Pay no mind to the policeman, construction worker, cowboy and other members of \u201cThe Village People\u201d group costume they\u2019re doing. <\/span><\/p>\n If you can\u2019t see how dehumanizing, trivializing, gentrifying, native-erasing, and culturally insensitive \u201cThe Village People\u201d\u2014or how they should be named, the Problematic People are to real Natives, policemen, construction workers and so on news flash: you\u2019re a white supremacist. It\u2019s 2016. <\/span><\/p>\n Anyone who\u2019s met me or read any of these columns can pretty much gather my experience in the costuming world. I\u2019ve done events from workshops to forums to karaoke and anything in between, one of these events centers on diversity in the costuming community. I\u2019m here to just share some of the realities that I deal with along the convention scene, since that culture has bled right into Halloween today. <\/span><\/p>\n One of the recurring discussions is \u201ccultural appropriation.\u201d This topic is a little rough to discuss, mostly because it makes zero sense: people are upset that some groups of people don\u2019t physically own corporeal ideas and social constructs. If you don\u2019t want someone to perceive \u201cyour\u201d culture, maybe you should trademark it or perhaps you could focus on actual issues instead of perceived offenses. <\/span><\/p>\n Who actually has time to dedicate his or her mental energy into being offended over how someone dresses. It\u2019s beautiful because the reality is, how they dress is none of your business. If someone wants to dress as a sexy tree for Halloween they\u2019re not appropriating tree culture. People seem to think it\u2019s either culture or costume\u2014as if cultures don\u2019t have costumes.<\/span><\/p>\n To go further, Halloween is already cultural appropriation if we have yet to notice. It didn\u2019t just come from nowhere; it evolved from various cultures and Pagan religions. The culture of Halloween as we understand it is currently an American cultural aspect, one that includes the element of costumes.<\/span><\/p>\n Also, if it was not apparent, one individual dressing as an Indian is not actually the entire, broad culture of Native Americans. As the individual is not in fact an entire demographic, they are not \u201cappropriating\u201d a \u201cculture.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Honestly, if you\u2019re going to try and claim someone is appropriating a culture, you might be wise to perhaps even remotely know the culture you\u2019re claiming is being so very ruined. It\u2019s still going to be logically inconsistent as an argument but at least you might show some sort of valid concern.<\/span><\/p>\n I may be incredibly insensitive but unfortunately I\u2019m at least somewhat logical and consistent. I can\u2019t even recall a costume ever giving me any negative feelings besides absolute horror over all these clowns that better not remotely come near Sinclair because I can and will stay up in my office and lock the door until the season ends.<\/span><\/p>\n Do other cultures get to have cultures, but America and particularly white Americans since we\u2019re the only ones that get called out for doing anything that doesn\u2019t stay in line with somehow holding the delicate balance of the entire world\u2019s race issues in our tiny costumed hands? Maybe you could stop misinterpreting our American cultural traditions as something sinister and problematic through another cultural lens, while claiming you love diversity so much?<\/span><\/p>\n The last Halloween before I actually got into costuming whatsoever I didn\u2019t get to celebrate\u2014but I wanted to be a group of the Wizard of Oz characters. Am I allowed to dress as the cowardly lion or am I offending actual lions and their rich cultural history in the Great Plains and whatever else I take as fact from \u201cThe Lion King?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n However, no one else was really feeling that suggestion. Maybe it was too offensive. But by the time Halloween did roll around, my friends came up with some other outfits: pregnant Kourtney Kardashian and Oprah dressed as a shark. I don\u2019t recall getting any cease and desist letters for the great shame we brought to the rich culture of the Kardashians and Oprah. And sharks. <\/span><\/p>\n Why let this attitude of actually trying to warp every single scenario into some dynamic anti-some group, problematic situation ruin not only your daily life but now even the one night you\u2019re supposed to go dress up?<\/span><\/p>\n What is probably most amusing is that the only people that actually seem to dislike someone from another culture dressing in costumes or even costumes that include cultural elements from another region are white people. Of course, not about the giant array of white cultural costumes that are ever popular, those aren\u2019t offensive because stereotypes of white cultures and generally anything anti-white is totally mainstream and accepted. <\/span><\/p>\n I had a friend dress up as Lil\u2019 Wayne because he\u2019s his favorite rapped\u2014yes he can name three of his albums\u2014and out of maybe some five thousand people he encountered, perhaps two said something snarky to him. And they were white. Clearly, black culture and hip-hop have ceased to exist since then and the main point of this article is to apologize for that.<\/span><\/p>\n Moral of the story, if you discourage people from dressing from other cultures, you\u2019re discouraging diversity and cultural exchange\u2014that\u2019s a lot more insensitive than white Lil\u2019 Wayne or myself as Nicki Minaj.<\/span><\/p>\n Barton Kleen<\/em> Let\u2019s get right to the nitty-gritty of the issue: someone, somehow, in some way shape or form is going to boycott specifically only white people wearing costumes this Halloween on the grounds of \u201ccultural appropriation.\u201d More and more Tumblr posts will be made about completely real events where the costumed white devil singlehandedly attempts to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10290,"featured_media":13706,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[1523,1522,1999,1309,368,1384,1413],"class_list":["post-14021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tartan-news","tag-appreciation","tag-appropriation","tag-barton-kleen","tag-costumes","tag-culture","tag-opinion","tag-playing-it-forward"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Barton-Website.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5s3vR-3E9","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10290"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14021"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14021\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14024,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14021\/revisions\/14024"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Peyri](\"http:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/PIF-2-300x200.jpg\")
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\nExecutive Editor<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"