seems to be no shortage of racist costumes. The best way to stop these is to simply not wear them. It’s doubtful that costume manufacturers who create and promote these costumes will stop making them anytime soon, especially since these warehouses churn them out in massive quantities. Avoid buying from or supporting them.

Even if someone who decides to wear an offensive costume has no intention of causing any social grief toward the marginalized group they are aiming to depict — the damage has been done.  

Many people may not deem a Halloween costume like a Native American headdress or geisha makeup to have a negative implication attached to it; however, it’s necessary to realize this is beyond stereotyping — it is the theft of a culture.  

My Mexican culture is sacred and beautiful and it is something that has taken me a long time to learn to love and accept. My culture is mine and my culture is not your costume.