August 4, 2018 • 43 mins
Anney is gearing up for DragonCon, so we're revisiting our favorite episode on ladies who cosplay.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hi, this is Annie, and this is Bridget, and you're
listening to stuff mom never told you. And it is
con season also as a convention season. Um. I've been
(00:26):
known to get into some trouble at conventions, particularly my
local Atlanta convention, Dragon Con, which is a Labor Day weekend.
I'm getting ready for it right now, so if you're around,
come find me. I'll be drunk, but I'll also be
Hella from thora Ragnarok, Spider Man or woman I suppose
the Winter Soldier and Ellie from the Last of Us.
Do you have a character you would jessef as Bridget
(00:48):
or have you? I would love to cosplay as Wonder Woman,
and once I cosplayed as mis Sean from Walking Dead,
which I feel like I look a little bit like
what convention was that the was not a convention. This
was just a us getting drunk and going to bars
at a very nerdy bar crawl. So I don't know
if that's sill counts cosplay, I'll count it. Um. There
(01:15):
is a dark side to cosplay and convention culture, of course,
and I have certainly certainly run into some creepiness. Um.
A lot of people feel like they can ask you
to take pictures and weird poses. Um, there is a
lot of the fake geek girl. I've been quizzed like
(01:36):
how well I know the character I'm dressing up as
basically just leave me alone. But okay, um um. Whenever
I um kind of don't play along with creepy guys
at conventions, they get angry at me and say I'm
not a real fan and kind of storm off, powered off.
(01:58):
So there there is at and it's unfortunate. Uh. And
in this episode that we're going to replay this classic,
Kristen and Caroline talk about some of that, along with
the rise of cosplay, fake girl fandom, and the sexual
harassment that women and men might encounter when cosplaying. We
hope you enjoy it. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
(02:24):
I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline, and we are talking about
cosplay today because it's the season of the con. Well
it might be a little past the season of the con,
but there's still some cons happening. There's still some cons happening,
namely a Dragon Con here in Atlanta on Labor Day weekend. Yeah,
and as of when we are recording this episode, Comic
Con just wrapped up, so there's been lots of news
(02:49):
in our world of the past as the podcast is
coming out now about cosplay and particularly women in cosplay. Yeah,
so what is it? Real quick? Obviously, it's a mash
up of costume and play, particularly dressing up like a
sci fi superhero, comic book, video game character, et cetera.
(03:12):
And cosplaying can range from just wearing a mask, even
though I have a feeling if you show up at
dragon Con and just a mask and jeans, that is
not going to cut it, uh, to actually becoming a character.
And it's almost a form of performance art at that point,
because not only do you wear a costume and makeup
(03:34):
and wigs and all sorts of things, but a lot
of people tend to embody fully, embody whoever it is
they're dressed up as. Yeah, and it it sort of
becomes your cultural capital when you go to these conferences
as far as your accuracy, the actreacy of everything from
your hat to your makeup, to the clothes you're wearing
to the shoes you're wearing. I have a friend who
(03:56):
goes to dragon Con every year and loves to dress
up for it, and she's typically a character out of
Star Wars and not somebody like Leiah or Han Solo,
not like a main character, but usually one of like
the pilots, the types of pilots. And I remember being
so impressed at how accurate I thought her costume was,
but she got some major flak when she went to
Dragon Con because there was like a single piece of
(04:17):
her costume that wasn't completely accurate. Yeah, accuracy is highly
valued and stuff you missed in history class. Fans are
probably well aware that Host Holly is an incredible costume
designer on top of being an incredible podcaster, and the
creations that she makes for Dragon Con are downright incredible
(04:40):
and take months to make because it's all about those details. Yeah.
I know. I have another friend who she'll kill me
if she hears me saying this. That she has two jobs,
and one of her job is working at a fabric
store crafting and fabric store. And part of the reason
why she works there is she it's some pretty good
(05:00):
deals to make some costumes, make some incredible costumes. She's
an incredible seamstress and can whip up these amazing costumes,
and I just I admire the time and dedication that
goes into that kind of stuff. Yeah. Well, the history
of cosplay is pretty fascinating as well, and involves a
lot of attention to detail and time intensive costumes. Uh.
(05:26):
And while a lot of times people seem to think
that cosplay just originated in Japan and was imported to
the US, in fact, it has a pretty rich history
in the US goes all the way back to nine
when sci fi fan Forest Jay Ackerman attended the first
ever World Science Fiction Convention a k a. World Con
(05:50):
and dressed in a quote futuristic costume all one word yeah,
and he was pretty much, along with his friend Myrtle Jones,
the first to do so. Um So, I just want
our cosplaying and con going friends out there to close
your eyes and imagine a con where no one is
dressed up, and that you're the weirdo if you do
(06:10):
show up dressed up. And so Myrtle, his friend Myrtle
wore a gown to accompany him, based on one from
the nineteen thirty three film Things to Come, And these
kids really got into character. They walked around looking like
a pair of superheroes speaking Esperanto to each other and
I was like, what speaking what? That's actually a language
(06:32):
that was constructed in modern history to be politically neutral,
I am showing my ignorance here. I had literally never
heard of Esperanto. I have seen the one feature film
shot in complete, Esperanto, and it stars William Shatner. It's
very strange. It's also in black and white. So if
you ever want, if you ever if you love William Shatner,
(06:55):
you should watch it. Well. So, the following year, World
Con holds its first masquerade ball, So obviously Ackerman and
Jones were doing something right. And then sixteen years later,
in nineteen fifty six, Ackerman returns to world Con to
report on it and notes how common costumes have become.
I'm assuming he felt like like the O G cost player, like, oh,
(07:17):
look at all these peons during this Now he had to.
Although I feel like Ackerman always gets the cred, but
wasn't it Myrtle Jones who made his costume? I mean, like,
obviously gets credit for wearing it, but I'm pretty sure
that it was Jones who constructed his costume, which sort
of looked like a nineteen what you would think of
as a nineteen fifties spaceman. It was like a like
(07:40):
trousers and a top with pointy shoulder pieces. It wasn't
It didn't look crazy elaborate, but that might be because
it was a black and white photographs. And also, well, also,
we're so used to costumes. Now, this is true. Dragon
Con has spoiled us, Caroline, it has, indeed. But so
(08:00):
you know, from the sixties onward, we start to see
fans spending a lot more time, money, and effort creating
their costumes to attend these cons. And then in nineteen
seventy we get the first comic Con taking place in
San Diego. Only three people attended and costuming was not
really a big part of it. And then in nineteen
seventy five it becomes clear that even though costuming wasn't
(08:24):
huge at comic con at the time, there was a
German newspaper that published an article on sci fi conventions
as quote largely devoted to costume dances, parties and mutual flattery.
It sounds like a lot of fun, but I think
the costume dances at the time were often still just
more along the lines of a traditional masquerade. Yeah. Well,
(08:47):
so five years later, in nineteen eighty, if we look
to Japan, the manga series Urse Yet Sarah is released
sorry if I butchered that. Um, and, along with the
nineteen seventy nine series Mobile Suit condem it helped jump
start cosplay in Japan, although it wasn't called cosplay yet. UM.
That wasn't until four when Japanese reporter slash manga publisher
(09:11):
Takahashi Nobiyuki was the first to use the word cosplay
after attending World Con in Los Angeles. Yeah, so the
development of cosplay is actually the result of this sort
of back and forth between cons in the US and
then the growing anime world in Japan, and Japanese readers
(09:34):
apparently loved the term cosplay because well that and the
concept because it really takes hold, and in just a
few years you have cosplayers dressing as anime characters. And
then in the nineteen nineties, that's when you see cosplay
really starting to take off with the explosion of anime
and manga in the United States. Right. Yeah, in the
(09:58):
early nineties, you have the first Anime Expo in l
A that attracted only about seventeen hundred people, but by
twenty twelve, almost fifty thousand people attended that con, and
there was even a cosplay cafe that opened up in Tokyo,
and by now there are entire cosplay districts in Japan,
(10:21):
and it's not it's common to see people in cosplay
on the streets of Japan, not just because they're on
their way to a con, but just because that's all
they dress. They're always in cosplay. Yeah, well, I mean
it's kind of like historic historic Williamsburg, Virginia. I guess
they're always dressed like it's the eighteen fifties or something,
(10:42):
or the seventeen Anyway, By twelve, anime conventions are being
held in thirty states in the US and five provinces
in Canada, and the following year in cosplayers hit reality
TV with the Sci Fi channels Heroes of Cosplay, So
it is like cosplay. As much as of people think
of it as being outside the mainstream and weird and
(11:03):
something strange and foreign, it's pretty mainstream. Yeah. I think
cosplay is becoming mainstream, probably to the chagrin of some
hardcore cause players. I know that not everyone who was
big into cosplay was a big fan of Heroes of
Cosplay on sci Fi. I read a blog post on
I think it was a comics related blog talking about
(11:26):
how it was just edited for reality, and it's not really.
