It's...well, it's Tuesday, because your friendly neighborhood maintainer got confused about the days of the week yesterday! My apologies. Pretend it's MMMMonday (or don't, if Mondays bum you out), and this is your weekly dose of maintainer-curated content intended to enrich your VP experience. ;)

In honor of... Tuesday and some discussion at VP's Facebook page this week,
we want to talk about Halloween costumes. But not in a "what are you going to be?" kind of way - we're going to share some links about
cultural appropriation, sexualizing costumes, and other Halloween-related things you may want to read about before choosing your costumes this year (if you are someone who celebrates Halloween, of course!)First, the links:
Native Appropriations: An Open Letter to PocaHottiesDon't Mess Up When You Dress Up, @ Bitch MagazineA poster from a public awareness series about this issue:
Miss Representation on representation and options in Halloween costumes for kidsAnd lastly,
Take Back Halloween, a website devoted to providing creative costume ideas, inspired by powerful, legendary, important women from all over the world. This is intended to provide an alternative to the intense focus on sexy costumes, if an alternative is what you seek. :)
After that little mini-links-roundup, let's discuss! Were you aware of the issue of cultural appropriation in costuming already, or as younger folks? (I know I dressed up as an "Indian" as a kid, apparently my parents had no idea there was anything problematic about that.)
Have you seen racist costumes in your neighborhoods? Have you been hurt by others dressing up as someone of your culture or race?
And what about those "sexy ____(fill in the blank" costumes - what do you think about that? Would you ever dress up as a "sexy hamburger"? (Seriously,
that is really a costume.)
Do you like the opportunity to get all vamped up (pun! sort of!), or does it make you uncomfortable?
If you have kids, do you have issues regarding the sexualization and/or limited options of costumes marketed to children? And yes, a bonus question, because I can't help it:
if you celebrate Halloween, what will you dress up as this year?