Maybe Don't Dress Your Kid Up As Moana This Halloween?

[Hekate]

117. Oh ffs. It's HALLOWEEN. By its very nature it is transgressive. Standards change with the times...

...to be sure. No one in their right mind would wear blackface and go as Aunt Jemima, and good riddance to that, say I. My uncles used to commit minor acts of vandalism (Trick or Treat!) tipping over outhouses and at least one Model T Ford. We don't laugh that off as boyish hijinks any more, do we?

However, my late sister in law Patty used to lead her girls on excursions to TP selected houses. Jack-O-Lanterns on my street routinely get rolled downhill by older kids after the littles have gone home.

Disney Princesses, some have argued, are already bleached-out representations/ stereotypes of womanhood and girlhood. Little girls of all ethnicities really, really want to be "princesses" and ride sparkleponies. For gods' sake. They're under 10. They need to role-play, and if imagining themselves as a different ethnicity at least leaves a trace that opens them, a few years hence, to try to see the world a different way...

As for Moana and Maui, as a mythologist and kama'aina I watched the movie with just a bit of gritted teeth, but tried to take it for the entertainment it is. The kids adored it, here in California, and my niece wanted a Moana doll for her birthday -- I got the last one at the mall.

Maui is a demigod, and Trickster -- not a complete buffoon, really. Iz wrote a song about him callling Maui the Hawaiian Supahman. He's a culture hero across Polynesia. The marks on his skin are Polynesian tattoos, and a costume that replicates those is hardly racist. From my seat they looked authentic enough, but I don't have a picture in front of me. As for Moana, points to Disney for giving her a somewhat authentic body-type, and making her a spunky girl.

I do not know what is going on with a site that calls itself raceconscious.org -- are they by any chance the same people that tried to tell all of us we can't wear hoop earrings unless we are Latina? Because of cultural appropriation?