Chapter 3
The Play’s the Thing:
Cosplay
Cosplay is the art of dressing as a character. Fans cosplay every kind of character, from Jane Austen and Hamilton characters in silk or velvet to intricate anime robots, or mecha, made in part with 3-D printers. Real people, such as Star Wars creator George Lucas, are represented too. It’s a global phenomenon and a lively subculture within fandom. At fan conventions, cosplayers inhabit their characters for photo sessions and costume contests or just walk the floor, which is an event in itself.
Long Ago . . .
The practice of disguising yourself for fun—not for religious, military, or other reasons—has roots that include masquerade balls. These fancy-dress parties, which started in Venice, Italy, during the sixteenth century, became popular all over Europe in the eighteenth century. Revelers wore elaborate masks, some based on stock characters from comic theater.
By 1869 fashion magazine Harper’s Bazaar was complaining that costumes at large public balls had taken on a scandalous nature: “Female masqueraders have appeared in scanty French dresses, merely tights and a bodice, or else some dashing male attire.” The magazines provided modest costume options for girls and women, such as queens and goddesses. For men, suggestions include Harlequin, a traditional jester in diamond-patterned garb. (This character inspired the DC Comics character Harley Quinn.)
Revelers dance at a fancy dress ball in Paris around 1800. The masked man at far left is dressed as Harlequin, a character from commedia dell’arte, the popular Italian comedic theater form that began in the early sixteenth century.
In the 1887 edition of the book Fancy Dresses Described; or, What to Wear at Fancy Balls, Victorian author Ardern Holt dedicated 253 pages to dressing up. Most of the entries merely describe what costumes should look like and not how to make them. The book includes some tips similar to those in modern cosplay tutorials. For example, if you wish to dress up as Joan of Arc, the young French woman executed in 1431 for dressing as a man and leading soldiers against the English army, you will need armor. If you don’t happen to have a suit of armor lying around, or steel to make it, Holt recommends “cutting out in strong brown paper the various pieces required, copied from an illustrated history, or from Knight’s ‘Shakespeare,’ pasted over with silvered paper, and strips of linen inside [to] strengthen them, so that tapes may be sewn with which to tie them on.”
Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, barely described his famous detective’s clothing. The lasting image of Holmes in a greatcoat and deerstalker cap comes from Sidney Paget’s illustrations, featured in Strand Magazine starting in 1891. The detective and his world have inspired creative cosplay from the beginning. When Conan Doyle threw a fancy-dress Christmas party in 1898, one woman showed up dressed as the racehorse Silver Blaze, from the Sherlock Holmes story of the same name. Conan Doyle himself dressed as a Viking.
Science-fiction fandom, with its fantastic elements, was a natural fit for cosplay. For the first meeting of the World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon) in 1939, Myrtle R. Jones Douglas, known by her fan name Morojo, designed and made twenty-fifth-century “futuristicostumes” for herself and her boyfriend, Forrest J Ackerman. Modeled after costumes in the 1936 movie Things to Come, Morojo’s long skirt converted into a cape, revealing satin shorts underneath. Ackerman wore a green satin cape over a shirt and loose trousers.
Masquerades
Elaborate costume contests, called masquerades, soon became a feature of cons. Ackerman reported on the 1956 Worldcon for the sci-fi magazine
Fantastic Universe: “The Masquerade Ball was filmed for televising, and was a sight for bugging eyes. Extraterrestrial glamour girls came in spectrumatic colors. . . . Monsters, mutants, scientists, spacemen, aliens, and assorted ‘Things’ thronged the ballroom floor as the flashbulbs popped.”
Starting with three hundred attendees in 1970, the longest-running comic book convention, San Diego Comic-Con, had grown to twenty-five hundred in 1974, the year of its first masquerade ball. By then Star Trek fans were also dressing as the show’s characters and putting on their own cons.
Fans check in at the first official Star Trek convention, held January 21–23, 1972, in New York. The hugely popular event included a costume contest, space exhibits from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and appearances by series creator Gene Roddenberry and writer D. C. Fontana.
