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Halloween is coming!
Since the dawn of the Halloween party, there have been a lot of great costumes...
...and a lot that have missed the mark.
Unless that mark is reductive and insensitive.
One part of Halloween costumes that gets overlooked, however, is the face. More specifically, the facial difference.
Often times, villains (or unfortunate heroes) in movies and TV shows have facial differences.
Because of which, we can associate facial differences with evil, or vice versa.
These popular characters then become popular costumes.
A lot of times, though, people don't need to worry about others knowing the context of a story: the scary element of their costume, the face, is enough to spook others out. This reliance on the superficial minimizes those who actually have facial differences and changes how many of us are perceived.
It is difficult to scroll through Instagram and see a makeup tutorial on how to achieve a perfect, gruesome scar for Halloween, or walk around during the season and look at prosthetic burns and bumps, as if burns and bumps and scars are bad things.
Listen: they're not - there actually beautiful - and the people who have them aren't inherently bad.
So this Halloween, when you're conceptualizing your perfect costume, ask yourself, is this mocking, belittling, or minimizing someone else's appearance or identity? If you're unsure, just look it up!
If it's a Yes, try something else. There are a lot of other ways to do "scary".
Happy Halloween! In the words of whoever wrote it on the counter at my hometown's corner store, Don't be an asshole.
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