Take Back the Halloween!

From Racialicious. Check it out for pictures, links, comments and the rest of the article.

Mainstream North American culture likes to define itself as cultureless, but Halloween is a very cultural practice. Not only is it a little weird (Just look at it from the point of view of an outsider. Send your kids out to strangers’ houses and tell them to ask for candy? Decorate your house like a graveyard? Dress up like a sexy version of a public health worker?) it is also based on difference - the point of Halloween is to dress up as “something different.” So how do people who are often made to feel visually different - you know, like people of colour - experience Halloween? The average Halloween costume tells us a lot about what we culturally consider to be abnormal.

It tells us that dressing up in an overtly sexy way is taboo - in other words, that we’re a pretty sex-negative people. It tells us that we are obsessed with strict gender categories - because most little boys and girls have to choose very gender-coded costumes, but also because for many young people Halloween is the one time they can experiment with gender in a socially sanctioned way.

And if dressing up as “something different” can typically involve wearing geisha make-up, a Native headdress, bling, or a turban, Halloween tells us that our cultural norm is a middle-class, North American, white person.