94 Days: More Moana Costume Drama

I was going to write a nice little piece about the new artwork released today detailing the quick service restaurant coming to the new Toy Story Land in Hollywood Studios. I even had the photo saved and the article I was going to reference pulled up. Then I saw this.

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

It's in Cosmopolitan Magazine (which my friend says is "the first hint that it's crap") but was written by the editors of Redbook. And it really IS crap. But it's worse than that. It's truly racist. Let me explain.

The Redbook editors are using the cultural appropriation argument here. They say that since Moana is a Pacific Islander no one but other Pacific Islanders should be able to dress up like her, or wear things meant to mimic or evoke the whole Pacific Islander motif. They reference an article on another website written by a mom who was worried that her daughter's preference for either an Elsa or Moana costume left her to choose between reinforcing "white privilege" (Elsa) or cultural appropriation. She clearly thinks the later is much worse.

The argument is that dressing up in another culture's traditional garb is making fun of that culture, like wearing blackface was a way for white actors to make fun of African Americans. But kids' Halloween costumes aren't blackface. More importantly, kids aren't racist. Unless they are taught to be, kids just don't see things that way. And that is where the problem lies.

Children want to dress as Moana because they admire her. She's strong and smart and independent, so this is a good thing.....in the sane world. When you tell your child that dressing as a person from another culture is wrong, you are planting the seeds of racism. You are teaching your child that superficial differences (like skin pigmentation and the latitude and longitude of your birthplace) are more important than the qualities (like courage and resourcefulness and independence) that your child admires in her heroine. You are, in essence, quoting the standard White Supremacist dogma and that makes you a bad parent. And, if I might add, a bad person.

Lately Disney has done a great job making the Princesses in its movies much more than just pretty faces. They have given us warriors and leaders and heroes for our daughters to admire. They have drawn on the rich traditions of Ireland and Norway and China and Polynesia and our own New Orleans to create stories that speak to all of us, that show us that heroes can look like anyone and can come from anywhere. To try to reverse that progress with holier than thou, wrong-headed, ignorant and small-minded virtue signalling is horrible.