It kind of ignored the heart of cosplay, which is
all about just appreciating something and having a space to
let your fandom run wild to finally, you know, to
(11:47):
actually be the characters that you love and also be
surrounded by people who love you for that, who look
at the tiniest of details on your costume and I
think it's amazing, it's incredible. But it's not just about
the costumes. In fact, the focus of this podcast really
isn't so much on the costumes, but rather the underlying
(12:09):
gender play that some scholars have looked into. Yeah, it's
really interesting, the whole issue of cross play, which I
kind of in my mind as a complete outsider, I
never really subdivided like cross play out from cosplay. I
was always like, oh, well, you know, she's dressing like
a male character, he's dressing like a female character. But
there's been a lot of scholarship on this issue. So,
(12:31):
like I pointed out, cross play is dressing as a
character of another gender, and successful cross play is seen
as a means for costplayers to distinguish themselves in their
art and their skills as a fan. So it's not
necessarily about, you know, becoming someone of another gender, but
becoming that character so completely that people are like, WHOA,
look at you, You're awesome. Yeah. A lot of people
(12:53):
just compare it to drag for for more lay audiences. Um.
And this is something, though specific male to female cross
play that Rachel Lang at Duke University looked into, and
she wrote in a paper on this that when men
cross play as women, they're not merely dawning femininity, but
(13:14):
hyper femininity, revealing the socially constructed nature of gender roles,
yet can commonly reinforcing them, which in a way is
a lot like drag because drag queens are not simply
dressing up as women, but as hyper feminine versions of
women with the big hair and the big makeup and
the sparkles. Yeah. And I thought this was such an
(13:36):
interesting way to look at it because they talk a
lot about the fictive nature of genders. So I don't
know if it was I think it was. This paper
was talking to one particular cross player who talked about
everything that he had to go through to become these
female feminine characters. He took voice lessons, he learned how
to walk, he has to pay so much attention to
how he moves his body to make sure that he's
(13:57):
moving quote like a woman and not like a man,
which comes naturally to him. And another interesting aspect of
cross play that rachel Ing points out is that a
lot of these men who do cross play as female
characters really stress the fact that they're not gay. Not
that there's not gay cross players, but you know what
I'm saying, a lot of these men try to emphasize
(14:18):
we're not gay. It's part of what a big fan
I am that I'm dressing as this female character. And
so just look at the gender spiral of this. So
a man who is straight is stressing as a female character,
and to do it and to show how good of
a fan he is, he's got to be super feminine
while stressing that he's masculine and so having to be
(14:39):
so self assured about that masculinity and heterosexuality while at
the same time asserting femininity layers. Well, yeah, and from
that layers, uh, there sometimes comes extra respect from the
causeplay community if you dare to engage or maybe not
dare doesn't seem like it's that wild of an idea
to engage in cross play because a lot of times too.
(15:03):
This involves making your own costume, and like you talked about,
going to that extra effort to emulate these female characters
as closely as possible, and Lang identified two major motivations
that drive specifically the male to female cross play, which
(15:26):
are the desire to express fandom and skills and also
the thrill of an enhanced which he calls carnivalesque experience
by transgressing the gender binary. In other words, it's just
more fun. Yeah, And a lot of cross players, serious
male to female cross players are really put off by
(15:47):
uh characters like I can't remember the official name, but
it's like basically like Bubba Sailor Moon, where guys who
are like bigger and hairy and are not making that
very strong physical effort to look like the female character
that they're depicting. But you know, so like the picture
in the story was a this rather large man with
(16:08):
a beard and a big gut dressed up as Sailor Moon,
you know, with the blonde wig over his beard and everything.
It's like more making light of it, whereas serious cross
players are having none of that, and they are really
making an effort to embody that character as a guardian
(16:36):
reported on in is female to male cross play because
a lot of times female cause players just might be
challenged by the fact that there aren't as many. Specifically,
we're talking about comic book heroes, interesting independent, strong female characters,
like if they really want to be a super tough character,
(16:58):
it might demand cross playing and and one benefit or
you know whatever. One good thing about like anime and
manga in particular is that while a lot of the
comic book or video games sources that we have in
the West, while the characters there might be very masculine,
and so women are choosing to cross play as these
(17:20):
male characters, in a lot of manga and anime series
the characters are more ambiguous. So helping to enable this
cross play is things like what's called bis shown in,
which are highly feminized male characters with model like proportions
that tend to appear in manga geared toward women. And
(17:40):
along those lines, what's super common to see when you
have women CAUSE players dressing up as traditionally male characters
is what's called femming, So dressing up, say as doctor Who,
but not trying to be one of the all male
doctor of characters over the years, but rather being a
(18:03):
female Doctor Who, but a female version i should say,
of a specific Doctor Who. And you see this all
the time. It's it's also kind of um, you get
into pockets of cosplay where it does start to look
like the whole Halloween costume thing, where it's just sexify anything.
So you could be like a sexy Bain and you'd
just be wearing you know, the scary face mask, but
(18:26):
just a crop top. The crop top will do, right,
and so um. Blogger nights Guy said that feming a
Doctor Who character is a way for geek women to
reclaim their femininity as legitimate in a subculture that often
denigrates all things girly. Yeah, and that's you know, it's
(18:47):
interesting that there seems to be so much cred, at
least according to that Duke paper, in the more realistic
uh male to female crossplay of men dressing up as
female characters and really owning that female character. Um. And
then sort of similar to that, there also seems to
(19:09):
be a lot of cred for femming cosplay as well,
which is kind of cool. I mean, there's a lot
of there's a lot of fascinating gender play at work
on con floors. Yeah, exactly, And responding to that blogger
night Sky, the Guardian writer does point out that, yeah,
she's absolutely right. Um, you know, it is a way
to reclaim characters to say that, hey, girlely is okay.
(19:31):
But it's also serving as that reminder that a lot
of female characters, including female characters in Doctor Who are
the sidekicks. Yeah, it's like going back to that whole
lack of good source material. Yeah. And uh, speaking of that,
cosplay has been a way to offer women entry into
(19:53):
the traditionally male dominated gaming world, comic world, world of fandom.
I mean, just think about the term fanboy. I mean
that's pretty clearly gendered. Uh. And and one example called
out in a paper we found in the journal Intersections,
Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific is how
(20:13):
in Japan, in particular, cosplay open doors for Japanese women
into the so called technic cultures. Right. And so we've
talked about the concept of kauai on the podcast before.
That's basically just like hypercuteness. And the paper was talking
about how you see this rise of the cute culture,
(20:34):
the kauai, alongside techno cultures that revolve around using a
mobile device, and so basically that Kauai served as sort
of a gateway from um passive consumer two women actually
entering the gaming realm, the anime realm and actively participating.
Because in the same way that a woman might fem
(20:57):
a doctor who character, they're talking about Japanese girls and
young women who are kind of cuting up characters and
participating in cosplay that way. And on top of that,
they were focusing on this specific type of younger Japanese woman.
And I don't have the Japanese term for it, but
(21:18):
it essentially means the single independent woman who is most
closely associated with these cultures, who is getting more into
or has gotten more into UM the technoculture and really
the participatory aspects of that. And the paper also talks
(21:40):
about how dressing up as characters in these games in
particular sort of opens up new forms of gender performance.