Japanese students began dressing up as characters to attend manga and anime cons around the same time. Writer Nobuyuki Takahashi needed a word to describe the new practice for an article. The English-language term masquerade sounded “too noble and old fashioned,” he said. “Finally, we came up with ‘cosplay.’ The term was a portmanteau [word blend] of ‘costume’ and ‘play.’ It was perfect.” The word (in Japanese, コスプレ, kosupure) appeared for the first time in print in Takahashi’s 1983 article about costumes in the magazine My Anime.
Cons are not the only site of cosplay. Modern-day Janeites of the Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA), for instance, meet for weekends of lectures, dance workshops, exhibits, banquets, and period costume balls, for which they dress in historically accurate silk gowns or velvet breeches. The JASNA home page quotes from Austen’s novel Emma, “It is such a happiness when good people get together––and they always do.” In honor of the two hundredth anniversary of Austen’s death, the Hampshire Regency Dancers hosted a Grand Jane Austen Ball in July 2017, in Winchester, England, near the village where the author lived.
“Make Stuff and Things”
Some costumes are meticulous reproductions of the original. Video game characters inspire some of the most detailed cosplays, complete with realistic weapons. This is a specialty of experienced costumer Bellexi, who described herself on Instagram as “just a girl that makes stuff and things!” To transform herself into Roadhog, a male character from the video game Overwatch, she spent seventy hours creating his signature weapon on a 3-D printer. She painstakingly copied the tattoo that covers Roadhog’s big, bare belly onto a flesh-colored bodysuit. Wearing the suit under a halter top, she appeared to have a real tattoo on her stomach. With a mask covering much of her face and camouflage pants to complete the look, she won the Best of Weekend for Hall Costumes at the 2016 Anime USA con.
Hall costumes are often worn all day, so most are practical designs for activities such as walking around, standing up for hours, breathing, and going to the bathroom. By contrast, masquerade costumes are worn only in a costume contest, where they are judged on high standards of craft. Masquerade contestants make their own costumes and document how they were made. Designed to be worn for a short time, the costumes are more impressive than comfortable.
Cosplayers Ash (left) and Katie (right) re-create costumes from the anime My Hero Academia. Anime cosplayers often use wigs and carefully structured clothing to replicate the wild styles of animated characters.
While some cosplayers aim to re-create a costume in exact detail, others reinterpret or combine characters. Spider-Man shows up in Captain America’s colors, and Elsa from Disney’s film Frozen appears as Daenerys Targaryen from the book and TV series Game of Thrones. Darth Vader from Star Wars walks the floor in a vast variety of styles. Instead of his all-black armor, this villainous character might be dressed like a Disney princess, with a pink helmet and mask. There’s Darth Vader as perky Pikachu, a bright yellow species of Pokémon, with red cheeks and bunny ears. Steampunk Vader wears a World War I gas mask and helmet, his chest piece constructed from curly bits of a brass musical instrument. Body painters re-create Vader’s suit entirely in paint on bare skin. One young cosplayer in the trademark black mask pilots a wheelchair transformed into Vader’s TIE fighter (a single-pilot space vehicle).
Cosplay even extends to noncharacter elements of media favorites. Fans of the BBC show Sherlock make costumes out of fabric that looks like Sherlock Holmes’s living room wallpaper––a dark brown lily pattern. They may even add Sherlock’s famous house address, 221B. Fans particularly love the TARDIS, a spacecraft and time machine from Doctor Who. It turns up as everything from a blue-painted cardboard box to a ruffly pinafore dress to a cloth costume on a llama. Costumed pets come to cons too, if only outside the venues. With their flat faces and wrinkly brows, for instance, dogs such as pugs and shih tzus make convincing Ewoks, the teddy-bearlike creatures from Star Wars.
Groups of cosplayers may coordinate their costumes. Friends go together as the four Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, for instance, or Pac-Man and the enemy ghosts from the old-school arcade game. Whole families might portray existing fictional families such as the Incredibles, a superhero family from the animated movie of the same name. Or they might make up their own family, cosplaying the children of video game characters Mario and Princess Peach as cute mushrooms, like the friendly helpers in the Nintendo games.
Strangers meet and pose with others doing characters from the same series in series-specific photoshoots. Some group cosplay is spontaneous. Fan and costumer Keelin said, “One of the funniest things I’ve seen at a con was a deliberate cosplay crossover at OSFest in Omaha, Nebraska. All of the ‘Doctor’ characters—a couple of Doctor Whos, Doc Ock, Doc Brown, Dr. Strange, Dr. Horrible—met up in the lobby and staged an argument over their credentials.”
