Moana? Do you really wanna?
The Maui question may have been settled, but this year, there are plenty of tweets out there asking the internet (and Lin-Manuel Miranda) if it’s OK to dress as Moana for Halloween.
At this point, you might be saying something like: “But, I dressed up as Jasmine as a child, and I’m not a racist!”, or, “It’s just a Halloween costume, please chill the f*ck out.” But one of the best things about time is that it moves forward. You should too. You can (and should) strive to be better than you were 10, 20, or 30 years ago. If you missed the mark when you were younger, maybe think about using this Halloween as an opportunity to teach your kids about the importance of cultural sensitivity. If your child’s dream costume feels questionable, don’t just throw up your hands and hand over your credit card. You’re the parent here, and the onus of what your child wears falls on you. If your kid wears a racist costume … you’re kind of wearing it too.
So your little darling just adores Moana and wants to dress as a Maui princess. Who can blame her? Moana’s adorable, and who would blame a child for wanting to be a Disney character they love? But if you let her, you’re a racist? At least it’s better than the neighbors refusing to give candy to your bigoted kids.
How does a woke mommy tell her wide-eyed child of such horrors?
If your Caucasian son or daughter doesn’t get to be exactly what they wanted for Halloween, encourage them to take a step back and realize that they’re awash in privileges that the real Moanas and Tianas of the world will likely never see, because the world is full of racist assholes.
That will certainly make Halloween special. Remember when Halloween was a fun opportunity to get candy from strangers? Good times.
- Tuesday Talk rules apply.
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Perhaps the authors are doing their best evil impression for Halloween?
Perhaps they are one step ahead of you?
Or, of course, they are humorless asses.
Tough choice.
Does this mean I can’t wear my striped djellaba this year?
Oh come on, quit pulling our legs!
Everyone knows that you simply go out in your daily admiral’s uniform.
Point?
Come to think of it, you probably look much, much better in your djellaba.
I guess that means that when my neighbor’s daughters named the family dog Moana, they were likening Polynesian people to dogs? But maybe it’s ok because the family is black?
Also, shouldn’t it be a mark of progress that white kids now want to dress up as non-white characters? I have to imagine that it would have been unheard of a generation or two ago.
Why must everyone blame the dawgs?
I’m old enough to remember when you had to WORK to come up with an offensive costume (and boy, did we ever work at it). Just having to pick a Disney character to get to the same place just seems too easy.
As a youngster, I usually dressed as a soldier for Halloween. An American one.
You can still satisfy your inner child and dress up as Agent Wall in your trendy border patrol costume.
I don’t have the cleavage for it.
In 5th grade my son was Flavor Flav for Halloween.
I belatedly apologize for introducing him to Public Enemy and allowing him to appropriate VH1 reality tv star culture (But damn he looked cute with that big ol’ clock around his neck)
I would suck if I had to be a parent of young children now.
My daughter (of Southeast Asia) is dressing up as Moana. What do I tell my Caucasian sons? It’s great if you want be transgender and wear a dress, but stop culturally appropriating your sisters’ culture you racist? What about my other racist daughter (also of Southeast Asia) dressing up as Harry Potter, culturally appropriating her brothers’ culture?
Her brother is a wizard?
And when you parents explain to your 8-year old daughter how she is awash in priveleges, be sure and use the phrase “racist assholes”.
Has Cosmo ever led you wrong in child-rearing?
Just follow these 10 tips.
Number 7 will drive your child crazy!
Once the target of religious conservatives who condemned the costumed candy hunt as “Satanic,” Halloween is now threatened by the “progressive” imbeciles who find every possible costume “offensive” for some reason.
My apologies. This article originally appeared in Redbook. Cosmo just reprinted it.
My mother is rolling over in her grave.
Only a correction of this magnitude is worthy of a new thread.
But it’s Halloween Tuesday Talk. It’s no rules, man. Helter skelter reigns.
That’s “dawg” to you.
Cry havoc and let slip the dawgs of war.
And yet cosmo is unconcerned about corporations appropriating an ancient Celtic festival to sell more candy and costumes.
Some dopes think this is about politically correct costumes. Thanks for straightening them out, comrade.
Instead of doing Halloween this year, I’m having cataract surgery.
Cataract surgery patient. Worst costume ever. Hope all goes well.
Au contraire, mon ami. The eye patch is the start of any self-respecting pirate costume.
Repurposed surgery? You have a point.
Well, the patch came off this morning and I’m not blind. It was a clear shield with white gauze behind it, so I looked like the pirate equivalent of a white-hat hacker.
So, what are you?
The pirate equivalent of a white-hat hacker.
Ah, that’s cute. Have a snickers.
Glad it’s going well.
And of course you can always count on Cosmopolitan to be your lodestar of advanced moral philosophy. If they say this is better, it must be so.