It decenters the geek guy as the prime game consumer,
and so it's the same kind of thing that you
see happening over in the US as well. But while
(22:00):
there are all sorts of fascinating gender performance aspects to this,
and the name that comes up over and over again
actually in these papers on cosplay is Judith Butler, you
know who is the I don't know if you'd want
to be called the mother of it, but she's the
matriarch of the idea of gender as performance. UM, and
(22:22):
women are certainly welcomed in the cosplay world and are
prominent part of it, but it's not It's not all
costumes and roses. Caroline. Well, yeah, So the whole thing
about you know, cosplay not being all Kauai all the
time is that while on the one hand, you've got
all these women coming into cons and cosplay and that's great,
(22:45):
and that's amazing and they should why not. Um, the
more women that show up, the more reports surface of
things like sexual harassment. You hear the statement a lot
that cosplay does not equal consent, and we will talk
a lot more about that in a minute. But you know,
there's the struggle with the fact that, like we just
mentioned a minute ago, source material for women wanting to
(23:07):
cosplay as strong characters is lacking. A lot of the
comic book women, video game women characters are dressed on
the more scantily clad side. Yeah, I mean, and and
a lot of their proportions are super busty or super leggy,
and it lends itself to sexy costumes. And even when
(23:30):
you know we're doing you know, if you're doing a
femb costume of a male character like I mentioned jokingly, uh,
a lot of times those costumes get sexy and provocative
as well. And while some of the cosplay world have
argued that, you know what, that's too sexy, it's too booby,
that's not what it's about. Um. The fact of the
matter is, even if you are wearing a super sexy costume,
(23:52):
whether it is being faithful to that original character portrayal,
or if you are reinterpreting a costume in a sex
your version, that's not an invitation for someone to touch
you or take up skirt photos of you or verbally
harass you. And unfortunately that has become at least a
more media prominent part of the cons So for instance,
(24:17):
recently with the San Diego Comic Con, there was this
entire initiative started by a group called Geeks War Consent.
That's capital c O N sent consent, Yeah, and Geeks
for Consent was basically pushing for comic con to adopt
a stronger, more official anti sexual harassment policy beyond just
(24:37):
their standard code of conduct, and they ended up collecting
more than signatures on a petition to get such a policy,
and they stated on their website that unfortunately some congo
or see women in costumes it's just a part of
the convention scenery and believe that they are dressed up
solely to attract mail attention. And you know, they're arguing
that it's not fair that, like, if you have a male,
(25:00):
for instance, just to use the example of a male
to female cross player, like you know, he's praised for
being so faithful to the character's depiction. And so if
you have a woman who wants to pick a strong
woman from anime or video games or movies or something,
and that character happens to be scantily clad or wearing
a crop top or ripped jeans or something, you know,
(25:22):
they want to be faithful to that strong character. And
sometimes that just involves being scantily clad themselves. But that
is not an okay, a past to harass these women,
grow these women, and it's what so many have to
end up dealing with. Yeah, there are groups that are
working to address this matter and to improve things. For instance,
(25:45):
the New York Cause Player Network has put together panels
to teach women how to stay safe and also deal
with harassment, although it does seem like it's not necessarily well,
let's just say it's not just the women who could
use some education regarding harassment and how to behave um.
And then beyond that, there have been some issues, particularly
(26:06):
with CAUSE players of color, because you know, as we
talked about, when it comes to cosplay, authenticity is the
number one currency. If you can look down to a
t like a particular character, then you are golden. But
when it comes to representation in UH comic book heroes,
(26:29):
for instance, a lot of them not only are male,
but they're also very white as well. So there's actually
a tumbler um called cosplaying while black, just to offer
some visibility to you know, Cause players of color that hey, look,
we can cause play too, just because our skin tone
might not match the skin tone of whatever character we
(26:52):
are dressing up as. Yeah, I I hated reading the
kinds of things that blogger Shaka cumber Batch over at
Exo Jane had to face when she dressed up as
Sailor Moon. She was like talking about how excited she
was to dress up as this character. How great of
a time she had, but that one single picture of
(27:12):
her dressed in character like blew the internet up with
people saying incredibly awful racist things and essentially boiled down
to you she wasn't suited because of her skin, because
of the her face shape, her nose shape, she wasn't
suited for such a cute character. I did like her point, though,
(27:33):
and she says, you know, I don't understand being attacked
for not being accurate down to my skin color, because
no one can be accurate when a character is eight
feet tall with quote basketballs for boobs, which is a
very good point because there there have been issues not
only with cosplayers of color, but also people of different
(27:53):
body shapes and sizes being called out, especially if they
might be wearing a tighter geting or a more skin
revealing costume, of saying, oh, no, you you're too you're
too big to wear that. None, none of that now,
where you know that the people who are really invested
in cosplay would say, but that's the whole part of this.
(28:16):
This is for everybody. This is this space where I
can bring all of my super geeky fandom that people
that I work with are people that I, you know,
see regularly in public just might not get about me.
This is where people can get me. So why do
I need to look a certain way? And that whole
issue too of of visibility and representation UM and cosplay
(28:39):
for everyone is another reason why. Sort of as jumping
off from cosplaying while black, there's also a popular cause
playing while trans tumbler because it was started by a
trans woman who said, you know what, I caused by
all the time, and I wanted some costume inspiration from
other trans cause players I could find nothing. Yeah, and
(29:03):
so that started as well because you know, and there
were a lot of people who came out on the
tumbler sharing their photos and talking about how wonderful it
was to see other trans people cosplaying because they felt
like they always needed to keep their sort of identity
under wraps for fear of discrimination. Yeah, a lot of
(29:23):
the trans cost players in this article we're sort of
talking about how they were on the defense. They had
to run defense all the time because people, it's that
whole layer gendered thing. You know, are you are you cosplaying?
Are you cross playing? You know what? Are you really?
You're really a guy, like having to face that abuse
so not only do you have to deal with potential
sexual harassment, but you also have to deal with people
(29:45):
harassing you for like not being biologically accurate. I don't know,
it's like there's there's so many ways to to be attacked. Well,
it's interesting that that's happening, to that it would happen,
and I really hope that this is the exception. I
don't think that this is really the rule. Um, But
these are instances that are certainly getting a lot more
(30:06):
attention as they should. Um. But it's fascinating that these
kinds of things come up in an area where it
seems like it should all be about, you know, it's
all it's all about sort of deconstructing gender, you know,
and what I mean, and and a lot of these
a lot of these characters aren't even human, So what's
(30:27):
the problem here exactly? Okay, Well, moving to you know,
we want to continue this this gender discussion of cosplaying,
but we obviously have to bring feminism into it, because
I mean, you could go in a circle forever talking
about a woman cosplayer dressing up as a scantily clad
comic book character and whether that's empowering and feminist or
(30:51):
whether that's being she's being exploited. I mean, it's quite
a discussion. It is quite a discussion. The fact the
matter is, there are professional cause playing women, um who
essentially are just their models. They're very attractive women with
very conventionally attractive bodies that involve large breasts and small
(31:11):
waist and attractive behind, and they you know, have fan
groups and fan pages and make money, you know, by
going to different cons and dressing up and their costumes
obviously are sexy, and that's the whole point of it,
and not everybody likes that. So, for instance, if someone
(31:33):
like Jessica Nigri, who is a professional cause player, she's
probably one of the most successful and well known and
is very sexy. If she goes to a con, people
complain that, well, it's hard to get anywhere because people
are just crowding up to you know, and by people,
it's usually all guys crowding to take photos with her.
(31:54):
And it's women like that who are making it super
sexy who are ruining it or the rest of us,
to which Jessica at all, who are also you know,
making money off of this, partially because they look really
great in sexy costumes. Say hey, now, no, I'm just
this is what I'm doing. So there's a lot of
(32:27):
argument over whether something like that is empowering and feminist
or not. And an I g N actually talked to
three women cost players who talked a lot about enjoying
the validation and attention that comes along with dressing up
like this, a feeling feminine and or powerful, and also
using their sexuality, all of this in the framework of feminism.
