Cosplayers

Gender and Identity

A. Luxx Mishou

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000422535
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Cosplayers: Gender and Identity is an examination of identity practices in cosplay, as expressed by cosplayers themselves. It challenges the assumed correlation between cosplay and cosplayer identity and considers the lived experiences of cosplayers engaging in the fan practice of sartorial performance.

Through a series of chapters covering the blurring lines of gender, sexualized fantasy in real spaces, and nostalgia, the author argues that observational data run the risk of affirming normative expectations of identity in the absence of cosplayer narratives, and produce misreadings that generalize. The work develops and builds an understanding of a complex cultural system of art, engaging with multiple methodologies to make identity, fandom, and critical analysis on the parts of participants and observers alike.

This is an accessible and innovative study suitable for scholars and students in gender studies, cultural studies, sexuality studies, sociology, and media studies.

1

All the con’s a stage

A study of (cos)players

Introduction

Cosplay is fun. Cosplay is an art, an act of textual analysis, a performance, an investment, and an argument. Cosplay is a social activity and a means of individual expression, a hobby, a profession (for a select few), and an active identity – “I am a cosplayer.” Cosplay is an international artform with global roots in masquerade, fashion, carnival, theatre, and fandom. It is produced by humans and informed by all of the complex intersectional identities and experiences with which humans engage with media, and with each other (Mountfort, Peirson-Smith, & Geczy, 2019). There is for some a sense of playful deviance in cosplay – a bucking of standards and expectations, and a peaceful rebellion against social roles. Though cosplay is sanctioned by most fan conventions and enjoyed by many attendees, it is not without its detractors (Winge, 2019). Cosplay is also a source of questions: who, what, and why? Who are cosplayers, what are they doing, and why do they do it?

Existing cosplay scholarship is critically invested in the acts and meanings of cosplay, reading cosplaying bodies as performative texts that function as cultural objects (“what?”) and reflections of the practices of an identified in-group (“why?”). Broadly, cosplay scholarship is grounded in the act and moment of play – the cosplayed body performing in sanctioned spaces. This work does not yet engage with the practicality of being a cosplayer – the social and economic barriers, limitations, and anxieties that cosplayers negotiate in order to bring their performative art to the social stage. By contrast, this book is invested in cosplayers (“who?”) rather than their specific cosplays, arguing that cosplay is not an exception from societal regulation, but remains fully defined by social, political, and economical structures that both enable and inhibit specific cosplay practices, and cosplayers. The contribution of this book is to bring an understanding of the practical and social to an understanding of cosplay, arguing that cosplayers are not divorced from barriers of sexism, racism, ableism, and phobias, but must directly negotiate the challenges of their communities in order to manifest the fantasy of cosplay. Cosplay is a narrative site that represents intersections of fantasy and reality performed by real people in real spaces. These people are my subject – the cosplayers. The work of Cosplayers is to examine cosplayer experiences in America, as influenced by American media, institutions, and respectability politics.

Setting the stage

An interest in how and why people dress as they do has inspired an entire field of study; so too has the desire to understand why people consume different media, and what this media says about time, place, and demographics. Cosplay is thus an interdisciplinary playground for scholars to read the art of dress, the impact and performance of fandom, and the psychological drive behind it all. Cosplay makes space to challenge artificial boundaries of age, gender, and natural cultural economies, and can itself perform an inquiry into definitions of sex, gender, and identity. As Mountfort, Peirson-Smith, and Geczy write, it is a global phenomenon (2019), and as Winge shows it is a social sphere with its own rituals and communities (2010).