Cosplayers at the 2016 Big Apple Comic Con in New York City gather for a superhero group photo.
Dream It, Be It
Cosplayers often make some or all of their costumes. They may spend thousands of dollars, or they may repurpose free or low-cost materials. Others adapt or commission costumes. Cosplayer Roland’s Forge is a professional prop maker who has been creating costumes and accessories since 2008. His detailed costume of the villainous Jafar from Disney’s Aladdin was a fan favorite at the 2016 Anime Los Angeles con. On the other end of the spectrum, a teenage boy cosplaying Alucard, a vampire from the Japanese manga Hellsing, decided to make Alucard’s long red cape even though he had no idea how. “My aunt gave me her old red dress, and I stayed up all night cutting and sewing it into this coat,” he said. “I’d never done any sewing before, so I made lots of mistakes. Don’t look at the seams inside.”
Crafty types may have an advantage, but as long as a costume stays together during the con, no one needs to know it’s held together with hot glue, duct tape, and staples. Beginners don’t have to rely on trial and error, however. Online fan-made tutorials give step-by-step instructions on how to achieve effects in costumes and accessories. Want a costume to look as if it survived decades after an apocalypse? Tutorials explain how to distress, stain, and otherwise age fabric. Hair that stands high up in curls? There’s a tutorial on building a wire frame to fit your head. Tutorials in makeup arts appeal to fans interested in movie and glamour makeup skills, from wild eyeshadow to film-quality prosthetics.
Inventive fans on a tight budget start with used clothes from thrift stores or friends’ closets, whether as costume pieces or for fabric. Old-fashioned papier-mâché—newspaper strips dipped in a mixture of flour and water and applied to a mold of chicken wire or an inflated balloon—makes a good helmet or mask. Anyone with the patience and hand strength to cut up cardboard cereal boxes can make armor. Foam, such as floor or yoga mats, is lightweight and easy to cut. Styrofoam is stiff enough to carve into props.
Cosplayers usually avoid working with metal, which is expensive and heavy. Most cons prohibit metal props for safety reasons. They also prohibit or limit real weapons, including sharp blades, as well as flames and other fire hazards. Anything that could cause falls, such as skates and slippery glitter, is often forbidden, as are many oversized props, including wings. Before attending a convention, be sure to check its cosplay guidelines. Cosplayers work around these limitations with metallic spray paint, adhesive papers, foam, and creative determination.
Although 3-D printing creates amazingly realistic props, it is complicated and can be expensive. The most common 3-D printers follow software instructions to lay down very thin layers of melted plastic that fuse together. The printers cost from a couple hundred to a few thousand dollars, so some fans use shared printers at libraries or community centers.
The first step is to design or download a model. Sites such as Thingiverse offer patterns and tutorials for 3-D printable objects, from spaceship models to body armor for your cat. Many designers share their work for free. Voluntary contributions help them continue to share amazing work. Fans can also hire commercial 3-D printer services. After the printing comes assembly, gluing parts together, and sometimes sanding—lots of sanding—for a smooth finish. Painting or other finishing is the final step.
Cosplay can be overwhelming, so experienced cosplayers advise newcomers to start small and keep it simple at first. Makeup, wig styling, custom tailoring, and other skills take a lot of time to learn. But anyone can get started with a bit of planning and a trip to the thrift store.
Cosplayers of Color
“Who should I cosplay?” Experienced cosplayers advise picking a favorite character. Looking like the character is not a requirement. There are no rules about race, gender, body type, ability, age, or anything else.
Cosplayer Chaka Cumberbatch believes that “at the very heart of cosplay is the love for a character, and the desire to bring that character to life. That’s what it should be about.” In 2010 Cumberbatch, a black woman, began cosplaying one of her favorites, Sailor Venus. The character is from the anime series Sailor Moon, about a team of magical schoolgirls who guard the solar system. Unable to sew, Cumberbatch worked closely with another cosplayer to design Venus’s sailor top, big neck bow, and short flouncy skirt. She carefully chose her accessories, including a wig in the right shade of blond.
