Growing up, ghouls, ghosts and monsters weren’t the biggest fear for artist Manasi Arya at Halloween.

A first generation Indian-American immigrant, Manasi found it “difficult to fit in” at school during spooky season.

She wanted to dress up like other children but couldn’t, because the American holiday “wasn’t a thing” at home.

So instead of buying a Halloween costume, her mum would tell her to “just wear an Indian outfit”.

However, the mother-daughter pair entered a pumpkin competition with a design of an Indian woman wearing traditional jewellery.

After they won, Manasi realised that the two parts of her identity could co-exist.

Skeletons wearing jhumkas halloween..

Manasi says that experience inspired her collection of clothing featuring South Asian women in traditional cultural dress meshed with classic Halloween images.

For example, one of her T-shirts has the iconic mask that Ghostface wears in the horror movie franchise Scream, but with the addition of a red bindi dot on the forehead.

Another shows a skeleton wearing big Indian earrings known as jhumkas and a headpiece called a tikka.

Manasi said that there has been “an overwhelmingly positive response” to the line, which she started three years ago.

She says that Indian parents have thanked her for giving them a way to introduce their children to who they are in a “fun but educational” way.

But there is a more serious dimension to Manasi’s work, with debates about what’s acceptable to wear for Halloween circling on social media for some time.

Some people say it’s fine to dress up as the icons they look up to, while others criticise them for “cosplaying” characters from different cultures.

As the clock ticks down to Halloween and you find yourself once again without a costume there may be a sense of mild panic setting in. But there’s a new trend hitting the streets, one that fuses the classic scare factor of a macabre skeleton with the glorious beauty of traditional Indian aesthetics. The #badbeti movement is sweeping across Instagram and people can’t get enough of it.

It addresses the need people feel to assimilate new cultures thereby compromising their cultural identity. As Babneet says ‘I don’t give an “Indian twist” to work/myself. I’m an Indian – Canadian who builds a bridge between my two cultures to create meaningful art. This isn’t a skull that I put an “Indian Twist” on, it’s more than that.’ This issue of being treated as exotic when trying to accept your own culture is a struggle that a lot of immigrant children face and #badbeti is trying to remove the stigma attached to embracing and expressing your own culture.

With the movement well underway there are plenty of badass desi women proudly declaring their national pride and shutting down haters once and for all….

It addresses the need people feel to assimilate new cultures thereby compromising their cultural identity. As Babneet says “I don’t give an ‘Indian twist’ to work/myself. I’m an Indian – Canadian who builds a bridge between my two cultures to create meaningful art. This isn’t a skull that I put an ‘Indian Twist’ on, it’s more than that.” This issue of being treated as exotic when trying to accept your own culture is a struggle that a lot of immigrant children face and #badbeti is trying to remove the stigma attached to embracing and expressing your own culture.

With the movement well underway there are plenty of badass desi women proudly declaring their national pride and shutting down haters once and for all.

She says she’s “comfortable with anyone” wearing her clothing because it is “mostly T-shirts, sweaters, and denim”.

But it seems that her designs are giving younger people the inspiration Manasi missed when she was a child.

She says one young Indian girl told her she was “inspired” by her art, so dressed up as a “desi witch” for Halloween, complete with a green and black sari with a witch’s hat.

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