AIn Culture
Costume
How playing dress-up can be
an ethnic put-down
By Anissa R. Stambouli
Carnival activity and playful disguise
have existed as a form of human celebration
and enter tainment long before the
commercialization of Halloween. While
costuming can be associated with various
types of performance, artistic expression
or personal festivities, at what point does
one’s choice of dress-up begin to put-down
another’s cultural identity?
The boundary between cultural appropriation and cultural sharing is a fluid separation—impossible to concretely differentiate
ISTOCKPHOTO/MORDOLFF
as it continually oscillates between intention
and interpretation.
As a rising conversational trend, “cultural
appropriation” is an endless storm of debate
swirling in the universe of the Internet, with
intraworlds like Twitter and Reddit spinning
out of orbit from the onslaught of hateful
accusations and righteous indignation. Most
recently, a mixed group of models decorated
with pastel dreadlocks in a Marc Jacobs show
prompted a media shower of response, again
demanding the question, “is this cultural
appropriation or cultural sharing?”