I’m not trying to be flip. I too was offended at the 7-year-old dressed up in a KKK outfit. Or if I saw someone dressed as Hilter.
But I don’t mind if a kid is dressed like a blood-sucking vampire. Or rotting zombie. Or Freddy Kruger. Surely those creatures are also morally reprehensible, but no one thinks the kid wants to grow up to act like those monsters.
Something about real-life tragedy being out-of-bounds?
One man’s meat is another man’s poison. This is not new.
Vampires, zombies, and cheesy 80s dream monsters aren’t real. Klan members did real bad things to real people, within living memory. Pretty much all the stories about offensive costumes involve dressing up like real people. There is a parodic element to costumes, and some things like terrorism victims shouldn’t be made light of.
Some people still dress up in KKK robes and Nazi regalia to make reprehensible political points. Vampires, zombies, and Freddie Kruger are not political symbols.
Pirates, vikings, and Mongol warriors at one time were real and authentic sources of bloodthirsty terror. Three hundred years from now maybe kids will be able to dress up as Nazi stormtroopers, but not while there are still Holocaust survivors alive.
I think it’s very hypocritical how we would be horrified if little kids showed up in a Nazi costume, and yet we adore them when they don pirate costume.
Unlike zombies and vampires, pirates really existed. They still do today, in places like Somalia. They are disgusting murderous thugs. I don’t see why they should get a free pass.
The pirates in movies like Pirates of the Caribbean are for the most part, fiction, dreamed up by Hollywood. They don’t resemble the pirates in days past, and they don’t resemble the ones operating today in Somalia. I suspect you’d get objections if kids dressed up as Somali pirates.
Have you ever seen a kid dressed as a Somali pirate? I think they mostly dress in baggy shirts and camouflage pants. They might be a little difficult to pick out on the street.
The RPG might give them away. Depends on the neighborhood, I guess.
Because they aren’t in fact “morally reprehensible.” It’s their nature to do the things they do; they’re simply acting in accordance with their identity. Would you call a great white shark “morally reprehensible”? It does what it does, in order to survive.
And yet no one would be offended by a 7 year old dressed up like a ghost or Charlie Chaplin.
Generally, the only costumes that normal people are offended by are ones that can be construed as “racist”. But even then, there are grey areas. Most people would consider it racist for a white person to dress in black face. Is it racist for a white person to dress in a costume as a particular character who happens to be black? Like what if me and my friends are going to a Star Wars themed party and our one black friend wants to go as Chewbacca? Are my choices to go as either a second Han or Luke or is it ok for me, as a white man, to go as Lando Calarissian?
You can get away with dressing as Lando. When you start blacking your face, you get into problematic territory.
Interestingly enough, we had a black trick-or-treater dressed as a vampire come by our house Halloween night. She appeared to be in her teens and had painted her face white in keeping with the historical image of Dracula as a pale white person (and also, I suspect, to make the fake blood easier to see). I, as a white (but non-vampiric) person, was not offended in the least.
The answer to the OP, and to why my example would likely offend far fewer people than a white kid dressing as Blackula, is cultural mores. The same general reason we in the US look on eating dog meat as repulsive while other cultures see it as a delicacy. Different cultures “evolve” to find different things offensive.
I haven’t seen any offensive costumes.
I may be impossible to offend. But I can see when things are in bad taste.
When I see the two girls dressed as the murder of my cousin (911 WTC attack) I am not offended. I feel something but its hard to put into words. But offended isn’t it. I can tell because I didn’t say “harumph.” But it certainly is in bad taste.