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August 25, 2014 • 40 mins

As cosplay has become more popular outside of Japan in recent years, it has raised fascinating questions about gender, sexuality and authenticity in fandom and the fictional realms cosplay strives to mirror. Just in time for con season, Cristen and Caroline share how there's far more to cosplay than dressing up.

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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff Mob Never told you. From how Supports
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. 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

(00:23):
there are 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
in our world of the past as the super podcast
is coming out now about cosplay and particularly women in cosplay. Yeah,

(00:50):
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.
And cosplaying can range from just wearing a mask, even
though I have a feeling if you show up at
dragon Con and just the mask and jeans that is

(01:11):
not going to cut it, 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
and wigs and all sorts of things, but a lot
of people tend to embody fully, embody whoever it is

(01:31):
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 accuracy 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
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 Leia or Han Solo,

(01:52):
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 it 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
her costume that wasn't completely accurate. Yeah, accuracy is highly
valued and stuff you missed in history class. Fans are

(02:15):
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
and take months to make because it's all about those details. Yeah.
I know. I have another friend who she'll kill me

(02:38):
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 gets some pretty good
deals to make some costume make some incredible costumes. She's
an incredible seamstress and can whip up these amazing costumes.

(02:58):
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.
And while a lot of times people seem to think

(03:18):
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
nine when sci fi fan Forest Jay Ackerman attended the
first ever World Science Fiction Convention a k a. World

(03:39):
Con 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

(04:00):
if you do 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? It's actually

(04:21):
a language 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.
Was very strange. It's also in black and white, so
if you ever want, if you ever if you love

(04:43):
William Shatner, you should watch it. Well. So the following year,
World Con holds its first mas gade ball, So obviously
Ackerman and Jones were doing something right. And then sixteen
years later, in nineteen fifty six, Ackerman returns to World
count were word on it and notes how common costumes
have become. I'm assuming he felt like like the o

(05:05):
G cost player, like, oh, look at all these beons
during this Now he had to have. 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

(05:26):
nineteen fifties spaceman. It was like a like 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 you know,

(05:50):
from the sixties on where 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 seventy five it
becomes clear that even though costuming wasn't huge at comic

(06:14):
con at the time, there was a German newspaper that
published an article on sci fi conventions as quote largely
devoted to costume dances, partties 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 so five

(06:37):
years later, nineteen eighty, if we look to Japan, the
manga series Uras Yet Sarah is released, Sorry if I
butchered that, um, and, along with the nineteen seventy nine
series Mobile Suit Gundam, it helped jump start cosplay in Japan,
although it wasn't called cosplay yet. Um. That wasn't until
Night four when Japanese reporters LA manga publisher Takahashi Nobiyuki

(07:02):
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 apparently loved

(07:24):
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

(07:45):
in the United States. Right. Yeah, in the 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 A nine nine.
There was even a cosplay cafe that opened up in Tokyo,

(08:05):
and by now there are entire cosplay districts in Japan
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

(08:28):
they're always dressed like it's the eighteen fifties or something,
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, costplayers hit Reality TV
with the Sci Fi channels Heroes of Cosplay, so it
is like cosplay. As much as a lot of people

(08:50):
think of it as being outside the mainstream and weird
and 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, uh not everyone
who was big into cosplay was a big fan of
Heroes of Cosplay on sci Fi. I read a blog

(09:11):
post on I think it was a comics related blog
talking about 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,

(09:36):
to to 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

(09:58):
the underlying 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,

(10:21):
like I pointed out, cross play is dressing as a
character of another gender, and successful cross play is seen
as a means for cross players 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

(10:42):
just compare it to drag for for more lay audiences. Um.
And this is something, though specifically male to female cross play,
that Rachel Lang a 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 hyper femininity,

(11:05):
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 interesting way to

(11:26):
look at it because they talk a lot about the
fictive nature of gender. 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 moving quote like

(11:48):
a woman and not like a man, which comes naturally
to him. And another interesting aspect of cross play that
Rachel Ling 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 we're not gay.

