Body Image and Cosplaying - A Male Perspective

Cosplay has become a widely known and participated hobby amongst members of the pop-culture convention culture. From game characters, superheroes and heroines, anime characters and even original characters, there are thousands of costumes that come to and fro through the doors of game, comic and anime conventions around the globe.

Cosplay, in part, is such a popular hobby taken up by such a wide range of people from different backgrounds and lives is because it is open and unrestricted to anyone. Any cosplayer, new, amateur or veteran would hopefully all agree that the reason people should cosplay is solely for the love and enjoyment of the hobby itself and the costumes and characters that people choose to create. Therefore anybody can cosplay anybody. A black cosplayer is free to cosplay any white character they choose, a size 12 should feel no restrictions against cosplaying a character that it normally portrayed as a super-slim yet impressively busty and curvaceous size 4 and the popularity of both men and women creating ‘genderbend’ character cosplays in recent years is testament to the gender barrier surrounding cosplaying being taken down spectacularly.

 However, whilst the outward acceptance of all walks of live being able to experience cosplay is a welcoming gate to most people, a more inward barrier can still hold in some people. In a lot of media such as video games, comics, films and anime series, characters are designed in an idealised style. The voluptuous figure of Mad Moxxi from Borderlands and the revealing design of Yoko Littner of Gurren Lagann are just a few examples to name of the less than natural body types but idealised figures of the characters that some individuals may desire to cosplay. But recreating these costumes can arise some issues of personal body image acceptance.

This article is from the perspective of my own male perspective on how body image and pop culture character stereotypes can make confidence in creating a cosplay somewhat of an obstacle. Take the masculine creations of Marvel and DC for example, my first ever cosplay was of the boy wonder, Robin, as seen in the animated series ‘Young Justice’. The benefit of my body type, being somewhat short and very slim made fitting the size and shape of the character in my cosplay a simple task. However if I were to be faced with the concept of creating a cosplay of the famous sidekick’s mentor, the Dark Knight himself, I’d feel nothing but anxiety and fear over the fun centric hobby.

In personal experience, the idea of cosplaying a character such as DC’s Batman or Superman and Marvel’s Captain America or Thor is a daunting idea. As someone who is short and slim, cosplaying such stereotypes of the tall, square chinned and muscular Adonis heroes is difficult to replicate. Whilst there is no part of the community that would deny someone of any different stature to cosplay such characters, in personal experience it can be difficult to build the courage to portray a character that you can’t share physical traits with. Whilst wigs can help a cosplayer to take on the image of their favourite characters, size, weight and muscles can be incredibly difficult, even impossible, to recreate and this can very easily dissuade someone from taking the leap into a new project.

So what can we, as a community, do to alter this? Well the attitude of the community has already come forward in leaps and bounds with a fast growing freedom amongst cosplayers and a welcoming nature. The issue is merely, in my own experience, a personal one. Developing the confidence to really jump feet first into the hobby and cosplay characters that you may not necessarily already have the natural features for can be difficult as being a different body type, male or female, can be a frightening challenge. However, with encouragement from the community to overcome this fear that can affect some of us may just help new cosplayers really find their feet and develop the confidence to add even greater diversity and freedom to the ever expanding hobby.