Autumn is officially upon us and I have been over-indulging in the scarf wearing, cider drinking, scary movie watching weather this October. As the leaves start to change colour and the temperature slowly starts to dip below 70 degrees, I’ve been talking in excess to my friends about what Halloween costumes they’re going to sport later this month. I’ve gotten ideas from popular tv shows, book characters, and even toys like a transformer or crayons.

While media attention has been focused on the ever-growing clown epidemic plaguing the country, people around me worry about their safety if someone chooses to dress up as one. They worry in their fake Native American headdresses and their Bollywood-themed ensembles about their possibility of someone harming them. What they don’t realize is that they’re also harming others, but in a different way.

Of course, clowns are something to worry about right now. The violence associated with them at this time has everyone on the edge of their seats as schools are closed and campuses go into lockdown at the mere sight of them. But this is a temporary issue. Five years from now, we’ll look back and wonder what we were so worried about. In the long run, the repeated problem of wearing cultures as a costume has extended its reach and has no sign of slowing down.

Cultural appropriation for the sake of a Halloween costume is a larger issue that does more symbolic damage than many people realize. On top of that, many of these costumes serve to perpetuate the stereotype of a culture, only focusing on the expected symbols a society has to offer. This violence against another culture makes the individual feel unseen, unheard, and makes them feel like a joke; like the way they live has been transformed into a commodity to be sported by people that “just want to look cute at a party.”

I was happy to see multiple posters hung around my campus last fall advocating the use of other costumes instead of donning the look of another culture. In the end, it’s culturally insensitive and you shouldn’t want to be an asshole. If you see someone dressing like that on Halloween, call them out on it, because it isn’t okay. Don’t be afraid to speak up. A lot of the time, these people didn’t take the time to think about how insensitive they were being, or they didn’t get to read an awesome article like this that calls out the practice as a load of bull.

Inspired by this I’ve made my own list of alternative costumes to wear in case you now realize that your geisha costume is a form of cultural appropriation.

Instead of a _____, wear:

An ostrich costume so you can bury your head in the sand for being racially insensitive.

A clown costume so people can tackle you to the ground.

Or if you’ve actually learned something:

A costume of Einstein so you can flaunt that you’re smarter for reading this article.