As an international practice, cosplay has attracted the attention of scholars from around the world who examine the practice through both national and international lenses. Though informed by her experiences abroad, Nicolle Lamerichs’s Productive Fandom (2018) is grounded in Lamerichs’s research at Dutch conventions, just as Norris and Bainbridge (2009) are informed by the practice of cosplay in Australia – as is Larissa Hjorth (2009). Crawford and Hancock (2019) position their research from the framework of cosplay in the United Kingdom, and Mountfort, Peirson-Smith, and Geczy (2019) are invested in the practices of Japan, Hong Kong, and China. Osmud Rahman, Liu Wing-sun, and Brittany Hei-man Cheung (2012) likewise write of the emergence of cosplay in Hong Kong, while Kane Anderson (2014, 2015) and Suzanne Scott (2015, 2019) write as Americans attending the world-famous San Diego Comic-Con, where they are figuratively joined by Indian scholar Catherine Thomas (2014); Matthew Hale (2014) writes instead of Dragon Con, and Jen Gunnels (2009) reports her findings from New York. As an American cosplayer, my own research is directly informed by my attendance at New York Comic Con, Dragon Con, Emerald City Comic Con, Awesome Con, Baltimore Comic Con, Katsucon, and Otakon. Frankly, I’ll rarely pass on an opportunity to cosplay, but my personal observations are limited to these national conventions, which cannot represent the universal experiences of cosplayers around the world.

Much of this worldly existing research on cosplay is invested in the interrogation of fandom as related to fan identities, fan practices, and fan productions. Suzanne Scott writes of gender and fandom in both 2015 and 2018, and Craig Norris and Jason Bainbridge write that cosplay “displays how heavily an audience member is invested in the ideals of the show or identifies with a particular character and shows others how ‘serious’ a fan they are” (2009, par. 7). In 2011 Joel Gn argues that cosplay “is primarily motivated by [the cosplayer’s] intense attraction towards the character to which they were exposed” (587), and The Superhero Costume authors Barbara Brownie and Danny Graydon say explicitly that “the costume communicates efficiently and specifically the subject of one’s fandom, and their level of devotion to that particular cultural artifact” (2016, 109). Julia Round agrees and suggests that “cosplay … signals the wearer’s identity through their taste” (147). Cosplay scholarship has also recognized cosplay as a productive site through which to challenge notions of gender. Katrien Jacobs writes of queerness and cosplay in Japan, Hong Kong, and China in 2013, and Christopher McGunnigle interrogates comic book “genderswapping” cosplay in 2019. Also in 2019, Tompkins uses statistical data to answer the question “Is Gender Just a Costume?” in an examination of crossplay, and in 2020 Rachel Hui Ying Leng argues that “M2F crossplay is significant as an emergent and increasingly popular trend in the growing cosplay community” (91).

When researchers seek to address particular questions related to cosplay practices, they routinely utilize surveys and interviews to gather statistical data. Juli Gittinger (2018) explores the intersection of performative religious identities and performative fan identities in hijabi cosplay through the circulation of an online questionnaire, and Rosenberg and Letamendi (2013) administer surveys to conduct psychological research to determine whether cosplayers are more likely to be introverts or extroverts. To test a list of nine hypotheses about cosplay, Dunn and Hermann (2020) collect hardcopy survey responses from 227 convention attendees, 152 of which self-identify as cosplayers. Connor Emont Leshner and Sarah Amira De La Garza (2019) consider the relationship between cosplay, identity, and interpersonal relationships by surveying 929 self-identified cosplayers. Exploring cosplay in Hong Kong, Osmud Rahman, Liu Wing-sun, and Brittany Hei-man Cheung (2012) conduct interviews of 15 cosplaying university students.

As the field grows, an increasing number of cosplay scholars are also “coming out” as participants. Whereas Jen Gunnels’s “A Jedi like my father before me” establishes a narrative of anthropologic distance from a subject of observation, Lamerichs has from the first acknowledged her cosplay experience as informing her research, and Kane Anderson recounts not only personal Comicon experiences, but unanticipated representation within his own research, finding photos of himself in cosplay as the subject of cultural discourse (2014, 2015). Jordan Kass Lome’s (2016) experiences as a cosplayer provide her with insight to consider “The creative empowerment of body positivity in the cosplay community,” and Katarina HS Birkedal’s research on affect and cosplay is greatly enriched by her autoethnographic accounts and allows her to argue for the relevance of cosplay study to International Relations (2019). As a cosplayer I know a few things, but only a few, and look to both participant researchers and nonparticipant researchers who have established and explored the field.

