Agreed. It's also saying to the children that they should not look up to her or be inspired by her. Although that kid in the third picture does NOT look happy about it!

not allowed to dress as "Little Mermaid" - cultural appropriation of fish

No. It isn’t racist to think something is racist. Wrong and dumb as f**k, but not racist.

Is it cultural appropriation when those of African or West Indian origin wear trainers, baggy jeans and hoodies? Of course not - society is very mixed up

I think people forgot the definition of racist. Lol it's like everything is racist in today's world. You can love people of all races and you'll be labeled a racist cause you want to wear clothing like them, or cook their traditional foods, or adopt their traditions. People need to chill lol

Only social justice warriors (SJWs) think it's racist. Normal people don't. SJWs try to separate everyone by skin colour, gender, sexualtity, etc. They put people into groups and decide what they should or should not be doing. They perpetuate racism and segregation.

I'm waiting for the answers to that here.

It's not, yes, that's correct, but that's simplifying things. Some people call it racist because it's close to the territory of cultural appropriation. However, it doesn't fall into that category. It's not racist to dress up as a character. However, it will be racist to dress up in Polynesian clothing as a costume and say that you're Polynesian. THAT would be cultural appropriation. Oh, and Dionna mentioned, blackface is racist.

It's racist because our people suffered a lot just to make clothes like that and it wasn't easy trying to use and make our clothes with leaves or bushes we find sitting on our island, and when the colonisers came to our islands we were torn from our pacific clothes and was put into clothes similar to the ones we have today, our ancestors had to fight them off to try and save our cultures traditions and we succeed but a lot were killed and this was all to preserve the damn culture. so as a pacific islander from Samoa i disagree with kids dressing as moana characters (i don't mind when its moana herself) with tattoos that our ancestors carved on our people for years. Like Maui has the tattoos our ancestors have been using and a lot of us islanders believe its a mockery to see people wearing it without understanding the actual culture behind it, and those tattoos are sacred and said to be only for the people of the culture and not from the people outside it.

Some of the posts in the article explained it a bit. The dressing up in itself is not racist. It becomes racist as soon as you use makeup to darken your skin (if you don't know why that is, google " history of blackface". It's gross and nowhere near complimentary). The outfit itself is obviously Moana and doesn't need altered skin tone to convey that character.