(12:08):
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 so self

(12:29):
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 cosplay community if
you dare to engage or maybe not dare. It doesn't
seem like it's that wild of an idea to engage
in cross play because a lot of times too, this

(12:53):
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

(13:15):
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

(13:36):
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
and the story was a this rather large man with

(13:57):
a beard and a big gut, dressed up a 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. Well. Probably even
more common, as a guardian reported on in is female

(14:20):
to male cross play because a lot of times female
casse 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, it might demand cross playing,

(14:42):
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 choose
to cross play as these male characters. In a lot

(15:03):
of manga and anime series, the characters are more ambiguous,
so helping to enable this cross play is things like
what's called bi shown in which are highly feminized male
characters with model like proportions that tend to appear in
manga geared toward women. And along those lines, what's super

(15:24):
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 Who characters over
the years, but rather being a female Doctor Who, but

(15:46):
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 Bay and you'd just be wearing you know,
the scary face mask, but just a crop top. The

(16:08):
croptp will do, right, and so um blogger night Sky
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 interesting that there seems to be

(16:30):
so much cred, at least according to that Duke paper,
in the more realistic uh male to female cross play
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 be a lot of cred for

(16:52):
feming 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 han floors. Yeah, exactly. And responding
to that blogger night Sky, the Guardian writer does point
out that yes, she's absolutely right. Um, you know, it
is a way to reclaim characters to say that, hey,
girley is okay. But it's also serving as that reminder

(17:15):
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 the traditionally male dominated gaming world, comic world,

(17:39):
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 in Japan, in particular, cosplay open doors for

(17:59):
japan needs 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, the kauai, alongside techno cultures that revolve
around using a mobile device. And so basically that kauai

(18:23):
served as sort of a gateway from um passive consumer
to women actually entering the gaming realm, the anime realm,
and actively participating. Because in the same way that a
woman might fem a doctor who character, they're talking about
Japanese girls and young women who are kind of cuting

(18:46):
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 it essentially means the single, independent
woman who is most closely associated with these cultures, who

(19:08):
is getting more into or has gotten more into, um,
the technoculture and really the participatory aspects of that. And
the paper also talks 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

(19:33):
the prime game consumer, and so it's just the same
kind of thing that you see happening over in the
US as well. But while 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

(19:55):
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 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,

(20:15):
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, 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,

(20:38):
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 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,

(20:59):
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 you know we're doing you know,
if you're doing a film costume of a male character,
like I mentioned jokingly, uh, a lot of times those

(21:19):
costumes get sexy and provocative as well. And while some
of the cosplay world have argued that, you know what,
that's two 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, whether it is being faithful
to that original character portrayal, or if you are reinterpreting
a costume in a sexier version. That's not an invitation

(21:44):
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, recently with the San Diego Common Con,
there was this entire initiative started by a group called

(22:04):
Geeks for 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 their standard code of conduct, and they ended
up collecting more than signatures on a petition to get

(22:25):
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 male attention. And you know,
they're arguing that it's not fair that like if you
have a mail, for instance, just to use the example
of a male to female cross player, like you know,

(22:45):
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
out of wearing a crop top or ripped jeans or something.
You know, they want to be faithful to that strong character,

(23:06):
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,
the New York Cause Player Network has put together panels

(23:29):
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
with Cause players of color, because you know, as we

(23:50):
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, than you are golden. But
when it comes to representation in uh comic book heroes,
for instance, a lot of them not only are male,

(24:13):
but they're also very white as well. So there's actually
a tumbler um called cause playing 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 are dressing up as. Yeah, I hated

(24:36):
reading the kinds of things that blogger shak A 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 a character,
how great of a time she had, but that one
single picture of her dressed in character like blew the
Internet up with people saying incredibly off full racist things

(25:01):
and essentially boiled down to 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, 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

(25:22):
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 costplayers of color, but also
people of different body shapes and sizes being called out,
especially if they might be wearing a tighter fitting or
a more skin revealing costume, of saying oh no, you

(25:46):
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. This is for everybody. This is
the space where I can ring all of my super
geeky fandom that people that I work with are people
that I, you know, see regularly in public, just might

(26:09):
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 visibility and representation UM
and cosplay 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

(26:32):
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 and I could find nothing. Yeah,
And 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

(26:54):
it was to see other trans people cosplaying because they
felt like they always needed to keep their sort identity
under wraps for fear of discrimination. Yeah, a lot of
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 gender thing. You know, are you are you