(32:49):
But they also do talk in this interview a lot
about the extreme sexual harassment that they face, whether it's
just verbal or actually physical, and the misogyny that they
know exists. But the whole thing about talking to these
three women is, um, they really really took issue with feminism. Yeah,
they all completely disavowed feminism because it seemed like the
(33:14):
women who were most critical of them were coming from
a feminist stance, basically saying that they were degrading themselves
by being sexy. And this this gets into a whole
different kind of conversation though, Well, yeah, because somebody like
the Vixen gamer she says, we're seeing a big spearhead
(33:35):
of feminism in the gaming industry, and I think, don't
sacrifice your feminine femininity to fit in, and then there's
the whole conversation of well what is I mean, let's
not get super philosophical right now, but like, what is femininity?
And who are you being feminine? Four? And who are
you performing your gender? Four? And are you really doing
it to make yourself happy? Or are you doing it
(33:56):
because you are fitting into what men expect of you?
And on and on and on. I am I would
love to hear from cause players on this particular issue,
because you know you and I can only offer outside
perspectives to me that the simplest way to boil it
down is, Ladies, you do you okay if this is
(34:20):
the way that you make your your money and you
feel empowered and safe doing it, okay? But do other
lady caused players a solid and unlike black Cat, don't
blame them for men behaving badly, because, as she describes,
(34:42):
if you don't turn around and threaten to hurt them
in the penis region, then you're the one to blame
for your own harassment. It's like everyone just needs to
Could we all just get on the same page regarding
harassment and good behavior? And could you just promote good
behavior and and then can't we all just con together
(35:04):
and in peace and harmony. That would be great. But
something that I thought was so strange, and and another
blogger thought this was odd too. But in this interview
Ardella cost Player, Ardella says that sexism is really a
point of view. It's how you react to it and
how you betray yourself as to whether or not you
(35:25):
allow people to objectify you. She basically said, don't let
anyone treat you like an object if that's not the
way you want to be treated to, which, you know,
I just like my eyes rolled into the back of
my head because Okay, Blogger intrat Sceptive a k a.
Readjenkins had an appropriate response. I thought she said that
to suggest that sexism, rather than being inherently wrong, is
(35:48):
simply a matter of how the person affected deals with
it is ridiculous, and she takes issue with a lot
of the arguments that were raised in the interview. Well yeah,
I mean she compared that to saying, uh, you know, okay,
so let's take this this assertion that sexism is just
how you, the the the objectified person deals with it.
(36:10):
She was like, okay, if you said that, but just
replaced sexism with racism, clearly everyone would disagree with you,
and so it's a similar kind of thing with sexism.
Um Over at the Geek Feminism blog, Uh, there's an
entire more academic presentation on this whole issue of the
(36:32):
sexy geek cause play thing, and um she talks about
how quote geek media representations of women influence geek women's
decisions to dress in sexy cause play, and how what
makes sexy cosplay sexy is not just that women are attractive,
but that they're performing and actively seeking the mail approval.
(36:54):
It's that question that you raise, Caroline of, like, well,
who are you performing this for? And obviously for professional
all cosplayers who make money off of other people buying
calendars and whatnot of them in sexy costumes. Yeah, obviously
they're performing it for, you know, to to look sexy
for the male gaze. That's their job. Yeah yeah, But
(37:17):
I mean I guess they're talking to about like people
who aren't just the just the professional ones, not just
the professional cost players, but just um women who might
go to these cons and do want to capture that
empowered feeling by dressing a certain way. And the geek
Feminism blogger talked about how it is that particular type
(37:37):
of gender performance that is rewarded in this culture, whether
you're a professional or an amateur. To me, the Geeks
for Consent response is sort of the cleanest across the
board response to all of this, which is simply that
cosplay does not equal consent. And perhaps if you know,
(37:59):
common con as other cons are doing outlines of stricter
sexual harassment policy. The more that people talk about it,
the more media coverage it gets, the more you know,
perhaps these kinds of behaviors that tain't the cosplay experience
UM might improve. Yeah, well, we can look to Washington,
d C is awesome Con as an example where this worked.
(38:23):
UM Awesome Con partnered with Geeks for Consent to provide
a team on site who could act as a resource
for attendees who feel unsafe. UM and awesome Con now
has adopted a zero tolerance policy against harassment, groping, stalking,
and inappropriate photography, and they said that gender based harassment
(38:43):
doesn't have to happen in the workplace to be unacceptable.
And so I think it's great that there are groups
out there and cons out there who are taking definite
concrete steps to say hey, no, no, no, no, no,
you don't get to be a harasser and you shouldn't
have to be a victim just because you want to
come to this convey mention like harassment is not an
acceptable part of dressing up and having an awesome time
(39:05):
with your fellow geek culture people. Well, personally, I don't
feel qualified to jump directly into this phray regarding you know,
all of the causeplay politics of sexy costumes. I think
there are a lot of different layers to it in
terms of the representations of women in these fandom sources,
the source texts and sourced films and television shows and etcetera. Um,
(39:30):
we are relying on our audience to fill in the
blank for this, because I know we got some cause
players listening. Yeah. I cannot wait to see your pictures.
By the way, yes, please send us photos. They are appreciated. Yeah,
I want to see photos, and I want to hear
from you if you've had any of these sorts of
whether you're male or female, cosplaying or cross playing, I
(39:51):
do want to hear from you about has have you
faced harassment or have you just been getting high fives
everywhere you go? I want to, I want to hear
about it, and is this something that is overblown in
the media. Is this simply, you know, sort of a
very small aspect of con the con life um that
maybe gets too much attention. Let us know Mom's Stuff
(40:15):
at how Stuffwork dot com is our email address. You
can also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast or messages
on Facebook, and we have a couple of messages to
share with you right now. We have some letters here
about our Wanderlust Traveling Women episode. I have one from Anna.
(40:37):
She said, three years ago, I had a stable partner,
good job prospects, and a home. I soon discovered I
was pregnant and gave up my career to start down
the path of motherhood. Later, I experienced a rather traumatic
miscarriage in which I had to have a d n C.
Following my miscarriage, my partner left me and blamed me
for the loss of the child. Realizing that I gave
(40:57):
up my career for a child that would never be
that resulted in the loss of my partner was too much,
so I decided that I needed to go. I didn't
just travel, but I moved to rural Japan by myself.
I've since moved around the southern island of Kyushu, met
my future husband, and have been enjoying the freedom that
comes with being a contract worker in Japan. I've never
(41:18):
read any travel memoirs, and this podcast was the first
time I didn't feel alone and what happened to me.
I think more women should go out and live in
another country by themselves for a while, because it really
does help you to see how small your problems are
in the grand scheme of things. But thanks Anna, and
I've got a similar letter here from Nadlie about um
how she got wander lusty after a breakup. She writes,
(41:44):
it's almost embarrassing how true most of the things you
discussed are in regard to myself and my story over
the past year, my significant other of eleven years and
I broke up and I found myself lost, never having
experienced adult life without him. I'm a school teacher and
have the summer's off, which allow me to take what
I refer to as an epic summer adventure, all of
which she capitalized. I got in my car and just
(42:06):
drove to as many places as I could. I think
the most life changing spot for me was seeing the
Grand Canyon for the first time. It could be because
of how impressive the Grand Canyon is, but I think
it was more because it was my first major stop.
Walking up to this amazing place that exists in the
world and knowing that I got there by myself was
completely and utterly overwhelming and empowering. I sat on the
rim of the canyon and just cried while others walked
(42:29):
around me, wondering what my problem was. After that, I
knew that I could do anything, and that being alone
has some great benefits. You can check out a blog
I kept while I was gone at Natalie Genie dot
tumbler dot com and see photos from my trip on
my Instagram using the hashtag my Epic Summer Adventure. Thanks
for all the time and effort you put into your show.