Mommy has to get her thoughts from somewhere, plus she gets to take the test on how on whether her pedicure drives men wild!!!
Aber eines der besten dinge an der zeit ist, dass es vorwärts geht! Du solltest auch! Sie können (und sollten) sich bemühen, besser zu sein, als sie 1923, 1913 oder 1903 waren!!!
Everything old is new again.
So a friend of my son is going to trick-or-treating as a Clone Trooper. He is of Persian ancestry. As anyone who has watched “Attack of the Clones” knows, the person from who all of the clone troopers were cloned was Jango Fett. Jango was played by a Maori actor, thus all of the clone troopers are presumably Maori. Based on this article, what is the social justice calculus I should work when deciding whether to tell this boy’s parents that his costume is offensive?
My son is going as Obi Wan Kenobi, Episode II version. I am worried enough about him, as Obi Wan is played by an English actor and I would not want him to be insulting anyone who was English.
Mad dawgs and Englishmen are still fair game, even in today’s climate.
Joe Cocker has always been misunderstood.
The captions are hysterical. I never saw that before, and now I can’t stop this yearning for Wonder Loaf.
Jango in chains?
Don’t worry – we English are at the bottom of every intersectional ladder, below even the Americans.
I’d add that we also have a sense of humour but that’s irrelevant since there are always people prepared to take offence on behalf of others.
Brits have a sense of humour? Well, maybe.
Except Ewan McGregor is Scottish so why would you care anyway, unless you take offence to him being called English
To avoid any cultural oppression I’m just gonna wear a white sheet tonight.
Ghost or KKK member, viewer’s choice.
Kids all know that he loves them so…
I have always believed there should be a distinction between dressing up as a particular character and dressing up as a race. I can see why people get annoyed at people dressing as a geisha or a Mexican, but to me there’s something different when kids are dressing as Moanna, or Mulan. Unfortunately nuance is lost. As is humour. Where I’m from there was a huge backlash about a local public figure dressing up as Trump.
“As is humour.” This may be the loss that explains all others.
“HumoUr”! Isn’t that a cultural appropriation of British spelling?
Have you no sense of decency? (I’m thinking of dressing up as Joseph Welch.)
I was just trying to provide a safe space. Jeez.
So I guess I was culturally appropriating when I dressed up as a Sheik with a bespoke 3 piece suit, sheet for a robe and pillow case for headdress. It was an adult party and I won first prize.
But then, thirty years ago, we were unapologetic raaaaacist cultural appropriators.
Crazy! The whole debate reminds me of the South Park’s last season and the creation of PC Principal. Children, by their very own nature, are not racist. They are taught it. They see cool, honorable, happy and brave characters in Moana, Tonto, Lone Ranger (am I dating myself?), Little Mermaid, etc. If they see those qualities in others of another culture and they want to emulate them…then I think a parent has done a good job! Have fun little one and forget the PC police 🙂 Happy Halloween!
One can use a costume to ridicule others or to honor others (and the spectrum between), but to leave such matters up in the air is to risk too much.
As we know from our favorite Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals, you’ve got to be carefully taught to be racist.
Somehow this has all been turned around on its head. Instead of not teaching your kids to be racist, they have to be carefully taught they can’t do things like dress up like their favorite Disney character because of their race or sex.
So you just had to get your Moana licks in, as if nobody would notice.
I find the exact opposite formula to help promote diversity.
My buddies daughter. (Black) went as a blond haired frozen princess and my daughter went as tiana. They chose the costumes because of thier love of the individual princesses story and message.
Should we have told them to switch costumes because of thier race?
What kind of message does that send to our children? That you shouldnt watch and learn from stories that arent your race?
Good luck surviving our wives to the asshole “woke” idiot that lectures our daughters.
And chances are pretty good that some woke idiot will do exactly that. And should get kicked in the ass for screwing with someone else’s kid.
To paraphrase a great tweet: If you’re going to push to have “more representative” Disney princesses, you’re going to have to accept that kids are going to want to dress up as them for Halloween. You can’t have one and not expect the other.
I will also add that, were someone to try and tell my daughter she couldn’t dress up as Moana because she was white, I would find it impossible to respond in a fashion any way resembling the level of politeness paraphrased in the prior paragraph.
We tapped out this year and went with the Judy Garland “Wizard of Oz” theme.
Daughter was Dorothy, my son was the Cowardly Lion, Dr. S. was the Wicked Witch, and I was the Wizard.
Out of the four of us, only Dr. S. was afraid her costume was culturally appropriating Wiccan culture.
By “afraid,” I mean we had a good laugh about it after the kids were in bed.
Pics or it didn’t happen.
Edit: And here’s the pic! Absolutely adorable.