(27:16):
coss playing? 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 harassing you for like not being biologically accurate.
I don't know, it's like there's there's so many ways
to be attacked. Well, it's interesting that that's happening, to

(27:37):
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 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,

(27:57):
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 the problem here, Yeah, exactly, Okay, Well moving
to you know, we want to continue this, this gender
discussion of cosplaying, but we obviously have to bring feminism

(28:19):
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 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 uh, professional cause playing

(28:42):
women who essentially are just their models. They're very attractive
women with very conventionally attractive bodies that involve large breasts
and small waists and attractive behind and they you know,
have fan groups and fan pages is and make money,
you know, by going to different cons and dressing up

(29:05):
and their costumes obviously are sexy and that's the whole
point of it. And not everybody likes that. So, for instance,
if someone 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,

(29:25):
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.
And it's women like that who are making it super
sexy who are ruining it for the rest of us,
to which Jessica at all, who are also you know,

(29:46):
making money off of this, partially because they look really
great and sexy costumes say hey, now, no, I'm just
this is what I'm doing, right, And so there's a
lot of 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

(30:06):
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. But they also do talk in this
interview a lot about the extreme sexual harassment that they face,

(30:27):
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 women who were most critical of

(30:48):
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 converse station though, Well, yeah,
because somebody like the Vixen gamer she says, we're seeing
a big spearhead of feminism in the gaming industry, and

(31:08):
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 because you are fitting into what men

(31:31):
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. The simplest way to
boil it down is ladies, you do you okay if
this is the way that you make your your money

(31:54):
and you feel empowered and safe doing it, okay A
but do other lady caused players is solid and unlike
black Cat, don't blame them for men behaving badly, because,
as she describes, if you don't turn around and threaten

(32:15):
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 because you
just promote good behavior, and then then can't we all
just con together in peace and harmony. That would be great.

(32:40):
But something that I thought was so strange and and
another blogger thought this was odd too. But in this
interview Ardella Costclaire 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
allow people to objectify you. She basically said, don't let

(33:00):
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 interest sceptive ak a read
Jenkins had an appropriate response. I thought she said that
to suggest that sexism, rather than being inherently wrong, is
simply a matter of how the person affected deals with

(33:22):
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 objectified person, deals with it. She
was like, Okay, you've said that, but just replaced sexism

(33:44):
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 sexy geek
caused play thing and um she talks about how quote

(34:08):
geek media representations of women influence geek women's decision 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 male approval.
It's that question that you raise, Caroline of like well,
who are you performing this for? And obviously for professional

(34:31):
cost players 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
I mean, I guess they're talking too about like people
who aren't just the just the professional ones, not just

(34:53):
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
of gender performance that is rewarded in this culture, whether
you're a professional or an amateur. To me that the

(35:15):
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,
Comic Con as other cons are doing outlines of stricter
sexual harassment policy. The more that people talk about it,

(35:37):
the more media coverage it gets, the more you know,
perhaps these kinds of behaviors that taint the cosplay experience
um might improve. Yeah, well, we can look to Washington,
d C is Awesome Con as an example where this worked.
Um Awesome Con partnered with Geeks for Consent to provide

(35:58):
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
doesn't have to happen in the workplace to be unacceptable.
And so I think it's great that there are groups

(36:20):
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 convention, Like, harassment is not an acceptable
part of dressing up and having an awesome time with
your fellow geek culture people. Well, personally, I don't feel

(36:40):
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
et cetera. Um, we are relying on our audience to

(37:04):
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 do want to hear from you
about has have you faced harassment or have you just

(37:26):
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 at how Stuffwork dot com is our email address.

(37:48):
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. She said three years ago, I had a

(38:10):
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 up my career for a child that
would never be that resulted in the loss of my

(38:32):
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 read any travel memoirs, and this
podcast was the first time I didn't feel alone and

(38:54):
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
Natalie about um how she got wander lusty after a breakup.
She writes, it's almost embarrassing how true most of the

(39:18):
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 summers off, which allowed me to take
what I refer to as an epic summer adventure, all
of which she capitalized. I got in my car and
just drove to as many places as I could. I

(39:40):
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
around me, wondering what my problem was. After that, I

(40:03):
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

(40:24):
written into us. Mom Steff at house set works 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 more on this and thousands of other topics.

(40:48):
Is it how stuff Works dot com

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