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.
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.
