Disability Isn’t a Halloween Costume

What we think is "scary" is often simply people who are different from us.

As a young girl with scoliosis and kyphosis, the only representations I ever saw of people like me were “hunchbacks” in the movies. These were typically ugly and deformed men with extreme spinal curvatures like Quasimodo.

More “sympathetic” images of the "hunchback" tended to present these disabled characters as pitiable and socially isolated, whereas dehumanizing representations presented them as monstrous or evil. Either way, l learned as a child that my difference was a source of shame, stigma, and horror. As I grew older, the back brace I was required to wear only amplified my profound sense of exclusion and otherness.

If you're dressing up for Halloween or costuming your kids, please remember that how you represent villainy, evil, and what's "frightening" has a significant impact on people with bodily, limb, or facial differences. From the Phantom of the Opera to the Joker to Dr. Poison from Wonder Woman, scarred and disfigured villains have been a persistent trope in Hollywood cinema.

In recent years, activists have raised awareness about the harm caused by the disfigured/disabled villain trope. But many people still use scars, burns, prosthetic limbs, and other physical disfigurements as "props" for Halloween costumes without thinking about how they are conflating physical disability with ugliness, evil, or horror.

People with apparent (and non-apparent) differences aren't "scary." What's truly scary is the harm and injustice that ableism causes in our communities and organizations.

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