Ok, so I’ve read this article, really sat down and parsed it out, shared it on my Tumblr after a FB friend posted a link to it and I can’t get behind it. This person doesn’t seem to be a member of the cosplaying community, is painting every woman who does cosplay with the same brush of wanting to garner straight male gaze with their attire, and couches it in academic sounding terms for the appearance of legitimacy.
It doesn’t consider those who do cosplay for the love of costuming, the challenge of getting a difficult concept right, showing off the fruits of your labor to those who can appreciate the work and craftsmanship that goes into cosplay.
It also assumes that all female “sexy” cosplayers are straight and angling for hetero male approval/attentions. Or that all these women are doing it to show off their bodies in some attempt to titillate or again garner straight male gaze/approval.
As a gamer, and a geek I found it offensive on behalf of people who do cosplay. A friend of mine who is really into it took serious offense at the article because it assumes that she (as someone who has cosplayed Isabela from DA II and Trish from the Devil May Cry series) is putting on that costume strictly to garner male attention and approval. No she does it because she loves the costuming, the challenge of putting it together and because she wants to do it for her own pleasure, not to get some dude’s (unwanted) gaze
It also made me think of another friends post (on Tumblr) who dressed up for her self, because she was having a day of I wanna wear this for me. A coworker then turned it into C must have a date/is interested in someone in her class/has a crush. Because clearly you can’t just dress nicely for YOURSELF, instead you must be doing it to get some man’s attention.
Yeah that article just doesn’t sit right with me.I will definitely reference it at my WisCon panel next weekend.