You never disappoint, So thanks Natalie, and thanks everybody who's
(42:53):
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(43:14):
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how stuff works dot com
Hi, this is Annie, and this is Bridget, and you're
listening to stuff mom never told you. And it is
con season also as a convention season. Um. I've been
(00:26):
known to get into some trouble at conventions, particularly my
local Atlanta convention, Dragon Con, which is a Labor Day weekend.
I'm getting ready for it right now, so if you're around,
come find me. I'll be drunk, but I'll also be
Hella from thora Ragnarok, Spider Man or woman I suppose
the Winter Soldier and Ellie from the Last of Us.
Do you have a character you would jessef as Bridget
(00:48):
or have you? I would love to cosplay as Wonder Woman,
and once I cosplayed as mis Sean from Walking Dead,
which I feel like I look a little bit like
what convention was that the was not a convention. This
was just a us getting drunk and going to bars
at a very nerdy bar crawl. So I don't know
if that's sill counts cosplay, I'll count it. Um. There
(01:15):
is a dark side to cosplay and convention culture, of course,
and I have certainly certainly run into some creepiness. Um.
A lot of people feel like they can ask you
to take pictures and weird poses. Um, there is a
lot of the fake geek girl. I've been quizzed like
(01:36):
how well I know the character I'm dressing up as
basically just leave me alone. But okay, um um. Whenever
I um kind of don't play along with creepy guys
at conventions, they get angry at me and say I'm
not a real fan and kind of storm off, powered off.
(01:58):
So there there is at and it's unfortunate. Uh. And
in this episode that we're going to replay this classic,
Kristen and Caroline talk about some of that, along with
the rise of cosplay, fake girl fandom, and the sexual
harassment that women and men might encounter when cosplaying. We
hope you enjoy it. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
(02:24):
I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline, and we are talking about
cosplay today because it's the season of the con. Well
it might be a little past the season of the con,
but there's still some cons happening. There's still some cons happening,
namely a Dragon Con here in Atlanta on Labor Day weekend. Yeah,
and as of when we are recording this episode, Comic
Con just wrapped up, so there's been lots of news
(02:49):
in our world of the past as the podcast is
coming out now about cosplay and particularly women in cosplay. Yeah,
so what is it? Real quick? Obviously, it's a mash
up of costume and play, particularly dressing up like a
sci fi superhero, comic book, video game character, et cetera.
(03:12):
And cosplaying can range from just wearing a mask, even
though I have a feeling if you show up at
dragon Con and just a mask and jeans, that is
not going to cut it, uh, to actually becoming a character.
And it's almost a form of performance art at that point,
because not only do you wear a costume and makeup
(03:34):
and wigs and all sorts of things, but a lot
of people tend to embody fully, embody whoever it is
they're dressed up as. Yeah, and it it sort of
becomes your cultural capital when you go to these conferences
as far as your accuracy, the actreacy of everything from
your hat to your makeup, to the clothes you're wearing
to the shoes you're wearing. I have a friend who
(03:56):
goes to dragon Con every year and loves to dress
up for it, and she's typically a character out of
Star Wars and not somebody like Leiah or Han Solo,
not like a main character, but usually one of like
the pilots, the types of pilots. And I remember being
so impressed at how accurate I thought her costume was,
but she got some major flak when she went to
Dragon Con because there was like a single piece of
(04:17):
her costume that wasn't completely accurate. Yeah, accuracy is highly
valued and stuff you missed in history class. Fans are
probably well aware that Host Holly is an incredible costume
designer on top of being an incredible podcaster, and the
creations that she makes for Dragon Con are downright incredible
(04:40):
and take months to make because it's all about those details. Yeah.
I know. I have another friend who she'll kill me
if she hears me saying this. That she has two jobs,
and one of her job is working at a fabric
store crafting and fabric store. And part of the reason
why she works there is she it's some pretty good
(05:00):
deals to make some costumes, make some incredible costumes. She's
an incredible seamstress and can whip up these amazing costumes,
and I just I admire the time and dedication that
goes into that kind of stuff. Yeah. Well, the history
of cosplay is pretty fascinating as well, and involves a
lot of attention to detail and time intensive costumes. Uh.
(05:26):
And while a lot of times people seem to think
that cosplay just originated in Japan and was imported to
the US, in fact, it has a pretty rich history
in the US goes all the way back to nine
when sci fi fan Forest Jay Ackerman attended the first
ever World Science Fiction Convention a k a. World Con
(05:50):
and dressed in a quote futuristic costume all one word yeah,
and he was pretty much, along with his friend Myrtle Jones,
the first to do so. Um So, I just want
our cosplaying and con going friends out there to close
your eyes and imagine a con where no one is
dressed up, and that you're the weirdo if you do
(06:10):
show up dressed up. And so Myrtle, his friend Myrtle
wore a gown to accompany him, based on one from
the nineteen thirty three film Things to Come, And these
kids really got into character. They walked around looking like
a pair of superheroes speaking Esperanto to each other and
I was like, what speaking what? That's actually a language
(06:32):
that was constructed in modern history to be politically neutral,
I am showing my ignorance here. I had literally never
heard of Esperanto. I have seen the one feature film
shot in complete, Esperanto, and it stars William Shatner. It's
very strange. It's also in black and white. So if
you ever want, if you ever if you love William Shatner,
(06:55):
you should watch it. Well. So, the following year, World
Con holds its first masquerade ball, So obviously Ackerman and
Jones were doing something right. And then sixteen years later,
in nineteen fifty six, Ackerman returns to world Con to
report on it and notes how common costumes have become.
I'm assuming he felt like like the O G cost player, like, oh,
(07:17):
look at all these peons during this Now he had to.
Although I feel like Ackerman always gets the cred, but
wasn't it Myrtle Jones who made his costume? I mean, like,
obviously gets credit for wearing it, but I'm pretty sure
that it was Jones who constructed his costume, which sort
of looked like a nineteen what you would think of
as a nineteen fifties spaceman. It was like a like
(07:40):
trousers and a top with pointy shoulder pieces. It wasn't
It didn't look crazy elaborate, but that might be because
it was a black and white photographs. And also, well, also,
we're so used to costumes. Now, this is true. Dragon
Con has spoiled us, Caroline, it has, indeed. But so
(08:00):
you know, from the sixties onward, we start to see
fans spending a lot more time, money, and effort creating
their costumes to attend these cons. And then in nineteen
seventy we get the first comic Con taking place in
San Diego. Only three people attended and costuming was not
really a big part of it. And then in nineteen
seventy five it becomes clear that even though costuming wasn't
(08:24):
huge at comic con at the time, there was a
German newspaper that published an article on sci fi conventions
as quote largely devoted to costume dances, parties and mutual flattery.
It sounds like a lot of fun, but I think
the costume dances at the time were often still just
more along the lines of a traditional masquerade. Yeah. Well,
(08:47):
so five years later, in nineteen eighty, if we look
to Japan, the manga series Urse Yet Sarah is released
sorry if I butchered that. Um, and, along with the
nineteen seventy nine series Mobile Suit condem it helped jump
start cosplay in Japan, although it wasn't called cosplay yet. UM.
That wasn't until four when Japanese reporter slash manga publisher
(09:11):
Takahashi Nobiyuki was the first to use the word cosplay
after attending World Con in Los Angeles. Yeah, so the
development of cosplay is actually the result of this sort
of back and forth between cons in the US and
then the growing anime world in Japan, and Japanese readers
(09:34):
apparently loved the term cosplay because well that and the
concept because it really takes hold, and in just a
few years you have cosplayers dressing as anime characters. And
then in the nineteen nineties, that's when you see cosplay
really starting to take off with the explosion of anime
and manga in the United States. Right. Yeah, in the
(09:58):
early nineties, you have the first Anime Expo in l
A that attracted only about seventeen hundred people, but by
twenty twelve, almost fifty thousand people attended that con, and
there was even a cosplay cafe that opened up in Tokyo,
and by now there are entire cosplay districts in Japan,
(10:21):
and it's not it's common to see people in cosplay
on the streets of Japan, not just because they're on
their way to a con, but just because that's all
they dress. They're always in cosplay. Yeah, well, I mean
it's kind of like historic historic Williamsburg, Virginia. I guess
they're always dressed like it's the eighteen fifties or something,
(10:42):
or the seventeen Anyway, By twelve, anime conventions are being
held in thirty states in the US and five provinces
in Canada, and the following year in cosplayers hit reality
TV with the Sci Fi channels Heroes of Cosplay, So
it is like cosplay. As much as of people think
of it as being outside the mainstream and weird and
(11:03):
something strange and foreign, it's pretty mainstream. Yeah. I think
cosplay is becoming mainstream, probably to the chagrin of some
hardcore cause players. I know that not everyone who was
big into cosplay was a big fan of Heroes of
Cosplay on sci Fi. I read a blog post on
I think it was a comics related blog talking about
(11:26):
how it was just edited for reality, and it's not really.
