Halloween: Uncomfortable and Restricting for Some Asian-Americans

After this year’s Halloween in particular, I was reminded of all the ways Halloween can affect people, especially people of color.

I was reminded especially of this when I was at work on Halloween day. I’m a Filipina girl who works as a preschool gymnastics coach, and as a Disney lover in the Halloween spirit, I dressed in Rapunzel’s famous purple dress with my hair in a braid. I was in love with the costume, and so were the kids.

A girl, most likely five to seven years old, walked up and asked me who I was. I told her I was Rapunzel, and she disagreed. She explained that I wasn’t Rapunzel because I wasn’t blond, and then promptly walked away.

I don’t hold any grudge against this child. I can’t expect her to know any better at such a young age. This interaction was significant to me only because it gave me flashbacks to the Halloween of 2016, when I was in fourth grade, and both myself and another girl in my class were planning to dress as Hermione. We weren’t allowed to wear our costumes to school, but we described them vividly to each other. She had slept in many little braids to allow her light brown hair to frizz up the way Hermione’s does. I had purchased a light brown wig for my costume but decided against wearing it, as I decided it was too similar to my skin tone to look any good. I specifically remember feeling jealous that she was able to look like Hermione, while I would just be viewed as a generic Gryffindor.

I don’t hold a grudge against that girl either. She didn’t do anything wrong. Neither of these scenarios was anyone’s fault. The reasons I was left feeling bad about myself were far more complex than the actions of a single person.

I think the dilemma of Asians on Halloween is explained best by Jenny Han, in her bestselling book To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before. At the beginning of chapter 43, her Korean-American character Lara Jean says, “There are very limited options for Asian girls on Halloween. Like one year I went as Velma from Scooby-Doo, but people just asked me if I was a manga character… So now I’m committed to dressing up as Asian characters exclusively.” Lara Jean goes on to add, “I wish I never have to answer a What are you? question ever again” (Han 225). As an Asian-American author, Jenny Han did an incredible job summarizing the feeling many Asian-Americans, myself included, have felt on Halloween. Though this quote from the book was likely looked over by many other readers, it resonated with me.

Lara Jean’s aim to dress only as Asian characters is a difficult one to achieve. This is because of the lack of Asian characters in the media, an issue brought up frequently by many, and responded to with little change. The reality is, out of the 1,300 top films produced from the years 2007-2019, only 44 (or 0.03%) starred or co-starred an Asian or Pacific Islander character, and 14 of those characters were played by Dwayne Johnson. This leaves many Asian Americans, such as Lara Jean, feeling uncomfortably restricted in their potential Halloween costumes.

I asked one of my Indian-American friends, Anika Ray, to share her story regarding Halloween. She told me that for a couple of years, she had dressed as white characters for Halloween, such as Belle, and coincidentally enough, Rapunzel and Hermione, just as I had. She explained that while trick or treating, people were always instantly able to recognize the costumes of her white friends…but not hers. Ray recounted, “Naturally, I got tired of this, and just ended up dressing as a generic witch for four years straight just to avoid the long-winded explanation of who I was supposed to be.”

There is no clear way to solve this problem, and no solution can happen overnight, but one way we can make progress is by putting more Asian characters in the media. Jenny Han did this with her character Lara Jean. The Halloween after the To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before movie was released, Han posted this on Instagram. The post features six photos of different Asian girls dressed as Lara Jean for Halloween. The caption includes the quote from her book, “there are very limited options for Asian girls on Halloween,” followed by the words, “Not this Halloween, Lara Jean.” Han writes this referencing the many Asian girls across the world who viewed Lara Jean as a new possibility for a costume. This was a great step by Han in the right direction, and should be replicated by all writers, producers, artists, and creators from now on.

Of course, there isn’t anything wrong with dressing as a character outside of your race, and of course, there isn’t an inherent problem in asking anyone who they are dressed as for Halloween either. The ideal scenario would be for every person of every race to feel as though their Halloween costume options are limitless, but unfortunately, it can just feel awkward when a well meaning person questions your costume when who you are feels so obvious in your mind. As Asian-American writer Steve Haruch puts it in his article “The Struggle Of Being Asian American For Halloween,” “Part of choosing a costume is how well you will embody the character, and race is part of what makes a costume legible.”

Similarly to Anika and Lara Jean, Haruch spends much of the article explaining his numerous attempts to dress as different characters for Halloween and then failing to be recognized. However, his experience differs from both previous quotees, as the characters he dressed as were actually Asian, and he still was not recognized, as there are so rarely easily recognizable Asian characters. He only found himself able to dress as sidekicks, because not everyone wants to be Mulan, Cho Chang, or Dwayne Johnson. This circles back to the problem of a lack of Asian characters in the media.

Halloween is yet another minute, but still valid, aspect of why representation is so incredibly important. It gives people a wider selection of characters they can portray for the night. But to be honest, I believe we should remove our mental racial restrictions in costumes altogether. Be whomever you’d like, and if someone questions it, answer honestly. We can grow, develop, and learn all together as a society. Who’s with me?