Here's Why Pregnant Meghan Markle Halloween Costumes Are Just Plain Wrong
*Captain America in Spider-Man PSA voice.* So, you've decided to dress as a pregnant Meghan Markle for Halloween. You think your choice might be problematic, but the question is, is it? Why, yes! Yes, it is. Pregnant Meghan Markle Halloween costumes are not the way to go this year. Or next year. Or the year after that. Or any year, for that matter. So do women a favor: scrap that costume idea and start brainstorming a new one. (Unless you are pregnant, in which case, be my guest and dress as your favorite royal couple. The offensive part of this costume is entirely dependent upon wearing a fake baby belly.)
Pop culture provides us common folk with a huge selection of Halloween costumes each year. It is fun as hell to recreate some of pop culture's biggest moments of any given year. Meghan and Harry's relationship is definitely a huge moment of 2018, so dressing as the royal family's new "it" couple is not a bad thing to do. This year has been the year of noteworthy celebrity couples, really, so you have lots of unproblematic ideas available to you. Newly engaged? Dress as Nick Jonas and Priyanka Chopra or Justin Bieber and Hailey Baldwin. Hell, you could even dress up as a newly broken up Ariana Grande and Pete Davidson if you really wanted (RIP, Petiana). Emulating your favorite celebrities is a more than acceptable Halloween costume (within reason, of course... looking at you, everyone even remotely considering donning blackface this year). Dressing as a pregnant woman, however, is not the move for a slew of reasons.
For starters, Halloween costumes imitating celebrities are — regardless of the intentions being good or bad — spoofs of the celebrities you're dressing as. So if you're dressed as a pregnant Meghan Markle, you are, at the most basic level, making a mockery of her pregnancy. And people have no way of knowing what kind of difficulties she went through on her way to getting pregnant. She could have experienced struggles with conceiving and/or undergone fertility treatments, which are very painful on the body.
Even if she was able to conceive her and Harry's first child with relative ease, it's still highly insensitive to put on a fake baby belly and essentially make fun of this sensitive, life-changing time of her life.
Outside of how it could be offensive to the Duchess of Sussex, you could come across women at your Halloween parties who are having a difficult pregnancy journey themselves. You never know what a woman is going through, so pretending to be a pregnant woman could be deeply hurtful to women struggling to conceive, women who aren't physically able to carry a pregnancy, women who are experiencing difficult pregnancies, and so many more circumstances that you're not aware of. On top of all of that, pregnancy brings about huge physical changes and new physical experiences for women that can be exhausting and scary simply because of how new it all feels, so strapping on a fake baby bump and masquerading as the pregnant duchess could be seen as deeply insensitive to women who are experiencing an intensely new physical journey.
And just so I've left no stone unturned here, this same principle applies to dressing as a pregnant Kylie Jenner, pregnant Khloé Kardashian, or Kim Kardashian and Kanye West's surrogate. (Yes, people were considering dressing as a "sexy" pregnant Kylie Jenner last year. It was a bad idea then too.) No group costumes like that, no individual costumes like that, no fake baby bellies, period. OK?
To sum this all up, dressing as Prince Harry and Meghan Markle isn't a bad Halloween costume, just make sure you aren't dressing as a pregnant Meghan Markle.
