Tasteless Halloween Costume

[Jester]

I was surprised I hadn't seen this posted in here yet, but I came across this story tonight, of this woman in Michigan dressing up for a Halloween office party as a Boston Marathon bombing victim. You can find one story covering it here.

Now, I don't agree with some of the vicious reactions to it. Yes, this woman was an idiot, the costume was tasteless, and she certainly deserved a good karmic smack. And she DID receive such a karmic smack when people discovered naked pictures of her on her social media, and spread them far more widely than she probably ever expected them to. But to lose her job? Have her life and the life of her parents threatened? I don't think she deserved that.

To be fair, she made the choice to dress up like this, and apparently thought it was a good idea. And that it was a good idea to post a picture of herself thus costumed on social media. Which is when the fertilizer hit the windmill.

So, what do you guys think of this?

[Andara Bledin]

Tacky? Yes. Something to get worked up over? If you like giving yourself ulcers, I guess.

The people threatening her and her parents ( ) are the ones who are offensive. Bunch of craven cowards who deserve to be found and prosecuted to within an inch of their pathetic lives.

And outing her nudie pics? Not cool. And illegal in California, too.

[Ginger Tea]

I found out about this via WTFIWWY live stream, it followed a 7year old dressed as a klansman, then in Korea there were some guys dressed as the pilot and flight crew of a recent air crash where one news media didn't fact check and stated their names to be along the lines of Ho Lee Fuk and Won Hun Lo among others, I didn't know when the crash occurred but I had to wonder if it was the same crash that featured footage from the pilot of Lost as part of the black box recorder.

[Kheldarson]

There was a couple of kids who dressed as Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman.

And yes, I use kids because anybody who dresses up like this as a "joke" is obviously still juvenile, no matter the age.

[Gravekeeper]

Don't forget VP art director at Amazon in blackface as a hobo. -.

[MadMike]

I found out about this via WTFIWWY live stream, it followed a 7year old dressed as a klansman

Interestingly enough, something like that happened at my old high school shortly before I started there. Apparently one girl dressed up to look black, and three guys dressed up as KKK, and as a joke, they were chasing her all over the school. It was all in fun, and back then, it didn't seem like such a big deal, because the entire school was white. It was a rural area, with very few, if any, minorities living in the area. Of course, that would never fly today.

It wasn't until my senior year that a black family moved into the area and started attending my high school. Ironically, their last name was "White."

[mathnerd]

I think the costume is utterly tasteless, and might warrant being fired in the "I don't want somebody who makes decisions this poor working for me" line of thought, but death threats against her parents? That's going way too far. I think the people making death threats of any kind are far worse than the costume.

[Greenday]

The choice was disgraceful. It's not funny. It's not witty. She's clearly not smart and neither are her friends that she asked for their opinion.

[Andara Bledin]

Don't forget VP art director at Amazon in blackface as a hobo. -.

Until we start getting pissed at guys dressing as women, we're all a bunch of hypocrites for thinking people wearing makeup to look like a different race are anything to get bent out of shape over. Particularly when it's only when they're doing it to look black.

[hinakiba777]

I am with everyone else on this subject. The costume choice was stupid and offensive, and she deserve a little karmic slap. Losing her job was extreme, but I can understand not wanting to have someone on your team with that level of judgement.

But death threats?! Especially against her parents who did nothing wrong, are just unacceptable. No one should levy death threats against someone, especially for something as relatively harmless as a stupid halloween costume. It isn't even the most offensive costume people have worn this year.

Major Amputating the Leg to deal with a broken toe kind of moment.

[mikoyan29]

Tasteless? Yes. Stupid? Yes. Worth all the fuss? Not really.

When I was in college there was a friend of mine who was black that dressed up as a KKK guy. It was kind of funny especially all of the looks he got.

[Gravekeeper]

Until we start getting pissed at guys dressing as women, we're all a bunch of hypocrites for thinking people wearing makeup to look like a different race are anything to get bent out of shape over.

...wait, what?

[Nyoibo]

Hell, I've seen half a dozen pictures of people dressing up as boston marathon bomb victims, haven't seen any outrage over them

[Titi]

Hell, I've seen half a dozen pictures of people dressing up as boston marathon bomb victims, haven't seen any outrage over them

The internet outrage came because this stupid person had posted her Drivers License on Twitter before the pic, making it very easy to track her down. I do NOT condone what happened to her family and friends, but she obviously has a history of bad judgment when it comes to social media.

And after the apologies came out on her twitter handle, she said that they were NOT her apologizing. She was hacked and she is being targeted for being female.

[KabeRinnaul]

Until we start getting pissed at guys dressing as women, we're all a bunch of hypocrites for thinking people wearing makeup to look like a different race are anything to get bent out of shape over. Particularly when it's only when they're doing it to look black.

Yeah, this is one of those times where social and historical context really matter.

Generally, a man dressed as a woman is associated with one of two things - theater and transvestites (either as a fetish or an expression of gender identity). More importantly, it's seen as emasculating for the man doing it - the man is the butt of the joke. Now, it could be argued that this perception is itself inherently misogynistic for its implication that being feminine is weak or undesirable, but on the whole, a man in drag is generally seen as making fun of himself.

A white guy dressed done up to look like a black guy really only has one major association - white vaudeville performers who used blackface to portray African-Americans on stage, almost exclusively in a negative fashion. The joke wasn't on the performer for acting like that, the joke was "those stupid blacks, they act just like this." That history means a white person portraying a black person is forever going to have racist implications, at least in the United States (which you may know has a very charged history when it comes to black-white relations).