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.

Of Wizards And Handguns - Are MMORPGs And FPSs The Same?

When comparing genres of video games it’s a pretty safe bet to say that MMORPG games such as World of Warcraft and Everquest are thought of as incredibly different to FPS titles like Call of Duty and the Battlefield series. These games dominate our markets and the nuances of each genre are known well in near every self-proclaimed gamer with Call of Duty releasing its 11^th instalment, Advanced Warfare, in 2014 and Blizzard releasing World of Warcraft’s 5^th expansion, Warlords of Draenor, mere days later. These being only 2 of the MMORPG and FPS series currently dominating the video gaming market just go to show the ever present popularity and success of the genres.

However is it truly honest to say the designs and player goals for these wholly different genres are really as different as some may think? Everquest, created in 1999 and celebrating the game’s 21^st expansion release in October, is one of the oldest MMORPGs still running and featured the gameplay basis most of its genre follows. Players chose a class and levelled through defeating enemies and achieving given goals in the fantasy world. But how can a fantasy world of levelling and questing relate in any way to modern first-person shooters?

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was the first Call of Duty to implement it’s not ever present levelling system into the multiplayer section of the game. Players achieve levels and increased ‘rank’ as a result of defeating other players, achieving game objectives and completing challenges and being rewarded experience points for doing so. With these levels a player can upgrade their equipment and skills. This is starting to sound familiar…

Borderlands, released by Gearbox Software in 2009, embraced the rpg design in their FPS with zany skills, talent trees, and varying equipment stats that alter the style of gameplay for your chosen and developed character. This in turn follows very similarly to Call of Duty’s various weapons and the altering ranges, fire rate and damage of those weapons and how players must also alter their play style to revolve around how they equip their characters.

So finally we ask, why do we love these various games and what seems to be the similar theme of design in them that gamers enjoy? Do players enjoy the rewarding aspect of increased level, the freedom of personal design of a player’s own playstyle? As well as this if the game genres really do hold such similarities then why is it some players do not like one but will play the other? It is a question that is so far unanswered but the similarities in what started as entirely opposite genres are nonetheless showing parallels in how their designers are building these new games. Is this a trend that will continue? With the popularity of the Call of Duty and Borderlands FPS series it wouldn’t at all be a farfetched claim to say, most likely.

(Disclaimer - I do not own or claim to own the featured images. All the images are property of original artists, designers and publishers.)