It’s only mid-September, but already, feminists and social justice warriors are warning revelers to tread carefully when it comes to selecting the appropriate Halloween costume.
First, Disney released costumes celebrating its upcoming feature film Moana, only to find out that an outfit that’s mostly brown skin and tribal tattoos had immediately turned the nation’s preschoolers into tiny racists.
Now, thanks to a new national furor over the JonBenet Ramsey case—the nearly 20-year-old unsolved murder of a child pageant queen— Bustle and others are warning potential Halloween party-goers to forgo their timely JonBenet costumes.
Granted, it seems only two people on Twitter have mentioned the prospect so far, but that’s two too many for Internet feminists, who immediately decried the idea as “problematic” and “trivializing” of JonBenet’s story. And all that is, at least, partly understandable. Regardless of her enduring cultural impact, JonBenet still died a tragic and untimely death.
But Bustle didn’t stop there. It turns out, dressing as any “other victims of violent crime” is just as distasteful, which should be news to anyone dressing up as, well, basically any of the traditional Halloween ghouls. After all, Dracula didn’t die a peaceful death. Ghosts haunt their Earthly counterparts because of a deep, spiritual unrest. Murdered prom queens and zombie brides had to end up un-dead somehow.
Violent costumes, at least, seemed to be among the last acceptable Halloween outfits left, after every Halloween trope from gypsy fortune tellers to wicked witches has been deemed either wildly insensitive or cultural appropriation.
Last year a Colorado University professor suggested that “probably your safest bet is to dress as the devil” after a Denver Post columnist suggested there was no 100% foolproof costume.
Microaggressing against Satanists? Internet feminists will not be cool with that.