Hello my lil' fairies
Sometimes, I'll be watching daytime telly (Loose Women, This Morning etc) and I'll stumble upon a topic of discussion that really sparks a reaction inside of me which I normally respond to by tweets. This morning I was watching Good Morning Britain and a topic came up that I knew needed a lot more than just 240 characters. It's something that is extremely close to my heart and really relevant at the moment.
I am a massive Disney fan and meeting the characters and Princesses at Disneyworld are memories I won't forget. It's also Halloween and millions of little children are going out to buy costumes of their favourite Princesses like Cinderella, Elsa and Jasmine. So, you can imagine my surprise when I heard Susanna Reid and Richard Madeley talking about the cultural appropriation of Halloween costumes, and in particular Moana and Elsa costumes. My view might be controversial in this PC society but, as someone of ethnic origin, I think I am pretty qualified to talk about my views on this subject.
Halloween is a time for little kids to pick out their role model and dress like them for FUN! I don't think that at any point they look further into their costume decision and think of wearing something for a malicious reason. The woman on GMB spoke about the offensiveness of dressing as Princesses of a specific ethnicity who may have been persecuted or had troubles (as is the case with Moana and Polynesia) as it was seen to mock them. She also spoke about how dressing up as Elsa was promoting white superiority which is a bunch of bull to me personally.
These films in no way come off as offensive or superior when they were released and, in the case of Moana, they tried to stay true to the roots by having the cast of various descent such as Samoan and Hawaiian. They also would have done a lot of research to make sure that all of the costumes were culturally correct for children to wear. To say that children wearing these outfits can be seen as malicious is really taking it too far! Children aren't painting their faces to match skin tones (which would be offensive) but are dressing up as strong female role models from films they adore. Same with Elsa, they don't see her skin tone but her strong feminist character!
This topic also has endless controversies that could lead to harmless dressing up being seen as something people avoid in case they offend someone. Also, if it's offensive to dress up as another ethnicity or group of people, do we have to stick to dressing to our own culture? Am I only allowed to dress up as Jasmine because of my skin tone and if I was to dress up as Cinderella *which I did aged 7 for my dads birthday*, would it be offensive? Also, is this applying to those who work at Disneyworld? Should we stop having the characters out and about because a small minority think it's offensive instead of seeing it as an escapism for children?
I think that there is room for conversations on cultural appropriation but its place is not within children's costumes or even costumes in general. As long as it's for the right reasons, why shouldn't you be allowed to dress as a Princess of different ethnicity if they're your idols - no matter what age! I don't see innocent Princess outfits as racist and until it becomes offensive, then I see no issue in it. These costumes are designed with reality in mind and to be as culturally correct as possible as to not offend its people. I think we need to stop trivialising these kinds of things because children don't see these outfits like that! To them, it's innocent fun and a day to be a Princess.
Are we going to far in being politically correct? I think there are other aspects of society that are more in need of addressing rather than costumes. We are lucky enough that there are now a multitude of Princesses from different backgrounds so we should embrace it to educate our children not scare them.
What does everyone else think, let me know your honest opinion!
That's all for now my dears,
xx
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