The Representation Project

But we were also reminded that the problem of representation on Halloween isn’t just limited to gender, but often intersects painfully with issues of race. Take, for example, the trend of dressing up young girls as “Indian princesses” or the plethora of ”sexy Indian” costumes now available on Amazon.com (we found at least 50).

Not only are these costumes stereotypical and inaccurate depictions of a culture (there are millions of American Indians and Alaska Natives in the U.S., and they don’t dress like this) but they are primarily being bought and worn by those who do not belong to that culture. By turning an entire ethnic group into a costume or “look,” we are dehumanizing the actual people of that group.

From Adrienne K. at NativeAppropriations.com:

The image of a warbonnet and warpaint wearing Indian is one that has been created and perpetuated by Hollywood and only bears minimal resemblance to traditional regalia of Plains tribes. It furthers the stereotype that Native peoples are one monolithic culture, when in fact there are 500+ distinct tribes with their own cultures. It also places Native people in the historic past, as something that cannot exist in modern society. We don’t walk around in ceremonial attire everyday, but we still exist and are still Native.

This practice is always offensive, but it’s especially insensitive to dress up as a hypersexualized “reservation dreamgirl“ while ignoring the exceptionally high rate of sexual assault American Indian women face.

In fact, according to the Department of Justice, American Indian and Alaskan Native women are 2.5 times more likely to be raped or sexually assaulted than women in the US in general. And 70% of the violence American Indians face is committed by people of a different race.

And it’s not just women and girls who are encouraged to mock this culture. Boys and men can purchase “chief” costumes and those which perpetuate demeaning and racist stereotypes of American Indian men as “savages.” And we still actually have an NFL team named the “redskins” and numerous college football mascots which lead ESPN commentators to feel comfortable doingthis on national television.

More from Adrienne:

You don’t understand what it feels like to be me. I am a Native person. You are (most likely) a white person. You walk through life everyday never having the fear of someone mis-representing your people and your culture. You don’t have to worry about the vast majority of your people living in poverty, struggling with alcoholism, domestic violence, hunger, and unemployment caused by 500+ years of colonialism and federal policies aimed at erasing your existence. You don’t walk through life everyday feeling invisible, because the only images the public sees of you are fictionalized stereotypes that don’t represent who you are at all. You don’t know what it’s like to care about something so deeply and know at your core that it’s so wrong, and have others in positions of power dismiss you like you’re some sort of over-sensitive freak.

American Indian and Alaskan Native women and men are not make-believe characters for us to dress up as or teach our kids to play at – they are real human beings living and breathing in our community. Tonight, let’s all make an effort to avoid costumes which exoticize American Indians or any ethnic group.

Imran is the Director of Social Media and Outreach at MissRepresentation.org. Follow him on Twitter @imransiddiquee

Using seemingly battered or dead women is actually a disturbingly common theme in fashion photography. And we’re #NotBuyingIt.

Click here to Tweet NARS and let them know how you feel.

Kazan’s Oscar-winning (if problematic) original film can be read as a challenge to sexual repression in America in the 1920s and 30s, but NARS imagery doesn’t really retain any of that critique. Instead it is directly inspired* by the work of photographer Guy Bourdin. According toTemptalia.com:

As a child, NARS Founder and Creative Director François Nars discovered Guy Bourdin’s work in the pages of French Vogue. It was then that Nars was first inspired to become a makeup artist.

It’s important to point out that Bourdin is actually famous for using disturbing images of seemingly dead or abused women. More on Bourdin from Utata.org:

That casually sadistic treatment of women wasn’t limited to the photograph. His behavior toward his models, his wife, his girlfriends was neglectful and dismissive at best, cruel and abusive at worst. He was often at his worst. Bourdin wasn’t simply unaware of their suffering, sometimes he appeared to enjoy it. On one occasion Bourdin wanted to cover the pale bodies of two models in tiny black pearls. He had his assistants cover the models with glue and attach the pearls. The layer of glue interfered with the skin’s ability to regulate temperature and exchange oxygen; both models passed out. As his assistants hurried to remove the pearls and the glue, Bourdin is reported to have said “Oh, it would be beautiful to photograph them dead in bed.”

He passed away in 1991 but his influence has, unfortunately, been ubiquitous in fashion photography since. One imagines that François Nars and other creative directors find Bourdin’s blatant misogyny edgy and/or thrillingly controversial. But in reality this (lazy, dangerous) trend has now been around for decades (or one could argue, forever) and has become so terribly normalized that this November they’ll be selling it at Sephoras across the country.

Please come up with new, less awful ideas people. K, thanks.

Thanks to @RaquelEvita on Twitter for the tip.

*UPDATE: More than inspired, the photo here seems to have been actually taken by Bourdin in 1997 (if slightly edited here). This is actually fairly significant, because this means the photo doesn’t feature any NARS makeup. Whatever your interpretation of Bourdin’s original, we know it was not intended to sell NARS makeup. So the company’s decision to use the image – representative of Bourdin’s long fascination with “violence, sex and death” – for this purpose, is perhaps even more troubling.