At the con, a professional photographer snapped her photo. Thinking nothing of it, she later posted the picture on Facebook. Her photo made the rounds on social media sites, and the racist responses shocked Cumberbatch. She wrote an influential article about her experience on the online magazine xoJane titled “I’m a Black Female Cosplayer and Some People Hate It.”
“My Venus became the unintentional face of the cosplay race debate online,” she wrote. On the one hand was condescending approval, such as, “For a black cosplayer (not to be racist) she did an amazing job!”—suggesting black cosplayers do not normally perform as well as white ones. On the other hand was blatant disapproval, Cumberbatch recalled, such as comments saying “I had a ‘face like a gorilla’ and wasn’t suited for such a cute character, because I am black.”
Insults can be enough to scare anyone away from cosplay, Cumberbatch acknowledged, but she urged newcomers to take on the challenge. She went online to create #28DaysofBlackCosplay, a social media event in which black cosplayers post their photos with the hashtag every day during February, which is Black History Month. The conversation continues year-round on blogs such as Cosplaying While Black and The Nerds of Color (NOC), where fans can talk about race, gender, class, and other factors in cosplay and fan culture. Reporter Shawn Taylor wrote for NOC about the first meeting of the Silicon Valley Comic Con in 2016. He was part of a panel about diversified fandom, noting the rise of many active fan artists of color. Impressed by the many great female cosplayers at the con, Taylor ended his review with a note: “Fellas. You have to step up your cosplay. Women and women-identified cosplayers are running the game.”
Cosplay and Modesty
Ange, a Muslim cosplayer from Indonesia, incorporated her headscarf into a costume from the Japanese TV series Kamen Rider Gaim for a 2017 hijab (headscarf) cosplay event near Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Another branch of cosplay resists the idea that you have to be willing to show a lot of skin to do cosplay right. This trend has roots in book covers, comics, anime, and other media in which all women wear revealing clothing—some of it physically impossible!—that reflects outdated ideals of sexiness in male-dominated fandom. Realistic armor, comfortable clothes, and cosplay that allows modesty are a growing subset of fan culture—and also turn up in canon sources. For instance, Ms. Marvel, the alter ego of American Muslim teenager Kamala Khan, wears a much less revealing costume than most Marvel superheroes.
Cosplayers aren’t limited to characters who dress or look like them in canon. For example, some cosplayers who wear hijab (headscarf) incorporate it into their costumes. A photo of Dania, username HijabiHooligan, giving a salute as Captain America in an American flag hijab got a lot of love on social media. (Bill Rosemann, creative director at Marvel, the company that owns the character, saluted her back on Twitter.) Makeup artist Saraswati (username QueenOfLuna) shaped and draped hijabs of different colors into the elaborate hairdos and headdresses of different Disney characters. With blue contact lenses, face-paint freckles, and a gold-colored hijab held in place with the character’s signature headband, Saraswati became Alice in Wonderland. With her black hijab twined into a turban and an elegant moustache and beard painted on her face, she became Jafar, the bad guy from Aladdin. Her photos were a hit.
In an interview with the site Black Nerd Problems, Dania said, “There is a lot of stigma surrounding the hijab. I want to show people that choosing to cover up does not deprive me of anything that my fellow women have—I can still have fun without compromising my faith!” In the vast and diverse cosplaying community, she can feel comfortable doing what she loves.
Rock Your Look
Robert Franzese looks almost exactly like Peter Griffin, the overweight, white dad from the adult, animated TV show Family Guy. Getting the costume together was easy, Franzese said. He already had a pair of green pants and a white button-down shirt. Acting like Griffin came easily too, and Franzese became a hit at cons around the United States. Seth MacFarlane, creator of Family Guy, even retweeted a YouTube video “Real Life Peter Griffin Goes to NYCC 2014.” In it Franzese explained one of the appeals of cosplaying. “I have a nobody job, making nobody pay,” he said, “but I go to New York Comic Con and people are pulling out phones like I’m freakin’ Brad Pitt.”
Fan culture generally seeks to be inclusive, welcoming fans of all genders, political and sexual orientations, races, and abilities. A male cosplayer recalled a good reception at New York Comic Con while cosplaying Elsa from Disney’s Frozen: “I do something called crossplay or gender-bending,” he explained. “You’ve got to take a female character or a male character and then switch it, and then people are like, ‘It’s very weird.’ . . . Luckily it is a very accepting community.”
