Daily reminder that you do not have to darken your skin to cosplay a character of another race.

Seriously, you really don’t. If you want to cosplay a Native American/Black/Asian character, you seriously don’t have to darken your skin. As a matter of fact, you really shouldn’t. When you put on yellow-face, black-face, brown-face, red-face, etc., you are participating in an extremely harmful practice that has been used to oppress and dehumanize these groups. Your intent may be to “correctly” portray the character, but that’s not the message you’re giving off. It would be much more appreciated if you left your skin tone the way it was and expressed your creativity through the costume itself. It is entirely possible to do awesome and creative and stunningly beautiful cosplays without artificially darkening your skin.

Now before any of you pull out the “but what if I cosplay an asari and I paint myself blue, is that racist” argument, let me say that no that isn’t racist. When you paint yourself to portray an elf or a turian or an asari or any other fictional species it is not racist. Why? Because they don’t exist. There is no systematic oppression of elves, turians, or asari because they’re not real! If you want to paint yourself purple and cosplay one of the many asari from the Mass Effect universe, please go right ahead. I assure you it’s in no way racist.

For more information on the history of people darkening their skin to portray different races, please see the following links:

484 Notes/ Hide

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    this is so important (but also cosplaying characters of color is still problematic imo, even without skin-darkening.)