As a costumer and a cosplayer, I am also aware of the gatekeeping within the community – cosplayers who scoff at purchased costumes and props, for example, or conversely deride professional cosplayers. Those who seek to define “cosplayer” by excluding the cosplay practices of some and lauding the cosplay practices of others. As Mountfort, Peirson-Smith, and Geczy recognize “this community is itself a double-edged sword that can mete out approval or condemnation” (2019, 5). Online and in person, at cons and backstage at shows, I have heard from participants who are afraid to label themselves as cosplayers because they purchased their cosplays, or have never been able to attend a large convention. As a cosplayer I am intimately aware of the sexism within cosplay communities, as participants vociferously condemn or defend femme-bodied people who elect to cosplay “sexy” characters, or controversially sexualize a traditionally sex-neutral character. I learned of my privilege as a white cosplayer when I listened to cosplayers of color who face institutional racism and bigotry from majority audiences condemning their adoption of white characters, despite the dearth of black characters available. I learned of the ableism, transphobia, and fat-shaming within and without the community, and saw how it directly impacted the choices made by cosplayers. These complex narratives of experience are presently missing in cosplay research, and it is my intention here to bring cosplayer voices into the narrative of cosplay studies.

Limitations of cosplay research

As recognized by Crawford and Hancock (2019), the expense of cosplay and accessing cosplay sites directly impacts participation, resulting in the impression that cosplay is a middle-class hobby. To this point, it’s important to acknowledge that conventions and comic cons are an inherent space of privilege, limiting attendance by virtue of cost, location, and attendance demographics. The best-known in the United States – San Diego Comic-Con, New York Comic Con, Atlanta’s Dragon Con, and Baltimore’s Otakon – are all hosted in coastal cities, which are known to deliberately increase rental costs during convention times. In addition to travel costs and expensive food costs is the literal price of admission, the least expensive ticket $40 per day (Otakon), and as much as $85 a day (Dragon Con). Further, one’s ability to secure badges to attend San Diego Comic-Con relies on a lottery, purposefully limiting and controlling attendance. Any patron who relies on a mobility device is forced to consider whether the site makes an effort to accommodate their attendance. Thrifty convention attendees will lessen the financial burden of con attendance by purchasing ticket packages, bunking several to a room, and strictly rationing food, but attendance still requires social, financial, and professional security, all of which are disproportionately more available to white, able-bodied attendees than minority attendees. This will likely lead to disproportional representation in observational studies.

Some conventions, like Dragon Con, are marketed as fan conventions, welcoming fandoms – and cosplayers – of wide genres, and enabling cosplayers from around the world to meet according to their favored mediums, genres, properties, characters, and archetypes. Other conventions, like Otakon, are marketed toward specific fandoms; Otakon celebrates Asian pop culture like manga, anime, video games, and more. One is more likely to find manga cosplayers than superhero cosplayers at Otakon, while a larger convention may demonstrate greater breadth. But the reputation of a convention, as well as its standard demographic, will impact cosplayer attendance and representation. One local convention has a reputation for attracting a largely masculine audience interested in sifting through boxes of unsorted comics. Another east coast con is notoriously unwelcoming for those who use mobility aids, as the crush of people makes it impossible to navigate vendor floors. Each of these factors, shared by word of mouth within cosplayer and fan communities, will impact the representation and demographics at an individual con, and will thus impact the quality and quantity of data collected by researchers...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1 All the con’s a stage: A study of (cos)players
• 2 Man describes not me, nor woman neitherd: Cosplayers and the fiction of gender
• 3 On bodies and boundaries: Regulating fantasy in real spaces
• 4 Manning the gates: Minority identities and gatekeeping in cosplay
• 5 The cosplay’s the thing
• Index