It kind of ignored the heart of cosplay, which is
all about just appreciating something and having a space to
let your fandom run wild to finally, you know, to
(11:47):
actually be the characters that you love and also be
surrounded by people who love you for that, who look
at the tiniest of details on your costume and I
think it's amazing, it's incredible. But it's not just about
the costumes. In fact, the focus of this podcast really
isn't so much on the costumes, but rather the underlying
(12:09):
gender play that some scholars have looked into. Yeah, it's
really interesting, the whole issue of cross play, which I
kind of in my mind as a complete outsider, I
never really subdivided like cross play out from cosplay. I
was always like, oh, well, you know, she's dressing like
a male character, he's dressing like a female character. But
there's been a lot of scholarship on this issue. So,
(12:31):
like I pointed out, cross play is dressing as a
character of another gender, and successful cross play is seen
as a means for costplayers to distinguish themselves in their
art and their skills as a fan. So it's not
necessarily about, you know, becoming someone of another gender, but
becoming that character so completely that people are like, WHOA,
look at you, You're awesome. Yeah. A lot of people
(12:53):
just compare it to drag for for more lay audiences. Um.
And this is something, though specific male to female cross
play that Rachel Lang at Duke University looked into, and
she wrote in a paper on this that when men
cross play as women, they're not merely dawning femininity, but
(13:14):
hyper femininity, revealing the socially constructed nature of gender roles,
yet can commonly reinforcing them, which in a way is
a lot like drag because drag queens are not simply
dressing up as women, but as hyper feminine versions of
women with the big hair and the big makeup and
the sparkles. Yeah. And I thought this was such an
(13:36):
interesting way to look at it because they talk a
lot about the fictive nature of genders. So I don't
know if it was I think it was. This paper
was talking to one particular cross player who talked about
everything that he had to go through to become these
female feminine characters. He took voice lessons, he learned how
to walk, he has to pay so much attention to
how he moves his body to make sure that he's
(13:57):
moving quote like a woman and not like a man,
which comes naturally to him. And another interesting aspect of
cross play that rachel Ing points out is that a
lot of these men who do cross play as female
characters really stress the fact that they're not gay. Not
that there's not gay cross players, but you know what
I'm saying, a lot of these men try to emphasize
(14:18):
we're not gay. It's part of what a big fan
I am that I'm dressing as this female character. And
so just look at the gender spiral of this. So
a man who is straight is stressing as a female character,
and to do it and to show how good of
a fan he is, he's got to be super feminine
while stressing that he's masculine and so having to be
(14:39):
so self assured about that masculinity and heterosexuality while at
the same time asserting femininity layers. Well, yeah, and from
that layers, uh, there sometimes comes extra respect from the
causeplay community if you dare to engage or maybe not
dare doesn't seem like it's that wild of an idea
to engage in cross play because a lot of times too.
(15:03):
This involves making your own costume, and like you talked about,
going to that extra effort to emulate these female characters
as closely as possible, and Lang identified two major motivations
that drive specifically the male to female cross play, which
(15:26):
are the desire to express fandom and skills and also
the thrill of an enhanced which he calls carnivalesque experience
by transgressing the gender binary. In other words, it's just
more fun. Yeah, And a lot of cross players, serious
male to female cross players are really put off by
(15:47):
uh characters like I can't remember the official name, but
it's like basically like Bubba Sailor Moon, where guys who
are like bigger and hairy and are not making that
very strong physical effort to look like the female character
that they're depicting. But you know, so like the picture
in the story was a this rather large man with
(16:08):
a beard and a big gut dressed up as Sailor Moon,
you know, with the blonde wig over his beard and everything.
It's like more making light of it, whereas serious cross
players are having none of that, and they are really
making an effort to embody that character as a guardian
(16:36):
reported on in is female to male cross play because
a lot of times female cause players just might be
challenged by the fact that there aren't as many. Specifically,
we're talking about comic book heroes, interesting independent, strong female characters,
like if they really want to be a super tough character,
(16:58):
it might demand cross playing and and one benefit or
you know whatever. One good thing about like anime and
manga in particular is that while a lot of the
comic book or video games sources that we have in
the West, while the characters there might be very masculine,
and so women are choosing to cross play as these
(17:20):
male characters, in a lot of manga and anime series
the characters are more ambiguous. So helping to enable this
cross play is things like what's called bis shown in,
which are highly feminized male characters with model like proportions
that tend to appear in manga geared toward women. And
(17:40):
along those lines, what's super common to see when you
have women CAUSE players dressing up as traditionally male characters
is what's called femming, So dressing up, say as doctor Who,
but not trying to be one of the all male
doctor of characters over the years, but rather being a
(18:03):
female Doctor Who, but a female version i should say,
of a specific Doctor Who. And you see this all
the time. It's it's also kind of um, you get
into pockets of cosplay where it does start to look
like the whole Halloween costume thing, where it's just sexify anything.
So you could be like a sexy Bain and you'd
just be wearing you know, the scary face mask, but
(18:26):
just a crop top. The crop top will do, right,
and so um. Blogger nights Guy said that feming a
Doctor Who character is a way for geek women to
reclaim their femininity as legitimate in a subculture that often
denigrates all things girly. Yeah, and that's you know, it's
(18:47):
interesting that there seems to be so much cred, at
least according to that Duke paper, in the more realistic
uh male to female crossplay of men dressing up as
female characters and really owning that female character. Um. And
then sort of similar to that, there also seems to
(19:09):
be a lot of cred for femming cosplay as well,
which is kind of cool. I mean, there's a lot
of there's a lot of fascinating gender play at work
on con floors. Yeah, exactly, And responding to that blogger
night Sky, the Guardian writer does point out that, yeah,
she's absolutely right. Um, you know, it is a way
to reclaim characters to say that, hey, girlely is okay.
(19:31):
But it's also serving as that reminder that a lot
of female characters, including female characters in Doctor Who are
the sidekicks. Yeah, it's like going back to that whole
lack of good source material. Yeah. And uh, speaking of that,
cosplay has been a way to offer women entry into
(19:53):
the traditionally male dominated gaming world, comic world, world of fandom.
I mean, just think about the term fanboy. I mean
that's pretty clearly gendered. Uh. And and one example called
out in a paper we found in the journal Intersections,
Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific is how
(20:13):
in Japan, in particular, cosplay open doors for Japanese women
into the so called technic cultures. Right. And so we've
talked about the concept of kauai on the podcast before.
That's basically just like hypercuteness. And the paper was talking
about how you see this rise of the cute culture,
(20:34):
the kauai, alongside techno cultures that revolve around using a
mobile device, and so basically that Kauai served as sort
of a gateway from um passive consumer two women actually
entering the gaming realm, the anime realm and actively participating.
Because in the same way that a woman might fem
(20:57):
a doctor who character, they're talking about Japanese girls and
young women who are kind of cuting up characters and
participating in cosplay that way. And on top of that,
they were focusing on this specific type of younger Japanese woman.
And I don't have the Japanese term for it, but
(21:18):
it essentially means the single independent woman who is most
closely associated with these cultures, who is getting more into
or has gotten more into UM the technoculture and really
the participatory aspects of that. And the paper also talks
(21:40):
about how dressing up as characters in these games in
particular sort of opens up new forms of gender performance.