But prejudice exists in fandom too, and cosplayers encounter lookism, or judgment based on physical appearance and abilities. To address this, Franzese appeared on a panel, Body Confidence and Positivity in Cosplay, at NYCC in 2016. The four panelists discussed how cosplayers of every shape and size can stay positive. Franzese said he had a hard time growing up as an overweight kid. The key to positivity, he advised, is to surround yourself with people who lift you up and help you become the best version of yourself. It’s the fan reactions and the friendships that make cosplaying joyful. The panel participants urged everyone who wants to cosplay to risk the possible public discomfort and dare to do it.
Valerie Hardt agrees. She began cosplaying when she was a child and has cosplayed a range of types, from Rose Tyler, a heroic love interest from Doctor Who, to Raleigh Becket, one of the buff brothers from the movie Pacific Rim. Cosplay has helped her to accept her body, she said, adding, “I felt more at home in my own skin after cosplaying as [DC Comics’s] Black Canary and Ms. Marvel.”
Steven and Millie, a retired couple who call themselves the Cosplay Parents, don’t let entertainment’s focus on young characters restrict their fun. They mostly cosplay older characters, such as General Leia Organa and Han Solo from Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and they also make up happy endings for characters who didn’t get them in canon. They cosplay Captain America and Peggy Carter as if they had been able to grow old together, and Carl and Ellie from the animated movie Up, imagining the couple adventuring together in old age. They never buy entire costumes, preferring to scour thrift stores and raid their closets for materials to modify. Steven said, “The fun and accomplishment is making it yourself.” Though they are shy people, they said the positive reception they received at cons encouraged them to keep going. They added, “We were also amazed that people who saw us at the convention or other events, and through social media, have embraced us in that the older generation can cosplay too, and have made comments like ‘#relationshipgoals.’” The Cosplay Parents advise others not to let negative comments about body type, age, or ethnicity deter them from cosplaying.
“Be Cool and Be Kind”
More than ever, girls and women are upping the ante at cons with their enthusiasm for cosplay. Some onlookers, however, react to costumes with rude or sexually inappropriate behavior ranging from name calling to taking photos or touching cosplayers without permission. Derogatory comments are aimed at boys and men too, as well as at anyone dressed as characters of a different race, body type, or gender. To raise awareness and to guarantee cons are as safe and friendly as possible, in 2010 three women began an organization called Geeks for CONsent. It and other groups adopted the slogan Cosplay ≠ CONsent, or Cosplay Is Not Consent.
Since then many cons have adopted antiharassment policies and train their on-site security to respond respectfully. Signs on the show floor at NYCC, for example, remind con-goers to treat one another with respect, reading, “Remember: Cosplay is not consent. Keep your hands to yourself. If you would like to take a picture with or of another NYCC Fan, always ask first and respect that person’s right to say no. When at NYCC, be respectful, be nice, be cool and be kind to each other.”
Live Long and Prosper
Many cosplayers bring elements of their fandoms into the rest of their lives. Star Trek fans Greg and Michelle got married—in costume—during the Star Trek Las Vegas 50th Anniversary Convention in 2016. The groom wore Captain Picard’s dress uniform from the show Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987–1994). Guests dressed as human and alien characters from the different series. At the reception, figures of characters Riker and Troi topped the wedding cake. Greg showed off his ring, engraved with the starship Enterprise. And Michelle’s seven-year-old son offered a fan toast: “May my mom and dad live long and . . .” He stumbled on the word prosper, but the attendees responded with cheers.
Cosplayers at the MCM London Comic Con in 2016 mash up Star Wars and anime with a wedding theme.
Cosplay, like Star Trek, seems set to live long and prosper. And fans’ demands for more seem to be inspiring not just more stories but a more realistic variety of humans portrayed in them. Production of Star Trek: Discovery, the seventh TV series in the franchise, began in 2017. It features new Starfleet uniforms and another diverse crew: African American actor Sonequa Martin-Green plays the lead, and Chinese Malaysian actor Michelle Yeoh plays a Federation captain. Producer and longtime Trek fan Bryan Fuller says he knows cosplayers will rise to the occasion.