Tis the season for spooky decorations, costumes, and kids knocking at your door in droves asking for candy. This is also the season for the return of the SJW police, to make sure kid costumes are culturally sensitive this frightening holiday.  This year it’s not the stereotypical costumes causing a frenzy, it’s Disney princesses. The SJW overlords are here to tell you which costume you are and aren’t allowed to wear based purely on the color of your skin. From the image on the left….there aren’t a lot of options…maybe a ninja…nope…fairy…of course not….um… Robot…but that’ll probably offend someone too.

Storytime: As a kid, growing up in the 90’s, I LOVED the X-men Animated Series. It was one of my first introduction to comic book characters. It led to a lifelong passion and obsession in comic books and superheroes. One of my first favorites was Storm, who has the power to control the weather. She was strong, had white hair, and could fly. Whenever I would play X-men with my friends, I always wanted to be Storm. Believe me, if I could have, I would have dressed up as Storm for Halloween. I didn’t see a black character. I saw a strong woman who faced her phobias, who fought bad guys, and stood up for others against tyranny. But because I am not black, neither I, nor any future children I might have would ever be allowed by the PC police to dress up as the iconic character, created by two men, one of whom was Jewish and passed away this year. His name was Len Wein.

Poor little girls who want to dress up as the latest Disney princess, Moana, are out of luck, apparently. Cosmopolitan, sharing an article from Redbook,  is here to tell us why that is. The movie’s plot and songs are okay, but its crowning achievement was that it was heralded as being a great representation of the Polynesian people. A little kid doesn’t know anything about that. All they see is a cool character they want to emulate.

Cosmopolitan and Redbook encourage parents to “be better” than when we were children who dressed up as our favorite characters regardless of race. I guess I was racist the entire time and I just didn’t know it. The article states, “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.”  Every time the concept of cultural appropriation comes up, the irony of it is that more often than not, it is not the person of the culture in question that is calling it appropriation. It’s that white SJW person behind a computer (with some exceptions). This has happened when light-skinned people wear kimonos or saris.

There is a link to a person who says their culture (the Polynesian culture) is not a costume. Fine. I agree. But Moana is a fictional character and while an accurate representation of said people, she is not real.  Dressing up as Moana is not turning the Polynesian people into a joke, nor does it reinforce some kind of stereotype. I’m not going to throw a fit every time a non-Jewish person dresses up as Magneto. Come on! Let’s be real here.

Parents should talk to their children about costume options. But why would you kill a kid’s desire to be their favorite character, just because their skin colors don’t match up?

Moana is a really special character to young girls of Polynesian descent who have never seen a Disney Princess who looks like them, just like how Tiana from The Princess and the Frog likely resonated with young Black women who had waited decades to see themselves represented. White girls have plenty of princesses to choose from — there’s Belle, Ariel, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty … you get the idea. 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.

Moana is a character like any other. I never got a Disney character that looked like me. There were, and still are, very few Jewish characters on television that aren’t stereotyped in one way or another, even less, if any, superheroes. Kids identify with characters for so many reasons that don’t always have anything to do with race. Would you really tell a kid he can’t dress up as his favorite character simply because that character is of a different race? How racist can you be? Some African American girls will dress up as Tiana and girls of Polynesian descent could dress up as Moana. They could also dress up as literally any other character in fiction and popular culture.

So what does this have to do with a seemingly innocent princess costume? Pretty much everything. It’s important to align with, and stand up for, people of color and minorities, and a key part of that is showing respect for their cultures. To pretend to be a racial, ethnic, or religious minority when you’re not makes light of their history — and reinforces a deeply problematic power dynamic, wherein white people use, then discard, pieces of cultures they’ve subjugated for centuries just because they can.

If a girl dresses up as Moana she is just going to be in a costume, as a fictional character, that is not in anyway insulting the people on whom the characters of the film were based on. She will not parade around pretending to be an expert, nor will she claim to be Polynesian…if she can even pronounce the word. She is just going to be a character, get candy, and pass out after the sugar rush sets in. They’re little girls, not the KKK. When you scream about Trump and banning refugees, and this is the thing you want to focus on, it just shows you don’t actually care about the real problems plaguing this country, or the world. You just find everything offensive.

To clarify: No one is telling you to ban your child from belting out Moana songs in your living room. They’re good songs!…But there’s no better time than when a kid is in their formative years to teach them that it’s not OK to mock other people’s cultures. That’s the sort of attitude that will ultimately bleed into the way they behave and think as they get older — do they respect the personhood of those unlike themselves, or is their only concern doing whatever they think is fun?

Okay. Moana is a fictional character, dressing up as a fictional character for two hours and begging for candy is not mocking a culture, it is dressing up as a character.  There is a suggestion in there to take the opportunity to teach kids about Polynesian culture. But that can be done at any time, anywhere. Give me a break. Please. If a kid dresses up as Moana for a day, they are not magically going to turn into a racist. That’s not how that works. They will not suddenly go shoot people, or torch places of worship if they dress up as x character. You can and should teach kids about other cultures, and you can still do so without preventing them from dressing up as their favorite characters. There’s stereotypical and downright dumb costumes, but you cannot prevent people from being silly. And yes, I do include peopel who want to dress up as Rabbis and nuns this holday season. Chill out and stop policing everything.