It decenters the geek guy as the prime game consumer,
and so it's the same kind of thing that you
see happening over in the US as well. But while
(22:00):
there are all sorts of fascinating gender performance aspects to this,
and the name that comes up over and over again
actually in these papers on cosplay is Judith Butler, you
know who is the I don't know if you'd want
to be called the mother of it, but she's the
matriarch of the idea of gender as performance. UM, and
(22:22):
women are certainly welcomed in the cosplay world and are
prominent part of it, but it's not It's not all
costumes and roses. Caroline. Well, yeah, So the whole thing
about you know, cosplay not being all Kauai all the
time is that while on the one hand, you've got
all these women coming into cons and cosplay and that's great,
(22:45):
and that's amazing and they should why not. Um, the
more women that show up, the more reports surface of
things like sexual harassment. You hear the statement a lot
that cosplay does not equal consent, and we will talk
a lot more about that in a minute. But you know,
there's the struggle with the fact that, like we just
mentioned a minute ago, source material for women wanting to
(23:07):
cosplay as strong characters is lacking. A lot of the
comic book women, video game women characters are dressed on
the more scantily clad side. Yeah, I mean, and and
a lot of their proportions are super busty or super leggy,
and it lends itself to sexy costumes. And even when
(23:30):
you know we're doing you know, if you're doing a
femb costume of a male character like I mentioned jokingly, uh,
a lot of times those costumes get sexy and provocative
as well. And while some of the cosplay world have
argued that, you know what, that's too sexy, it's too booby,
that's not what it's about. Um. The fact of the
matter is, even if you are wearing a super sexy costume,
(23:52):
whether it is being faithful to that original character portrayal,
or if you are reinterpreting a costume in a sex
your version, that's not an invitation for someone to touch
you or take up skirt photos of you or verbally
harass you. And unfortunately that has become at least a
more media prominent part of the cons So for instance,
(24:17):
recently with the San Diego Comic Con, there was this
entire initiative started by a group called Geeks War Consent.
That's capital c O N sent consent, Yeah, and Geeks
for Consent was basically pushing for comic con to adopt
a stronger, more official anti sexual harassment policy beyond just
(24:37):
their standard code of conduct, and they ended up collecting
more than signatures on a petition to get such a policy,
and they stated on their website that unfortunately some congo
or see women in costumes it's just a part of
the convention scenery and believe that they are dressed up
solely to attract mail attention. And you know, they're arguing
that it's not fair that, like, if you have a male,
(25:00):
for instance, just to use the example of a male
to female cross player, like you know, he's praised for
being so faithful to the character's depiction. And so if
you have a woman who wants to pick a strong
woman from anime or video games or movies or something,
and that character happens to be scantily clad or wearing
a crop top or ripped jeans or something, you know,
(25:22):
they want to be faithful to that strong character. And
sometimes that just involves being scantily clad themselves. But that
is not an okay, a past to harass these women,
grow these women, and it's what so many have to
end up dealing with. Yeah, there are groups that are
working to address this matter and to improve things. For instance,
(25:45):
the New York Cause Player Network has put together panels
to teach women how to stay safe and also deal
with harassment, although it does seem like it's not necessarily well,
let's just say it's not just the women who could
use some education regarding harassment and how to behave um.
And then beyond that, there have been some issues, particularly
(26:06):
with CAUSE players of color, because you know, as we
talked about, when it comes to cosplay, authenticity is the
number one currency. If you can look down to a
t like a particular character, then you are golden. But
when it comes to representation in UH comic book heroes,
(26:29):
for instance, a lot of them not only are male,
but they're also very white as well. So there's actually
a tumbler um called cosplaying while black, just to offer
some visibility to you know, Cause players of color that hey, look,
we can cause play too, just because our skin tone
might not match the skin tone of whatever character we
(26:52):
are dressing up as. Yeah, I I hated reading the
kinds of things that blogger Shaka cumber Batch over at
Exo Jane had to face when she dressed up as
Sailor Moon. She was like talking about how excited she
was to dress up as this character. How great of
a time she had, but that one single picture of
(27:12):
her dressed in character like blew the internet up with
people saying incredibly awful racist things and essentially boiled down
to you she wasn't suited because of her skin, because
of the her face shape, her nose shape, she wasn't
suited for such a cute character. I did like her point, though,
(27:33):
and she says, you know, I don't understand being attacked
for not being accurate down to my skin color, because
no one can be accurate when a character is eight
feet tall with quote basketballs for boobs, which is a
very good point because there there have been issues not
only with cosplayers of color, but also people of different
(27:53):
body shapes and sizes being called out, especially if they
might be wearing a tighter geting or a more skin
revealing costume, of saying, oh, no, you you're too you're
too big to wear that. None, none of that now,
where you know that the people who are really invested
in cosplay would say, but that's the whole part of this.
(28:16):
This is for everybody. This is this space where I
can bring all of my super geeky fandom that people
that I work with are people that I, you know,
see regularly in public just might not get about me.
This is where people can get me. So why do
I need to look a certain way? And that whole
issue too of of visibility and representation UM and cosplay
(28:39):
for everyone is another reason why. Sort of as jumping
off from cosplaying while black, there's also a popular cause
playing while trans tumbler because it was started by a
trans woman who said, you know what, I caused by
all the time, and I wanted some costume inspiration from
other trans cause players I could find nothing. Yeah, and
(29:03):
so that started as well because you know, and there
were a lot of people who came out on the
tumbler sharing their photos and talking about how wonderful it
was to see other trans people cosplaying because they felt
like they always needed to keep their sort of identity
under wraps for fear of discrimination. Yeah, a lot of
(29:23):
the trans cost players in this article we're sort of
talking about how they were on the defense. They had
to run defense all the time because people, it's that
whole layer gendered thing. You know, are you are you cosplaying?
Are you cross playing? You know what? Are you really?
You're really a guy, like having to face that abuse
so not only do you have to deal with potential
sexual harassment, but you also have to deal with people
(29:45):
harassing you for like not being biologically accurate. I don't know,
it's like there's there's so many ways to to be attacked. Well,
it's interesting that that's happening, to that it would happen,
and I really hope that this is the exception. I
don't think that this is really the rule. Um, But
these are instances that are certainly getting a lot more
(30:06):
attention as they should. Um. But it's fascinating that these
kinds of things come up in an area where it
seems like it should all be about, you know, it's
all it's all about sort of deconstructing gender, you know,
and what I mean, and and a lot of these
a lot of these characters aren't even human, So what's
(30:27):
the problem here exactly? Okay, Well, moving to you know,
we want to continue this this gender discussion of cosplaying,
but we obviously have to bring feminism into it, because
I mean, you could go in a circle forever talking
about a woman cosplayer dressing up as a scantily clad
comic book character and whether that's empowering and feminist or
(30:51):
whether that's being she's being exploited. I mean, it's quite
a discussion. It is quite a discussion. The fact the
matter is, there are professional cause playing women, um who
essentially are just their models. They're very attractive women with
very conventionally attractive bodies that involve large breasts and small
(31:11):
waist and attractive behind, and they you know, have fan
groups and fan pages and make money, you know, by
going to different cons and dressing up and their costumes
obviously are sexy, and that's the whole point of it,
and not everybody likes that. So, for instance, if someone
(31:33):
like Jessica Nigri, who is a professional cause player, she's
probably one of the most successful and well known and
is very sexy. If she goes to a con, people
complain that, well, it's hard to get anywhere because people
are just crowding up to you know, and by people,
it's usually all guys crowding to take photos with her.
(31:54):
And it's women like that who are making it super
sexy who are ruining it or the rest of us,
to which Jessica at all, who are also you know,
making money off of this, partially because they look really
great in sexy costumes. Say hey, now, no, I'm just
this is what I'm doing. So there's a lot of
(32:27):
argument over whether something like that is empowering and feminist
or not. And an I g N actually talked to
three women cost players who talked a lot about enjoying
the validation and attention that comes along with dressing up
like this, a feeling feminine and or powerful, and also
using their sexuality, all of this in the framework of feminism.
