The street I grew up in, though peaceful, is not good for Halloween: a few children, many old seniors, and a few real antisocial people who hate children. Even in the days before the inflatable castles, these houses apparently missed the cheers of Halloween – perhaps a toothless jack or two, but no more. As a child who is not interested in dressing, I have no special use for clothing.
However, as a father, I love Halloween. I like my street, there are a variety of children here, and I benefit from the infuriating Pamplona’s new face. They came to us from the city block to the east, from the suburbs to the west, from our famous deep bag of sweets, from the apartment buildings and the lack of sidewalks to the McMansion-y area.
Most importantly, I like my four daughters enjoying this festival. They love the day’s neighborhood activities, puppet making classes and parades through our small shops.
Most importantly, they like their clothes. With passionate performances, they love to conceive their Wholesale Halloween Costumes, plan their execution, and then hand over their plans to their mother, their cunning, sewing aspects appear once a year to her daughter Halloween, she, as a Manhattan The girls for them is in the elevator press the “UP” button, never before. She is the game of our eldest daughter Rebekah’s Postmodern Costume Concept – in 2013 she was a classic washer / dryer set – just like our third daughter Klara, who has been a flower and a ballerina .
Given the number of clothes our children wear, about 30 since 2010, we are fortunate that we have never had any ideas rejected for political reasons. Our children do not even know that Halloween has really become controversial as the Christmas news in the eyes of Fox News anchor. Of course there is no real war at Christmas, but there are many conflicts in Halloween costumes. Some of them are absurd and some are necessary, but parents should pay attention today anyway.
Two years ago, a Yale University faculty member sent an e-mail warning against students wearing culturally insensitive clothing that caused an uproar throughout the country. Last year, Disney had to pull Polynesian Demigod costumes from the market and play a role in the movie Moana. Clothing depicts the brown skin of a tattoo, understandably offensive to those who think it is black face: “Look, wear the color of another race!
Last month, at the site raceconscious.org, a mother worried that having her white daughter wear a Mona-like text would be culturally owned – but leaving her as a blonde from Frozen Scandinavian Princess Elsa You have to be a “beautiful” way. ”
On the one hand, this concern about the ethical implications of what once was seen as harmless is outdated. I am happy that we no longer think that we are white children dressed as “Indians” in preparation for Halloween. Whites should be especially careful when portraying other cultures, but we should all understate it: if I saw a young kid wearing a black hat and fake locks in a Hasidic Jewish Halloween costume, would I fear that the boy was Irish Catholics, Negroes, Navajo or Yazidi.
But maybe not so simple. For example, if this little boy, dressed as an Orthodox Jew, is a theater lover who wants to play Tevye from The Fiddler on the Roof? Well, that will be cute. When I was ten years old, I fell in love with a musical, and if you forced me to dress up for Halloween, I might choose a role for the African-American drama “Dream Girl.” A few years ago, I was obsessed with Diana Ross.
My parents will have a good sense of not letting me play Diane Rose without being black. But in cases like Tevye, we might hear from Yale scholar Erika Christakis of Yale who wrote in his notorious e-mail: “Pretend play is the basis for most cognitive tasks, and in my opinion We want to be an incentive to exercise our imagination, not to limit it. ”
Kristakis is a former kindergarten teacher, and she is definitely right, at least, in the children’s clothing preferences, “fantasy personality and wholesale culture is different.”
So far, we are fortunate in our children’s clothing choices. But if Ally is obsessed with fairies? Or Anna and martial arts? May a man of short stature dress up as a feudal Japanese mercenary? After nine NBC warriors of the NBC season, I guess the answer is yes.
I’m glad that this year Anna’s going as a witch. Nobody, except everybody who practices nature-based religions that they identify with witchcraft, could get upset about that.
Mark Oppenheimer, a contributing writer to Opinion, is the host of Unorthodox, the podcast of Tablet magazine.
