While Halloween has always been associated with spooks, candies and adorable children, for many people the best part of Halloween has always been dressing up as stereotypical, ignorant depictions of other cultures. In recent years, however, under the rallying cry of “My Culture is not a Costume,” people from a variety of communities have pointed out how harmful it can be to treat somebody’s entire heritage as if it was just a pair of plastic vampire fangs for you to slobber all over. Don’t worry though: if you’re still dying to spend your Halloween depicting a poorly researched and grossly misrepresented version of another culture, we’ve compiled a list of cultures you can probably still get away with appropriating.
1. Roman
While you may not be able to trace your lineage back to the ancient empire of swords and sandals, those two accessories are almost all you need to pretend you’re a member of this long-dead culture. The best part is, a fallen empire can’t speak out about being misrepresented because they don’t exist anymore!
2. Elvish
Putting on makeup to look like another race is always wrong, unless we’re talking about a pair of pointy ears and a race that isn’t real! Don’t even worry about getting shot by a perfectly aimed arrow for your act of disrespect toward their ancient ways!
3. Viking
A classic. Put on a helmet with horns sticking out of it and you’re already wearing something that bears no resemblance to anything any real Viking has ever worn! This dead culture has been misrepresented for generations, so why stop now?
4. Culture Club
(YouTube)
(We all know Culture Club! Boy George! And the rest. Do you really want to hurt them? Do you really want to make them cry? Don’t worry, you can’t! Even though they have the word culture in their name they are actually a band! You’ll feel like a real Karma Chameleon as you appropriate the night away!
5. Bacterial
This culture might not be that simple to identify in costume form, but the upshot is that you can’t hurt a culture that doesn’t have the capacity to recognize it is being appropriated. Remember, yogurt is healthier than candy!
6. Culture Shock
Less of a costume, more of a feeling. All you really need to do is imagine you come from a place that doesn’t celebrate Halloween, then walk around trying to figure out why your people are being needlessly mocked! It’s fun! Except not really!
7. The Arts & Culture section of the newspaper
Nothing is spookier than watching something die a slow death, making this depiction of a subset of print media a perfect Halloween costume! Best of all nobody will be angry about it because culture journalists will just be happy you know they exist!
8. Neanderthal
Did they even have a culture? Maybe! Who knows? They’re all dead! So grab some basic stone tools and hunker down shorter than modern homo sapiens without fear of offending anyone!
9. Gamer
Gamers aren’t an ethnicity or racial group, they’re not a persecuted minority and they have no heritage, so appropriating online video game culture should be just fine! But on second thought, this one might get you some credible death threats, so maybe not.