(32:49):
But they also do talk in this interview a lot
about the extreme sexual harassment that they face, whether it's
just verbal or actually physical, and the misogyny that they
know exists. But the whole thing about talking to these
three women is, um, they really really took issue with feminism. Yeah,
they all completely disavowed feminism because it seemed like the
(33:14):
women who were most critical of them were coming from
a feminist stance, basically saying that they were degrading themselves
by being sexy. And this this gets into a whole
different kind of conversation though, Well, yeah, because somebody like
the Vixen gamer she says, we're seeing a big spearhead
(33:35):
of feminism in the gaming industry, and I think, don't
sacrifice your feminine femininity to fit in, and then there's
the whole conversation of well what is I mean, let's
not get super philosophical right now, but like, what is femininity?
And who are you being feminine? Four? And who are
you performing your gender? Four? And are you really doing
it to make yourself happy? Or are you doing it
(33:56):
because you are fitting into what men expect of you?
And on and on and on. I am I would
love to hear from cause players on this particular issue,
because you know you and I can only offer outside
perspectives to me that the simplest way to boil it
down is, Ladies, you do you okay if this is
(34:20):
the way that you make your your money and you
feel empowered and safe doing it, okay? But do other
lady caused players a solid and unlike black Cat, don't
blame them for men behaving badly, because, as she describes,
(34:42):
if you don't turn around and threaten to hurt them
in the penis region, then you're the one to blame
for your own harassment. It's like everyone just needs to
Could we all just get on the same page regarding
harassment and good behavior? And could you just promote good
behavior and and then can't we all just con together
(35:04):
and in peace and harmony. That would be great. But
something that I thought was so strange, and and another
blogger thought this was odd too. But in this interview
Ardella cost Player, Ardella says that sexism is really a
point of view. It's how you react to it and
how you betray yourself as to whether or not you
(35:25):
allow people to objectify you. She basically said, don't let
anyone treat you like an object if that's not the
way you want to be treated to, which, you know,
I just like my eyes rolled into the back of
my head because Okay, Blogger intrat Sceptive a k a.
Readjenkins had an appropriate response. I thought she said that
to suggest that sexism, rather than being inherently wrong, is
(35:48):
simply a matter of how the person affected deals with
it is ridiculous, and she takes issue with a lot
of the arguments that were raised in the interview. Well yeah,
I mean she compared that to saying, uh, you know, okay,
so let's take this this assertion that sexism is just
how you, the the the objectified person deals with it.
(36:10):
She was like, okay, if you said that, but just
replaced sexism with racism, clearly everyone would disagree with you,
and so it's a similar kind of thing with sexism.
Um Over at the Geek Feminism blog, Uh, there's an
entire more academic presentation on this whole issue of the
(36:32):
sexy geek cause play thing, and um she talks about
how quote geek media representations of women influence geek women's
decisions to dress in sexy cause play, and how what
makes sexy cosplay sexy is not just that women are attractive,
but that they're performing and actively seeking the mail approval.
(36:54):
It's that question that you raise, Caroline of, like, well,
who are you performing this for? And obviously for professional
all cosplayers who make money off of other people buying
calendars and whatnot of them in sexy costumes. Yeah, obviously
they're performing it for, you know, to to look sexy
for the male gaze. That's their job. Yeah yeah, But
(37:17):
I mean I guess they're talking to about like people
who aren't just the just the professional ones, not just
the professional cost players, but just um women who might
go to these cons and do want to capture that
empowered feeling by dressing a certain way. And the geek
Feminism blogger talked about how it is that particular type
(37:37):
of gender performance that is rewarded in this culture, whether
you're a professional or an amateur. To me, the Geeks
for Consent response is sort of the cleanest across the
board response to all of this, which is simply that
cosplay does not equal consent. And perhaps if you know,
(37:59):
common con as other cons are doing outlines of stricter
sexual harassment policy. The more that people talk about it,
the more media coverage it gets, the more you know,
perhaps these kinds of behaviors that tain't the cosplay experience
UM might improve. Yeah, well, we can look to Washington,
d C is awesome Con as an example where this worked.
(38:23):
UM Awesome Con partnered with Geeks for Consent to provide
a team on site who could act as a resource
for attendees who feel unsafe. UM and awesome Con now
has adopted a zero tolerance policy against harassment, groping, stalking,
and inappropriate photography, and they said that gender based harassment
(38:43):
doesn't have to happen in the workplace to be unacceptable.
And so I think it's great that there are groups
out there and cons out there who are taking definite
concrete steps to say hey, no, no, no, no, no,
you don't get to be a harasser and you shouldn't
have to be a victim just because you want to
come to this convey mention like harassment is not an
acceptable part of dressing up and having an awesome time
(39:05):
with your fellow geek culture people. Well, personally, I don't
feel qualified to jump directly into this phray regarding you know,
all of the causeplay politics of sexy costumes. I think
there are a lot of different layers to it in
terms of the representations of women in these fandom sources,
the source texts and sourced films and television shows and etcetera. Um,
(39:30):
we are relying on our audience to fill in the
blank for this, because I know we got some cause
players listening. Yeah. I cannot wait to see your pictures.
By the way, yes, please send us photos. They are appreciated. Yeah,
I want to see photos, and I want to hear
from you if you've had any of these sorts of
whether you're male or female, cosplaying or cross playing, I
(39:51):
do want to hear from you about has have you
faced harassment or have you just been getting high fives
everywhere you go? I want to, I want to hear
about it, and is this something that is overblown in
the media. Is this simply, you know, sort of a
very small aspect of con the con life um that
maybe gets too much attention. Let us know Mom's Stuff
(40:15):
at how Stuffwork dot com is our email address. You
can also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast or messages
on Facebook, and we have a couple of messages to
share with you right now. We have some letters here
about our Wanderlust Traveling Women episode. I have one from Anna.
(40:37):
She said, three years ago, I had a stable partner,
good job prospects, and a home. I soon discovered I
was pregnant and gave up my career to start down
the path of motherhood. Later, I experienced a rather traumatic
miscarriage in which I had to have a d n C.
Following my miscarriage, my partner left me and blamed me
for the loss of the child. Realizing that I gave
(40:57):
up my career for a child that would never be
that resulted in the loss of my partner was too much,
so I decided that I needed to go. I didn't
just travel, but I moved to rural Japan by myself.
I've since moved around the southern island of Kyushu, met
my future husband, and have been enjoying the freedom that
comes with being a contract worker in Japan. I've never
(41:18):
read any travel memoirs, and this podcast was the first
time I didn't feel alone and what happened to me.
I think more women should go out and live in
another country by themselves for a while, because it really
does help you to see how small your problems are
in the grand scheme of things. But thanks Anna, and
I've got a similar letter here from Nadlie about um
how she got wander lusty after a breakup. She writes,
(41:44):
it's almost embarrassing how true most of the things you
discussed are in regard to myself and my story over
the past year, my significant other of eleven years and
I broke up and I found myself lost, never having
experienced adult life without him. I'm a school teacher and
have the summer's off, which allow me to take what
I refer to as an epic summer adventure, all of
which she capitalized. I got in my car and just
(42:06):
drove to as many places as I could. I think
the most life changing spot for me was seeing the
Grand Canyon for the first time. It could be because
of how impressive the Grand Canyon is, but I think
it was more because it was my first major stop.
Walking up to this amazing place that exists in the
world and knowing that I got there by myself was
completely and utterly overwhelming and empowering. I sat on the
rim of the canyon and just cried while others walked
(42:29):
around me, wondering what my problem was. After that, I
knew that I could do anything, and that being alone
has some great benefits. You can check out a blog
I kept while I was gone at Natalie Genie dot
tumbler dot com and see photos from my trip on
my Instagram using the hashtag my Epic Summer Adventure. Thanks
for all the time and effort you put into your show.
You never disappoint, So thanks Natalie, and thanks everybody who's
(42:53):
written into us. Mom Stepp at how Stuffworks dot com
is our email address and for links to all of
our social media's as well as all of our blog post, videos,
and podcasts, including this one, which also includes its sources
so you can follow along. There's one place to go,
and it's stuff Mom Never Told You dot com For
(43:14):
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