How many Halloween headlines like this will it take for celebrities to stop wearing blackface or dressing up as any sort of minority? Because this year, it is Hillary Duff’s honor to be dragged on the internet for stepping in it, costume-wise. She and her boyfriend Jason Walsh stepped out in a culturally insensitive couples costume this weekend while attending a party thrown by George Clooney. (Quick aside – Hillary Duff getting an invite to George Clooney’s party is definitely an accomplishment for her and should be applauded. Way to move up the ladder, Duff.)
The costume, for which Duff dressed up as a pilgrim (complete with a toy gun) and Walsh wore a Native American costume that included him donning a headdress and face paint. Before even getting into the relationship between the pilgrims and the native populations of the Americas, it should have been pretty obvious that the Native American costume was a bad idea. Walsh can’t even claim that he was unaware of the meaning behind the headdress, or the cultural appropriation that he was taking part in since that very debate is happening right now. The Cleveland Indians are in the World Series so naturally people are wearing red face to games and the back-and-forth over whether the team’s logo is bad enough to change has come up again.
Naturally, people online were not too happy with the couple’s tone deaf costume.
https://twitter.com/MsPackyetti/status/792472416366845956
https://twitter.com/RareGawd/status/792406512140451841
A Native American and a pilgrim walk into a bar on Halloween. Oh wait.. it's just a washed up Disney star and her boyfriend #HillaryDuff pic.twitter.com/3bjBnsyTL5
— Lauren (@ljohnson2006) October 30, 2016
https://twitter.com/A_Gallivant/status/792760619573227520
1. WTF Hillary Duff? And 2. Who even thinks of that as a couples costume?
— intimidating girl (@crxssida) October 29, 2016
Maybe next year Duff and her boyfriend, and other celebrities faced with a similar decision, will decide just to go as Sleeping Beauty and her prince or something. Easy, straight forward, and definitely not racist.
(via Mic)
