What’s more surprising, that there are websites selling Caitlyn Jenner Halloween costumes, or the fact that more people didn’t see this coming?
A few websites are selling an outfit inspired by the former athlete’s Vanity Fair cover, while a major Halloween retailer says it too has a Jenner costume on the way—and that it’s meant to celebrate the reality star and transgender icon, not make fun of her.
“Caitlyn Jenner has proven to be the most important real-life superhero of the year,” Trisha Lombardo, a representative for Spirit Halloween, told the New York Daily News. “Spirit Halloween is proud to carry the costume that celebrates her.”
Activists, however, say the use of a schlubby male model on various other sites suggests the costume is being marketed as a way to make fun of transgender people, with the “joke” being that Caitlyn Jenner, previously known to the world as Bruce Jenner, is “really” a man despite identifying as otherwise.
“To make a costume out of a marginalized identity reduces that person and community to a stereotype for privileged people to abuse,” writes activist Addison Rose Vincent in a Change.org petition calling for Spirit to do away with plans for a costume. “In this case, if you follow through with production of a Caitlyn Jenner costume, cisgender people will purchase it to make fun of her and our community.”
Representatives for Caitlyn Jenner declined to comment to BuzzFeed and the Daily News.
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Write to Nolan Feeney at nolan.feeney@time.com